He studied history at Oxford University and worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In the 1960s he worked at the University of Chile, where he wrote Guerrilla Movements in Latin America, "the enduring bible" on that topic. In January 1966, Gott was a candidate in a by-election in Kingston upon Hull North for the 'Radical Alliance', running on a platform which stressed opposition to the Vietnam War; he polled only 253 votes.

In 1967 Gott was in Bolivia as a freelance journalist for The Guardian to witness the events surrounding the capture and murder of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, and played a role in confirming that the 4-5 hour-old body in question was actually Che's, because he had met him in Havana in 1963.

In 1981 the BBC sought to appoint Gott to the position of editor at its cultural magazine The Listener, but his radical politics led to him failing to obtain security clearance and the post went instead to Russell Twisk.

Years later, after repeated accusations of being anti-British, he finally resigned as literary editor of the Guardian in 1994 after allegations were made in The Spectator that he had been an "agent of influence" for the KGB, claims which he rejected, arguing that "Like many other journalists, diplomats and politicians, I lunched with Russians during the cold war." He asserted that his resignation was "a debt of honour to my paper, not an admission of guilt", because his failure to inform his editor of three trips abroad to meet with KGB officials at their expense had caused embarrassment to the paper during its investigation of Jonathan Aitken. The source of the allegation that he was an agent, KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky. In his resignation letter Gott admitted "I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner. That, in the circumstances, was culpable stupidity, though at the time it seemed more like an enjoyable joke".