Henderson spent his early years in nearby Glen Shee and eventually moved to England with his mother. He won a scholarship to Dulwich School in London; however, his mother died shortly before he was due to take up his place and he had to live in an orphanage while studying there.^{[dubious – discuss]}

He studied Modern Languages at Downing College, Cambridge, in the years leading up to World War II, and as a visiting student in Germany ran messages for an organization run by the Society of Friends aiding the German resistance and helping to rescue Jews.^[1][4]

Although he argued strongly for peace, even well into the early years of the war, he became convinced that a satisfactory peace could not be reached and so he threw himself into the war effort. Joining as an enlisted soldier in the Pioneer Corps, he later applied for and received a commission in the Intelligence Corps. He was quite effective as an interrogator due to his command of six European languages and deep understanding of German culture.

He took part in the Desert War in Africa, during which he wrote his poem Elegies For the Dead in Cyrenaica, encompassing every aspect of a soldier's experience of the sands of North Africa. On 2 May 1945, Henderson personally oversaw the drafting of the surrender order of Italy issued by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani.^[5]

Henderson collected the lyrics to "D-Day Dodgers," a satirical song to the tune of "Lili Marlene", attributed to Lance-Sergeant Harry Pynn, who served in Italy. Henderson also wrote the lyrics to "The 51st (Highland) Division's Farewell to Sicily", set to a pipe tune called "Farewell to the Creeks". The book in which these were collected, Ballads of World War II, was published "privately" to evade censorship, but earned Henderson a ten-year ban from BBC radio, preventing a series on ballad-making from being made. His 1948 war poetry book, Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica, received the Somerset Maugham Award.^[1]

Henderson threw himself into the work of the folk revival after the war, discovering and bringing to public attention Jeannie Robertson, Flora MacNeil, Calum Johnston (see Annie and Calum Johnston of Barra Archived 14 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine) and others. In the 1950s, he acted as a guide to the American folklorist, Alan Lomax, who collected many field recordings in Scotland. (See Alan Lomax, Collector of Songs).

Henderson was instrumental in bringing about the Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh in 1951, which placed traditionally performed Scottish folk music on the public stage for the first time as "A Night of Scottish Song". However, the People's Festival, of which it was part, was planned as a left-wing competitor to the Edinburgh Festival and was deeply controversial. At the event, Henderson performed The John Maclean March, to the tune of Scotland the Brave, which honoured the life and work John Maclean, a communist and Scottish nationalist hero.

However, the event marked the first time that Scotland's traditional folk music was performed on a public stage. The performers included Flora MacNeil, Calum Johnston, John Burgess, Jessie Murray, John Strachan, and Jimmy MacBeath. The event was extremely popular and was regarded as the beginning of the second British folk revival.

Henderson continued to host the events every year until 1954, when the Communist ties of several members of the People's Festival Committee led to the Labour Party declaring it a "Proscribed Organisation". Losing the financial support of the local trades unions, the People's Festival was permanently cancelled.^[6] Henderson's own songs, particularly "Freedom Come All Ye", have become part of the folk tradition themselves.^[1]

Dividing his time between Continental Europe and Scotland, he eventually settled in Edinburgh in 1959 with his German wife, Kätzel (Felizitas Schmidt).

Henderson collected widely in the Borders and the north-east of Scotland, creating links between the travellers, the bothy singers of Aberdeenshire, the Border shepherds, and the young men and women who frequented the folk clubs in Edinburgh.

From 1955 to 1987 he was on the staff of the University of Edinburgh's School of Scottish Studies which he co-founded with Calum Maclean: there he contributed to the sound archives that are now available on-line. Henderson held several honorary degrees and after his retirement became an honorary fellow of the School of Scottish Studies. For many years he held court in Sandy Bell's Bar, the meeting place for local and visiting folk musicians. In April 1979, he was ' the prevailing spirit' at the first Edinburgh International Folk Festival conference 'The People's Past' both on ballads and in challenging traditional history telling. He also spoke at a Riddle's Court meeting which had hosted in the past, the Workers' Educational Association when he said that Calvinism was repressive in the Scottish psyche and that 'we had to divest ourselves of layers or preconception and misconception before we could come to grips with Scotland and its people.'^[7]

Henderson was a socialist,^[1] and beside his academic work for the University, he produced translations of the Prison Letters of Antonio Gramsci,^[8] whom he had first heard of among Communist Italian partisans during the war. The translation was published in the New Edinburgh Review in 1974 and as a book in 1988.^[1] He was involved in campaigns for Scottish home rule and in the foundation of the 1970s Scottish Labour Party. Henderson, who was openly bisexual, was vocal about gay rights and acceptance.^[1][9]

In 1983, Henderson was voted Scot of the Year by Radio Scotland listeners when he, in protest of the Thatcher government's nuclear weapons policy, turned down an OBE.^[1]

He died in Edinburgh on 8 March 2002 aged 82, survived by his wife Kätzel and their daughters, Janet and Christine Henderson.^[10]

In 2005, Rounder Records released a recording of the 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh as part of The Alan Lomax Collection. Henderson had collaborated with the preparations for the release.

