Williams left Oxford to accommodate his wife's rising political ambitions, finding a post first at University College London, where he worked from 1959 until 1964. He was later appointed Professor of Philosophy at Bedford College, while his wife worked as a journalist for the Financial Times. For 17 years the couple lived in a large house in Kensington with the literary agent Hilary Rubinstein and his wife, a period Willams described as one of the happiest of his life.[6]