After serving in the RAF throughout WWII, Tom spent the next twenty years in the diplomatic service of the Republic of Indonesia, having been in a position to help the young Republic to become established, during the latter part of his RAF service. Luckily, he left Indonesia just before the horror of the military take-over in 1965. Since then he became a hotelier, farmer founder of Luath Press, and wrote a series of guide books to his beloved West and North of Scotland. Later he helped his herbalist daughter to breathe new life into Napiers of Edinburgh, a herbal consultancy established in 1860, and wrote Napiers History of Herbal Healing, also published by Luath.