Born at Warrington, Peterborough, Northamptonshire and educated at Kings School, Peterborough. Started working in Peterborough’s Education Department but in 1956 changed career to work in insurance eventually becoming Manager of General Accident in Kettering in 1982. He married and had three children.
He started collecting Lepidoptera in 1945 but took up Coleoptera in 1951. Subsequently met up with Donald Tozer who gave him much encouragement and help. Most of his collecting was done within twenty miles of Peterborough, but he also collected all over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, and when on holiday as far away as the Spey Valley and the Cairngorms in Scotland, Snowdon and Barmouth in Wales, and the New Forest and Isle of Purbeck in Dorset and Cornwall. Some collecting with his friends Bill Turner and Wilf Russell, was done in the East Midlands.
Henson did not publish his records but submitted many lists to English Nature and national recording schemes from various parts of the country. Tony Drane, who first met Henson when they were both collecting at Wicken Fen and subsequently became a lifelong friend, recorded in his obituary in EMM., 142, 2006, 175-176, ‘the warmth of his personality, his ready smile and his keen sense of humour... made him a delightful companion on a foray. He also had a patient tenacity in the field to find the target species and any habitat that he had worked knew it had been searched!’ But Henson was not interested in the smaller species and ‘any beetles under 3mm were ignored unless they were particularly interesting.'
In writing to me about his collection Henson stated that it represented all groups except Staphylinidae and water beetles but was strongest in Carabidae, Curculionidae, Cerambycidae, Chrysomelidae, Elateridae and Scarabaeidae. Beetles collected by him may also be found in the collections of A.B. Drane, D. Tozer, P.J.K. Burton and W. Hunt.
He was a member of the Northants. Naturalists Trust (from 1970) and Honorary Warden for Castor Hanglands NNR from 1952. The obituary mentioned above includes a photograph. (MD 3/03, 11/09, 1/22)