William Croft Dickinson was born in Leicester on 28 August 1897. He was educated at Mill Hill School in London, and then he studied at St. Andrews University in Scotland, graduating in 1921 and later proceeding to Ph.D. He was also awarded a D.Litt. (London) in 1928. During the First World War, and while an undergraduate, he enlisted in the Black Watch and was later commissioned, serving in France and Flanders with 45th Company Machine Gun Corps (Infantry) (15th Scottish Division). He was decorated at Passchendaele.

After the War and studying, he was Librarian at the London School of Economics Library - the British Library of Political and Economic Science - between 1933 and 1944. In 1944 he became Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography at Edinburgh University in 1944, succeeding Professor R. K. Hannay. Just prior to his appointment he delivered the Rhind Lectures of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland on the Jurisdiction of medieval Scotland.

His publication record includes: The sheriff court book of Fife, 1515-1522 (1928), The Court Book of the Barony of Carnwath, 1523-1542 (1937), and with Dr A. O. and Mrs M. O. Anderson, the Chronicle of Melrose (1936). He was also a writer of children's stories and ghost stories including Borrobil (1944), and Dark encounters (1963).

Just a few months before his death in 1963, Dickinson was made a C.B.E. He died on 22 May 1963.