In August 2013, Edinburgh University announced that it had acquired his personal archive of "more than 10,000 letters from almost 3400 correspondents, plus 136 notebooks and diaries", dating from the 1930s to the end of his life.^[11] These will be kept in the Special Collections department of the main library.^[12]

Discussions around national identity and constitutional resettlement in Scotland, especially those surrounding the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014, have often invoked Henderson's legacy. Politicians and cultural commentators alike describe their admiration for his song 'Freedom Come-All-Ye' and lend their voices to those touting it as an alternative national anthem. As a radical democrat whose political beliefs were closely bound up in the study of folk culture and high literature, Henderson's work expresses a tension between romantic nationalism and socialist internationalism which has been reaffirmed in public life in Scotland since his death.^[13]

Debate on his parenting, and a possible link to the eighth Duke of Atholl or a 'cousin' of that lineage,^[1] has continued into considering the 'cultural context' of the eighth Duke's role in designing the Scottish National War Memorial (opened 1927) bringing together the culture of 'the people', but also looking into Henderson possibly being of royal or aristocratic blood, 'acknowledging a heritage that meant a lot to him, while still protecting his anonymity, and the power of his life's work to identify with everyman and everywoman.'^{[citation needed]} Paul Potts had called Henderson "That guy? He's one of the wandering kings of Scotland."^[2]

• Hamish Henderson (1947) Ballads of World War II, Caledonian Press, Glasgow OCLC 6824582^[14]
• Hamish Henderson (1948) Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica, J. Lehmann, London OCLC 2806224
• Hamish Henderson (1987), "Antonio Gramsci" in Ross, Raymond J. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 28, Winter 87/88, pp. 22 – 26, ISSN 0264-0856
• Hamish Henderson (1995), Zeus as Curly Snake: The Chthonian Image, in Ross, Raymond (ed.), Cencrastus No. 52, Summer 1995, pp. 7 – 9, ISSN 0264-0856
• Alec Finlay, editor (1992) Alias MacAlias: Writings on songs, folk and literature, Polygon, Edinburgh ISBN 978-0-74866-042-1
• Alec Finlay, editor (1996) The Armstrong Nose: Selected letters of Hamish Henderson, Polygon, Edinburgh ISBN 978-0-74866-191-6
• Geordie McIntyre (1973), Resurgimento!, an interview with Hamish Henderson, in Maisels, Chic K. (ed.), Folk Song and the Folk Tradition, Festival issue of the New Edinburgh Review, August 73, pp. 12 & 13
• Raymond Ross, editor (2000) Collected Poems and Songs, Curly Snake Pub., Edinburgh, Scotland ISBN 978-1-90214-101-5^[15]
• Eberhard Bort, editor (2010) Borne on the Carrying Stream: The Legacy of Hamish Henderson, Grace Note Publications ISBN 978-1-907676-01-7
• Eberhard Bort, editor (2011) Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival ISBN 978-1-907676-10-9
• Jack Mitchell (1976), Hamish Henderson and the Scottish Tradition, in Burnett, Ray (ed.), Calgacus No. 3, Spring 1976, pp. 26 – 31, ISSN 0307-2029
• Timothy Neat (2012) Hamish Henderson: Poetry Becomes People (1952-2002), Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh ISBN 978-0-85790-487-4
• Corey Gibson (2015) The Voice of the People: Hamish Henderson and Scottish Cultural Politics, Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 978-0-74869-657-4
• Ian Spring (2020), Hamish Henderson: A Critical Appreciation, Rymour Books, Perth, ISBN 978-1-8381863-3-3
• Fred Freeman (2022), "Burns, Hamish and Sang", Pairt 1, in Morton, Elaine & Hershaw, William, Lallans 100, Simmer 2022, pp. 111 – 119, ISSN 1359-3587
• Tom Hubbard, "Hamish Henderson as Translator", in Hubbard, Tom (2022), Invitation to the Voyage: Scotland, Europe and Literature, Rymour, pp. 93 – 95, ISBN 9-781739-596002

• Scotsman obituary