Personal Life and Charity Support
Davies is the father of seven children (five daughters and two sons) and has three former wives. In addition to owning the world's fastest commercial private jet (the 700+ mph Cessna Citation X), he has a "Super Yacht" and a fleet of luxury cars including a black Ferrari Maranello.
He is a big fan of Coldplay, Paulo Nutini and James Blunt. In 2008, it was reported that he had built a 7 hole golf course in his back garden.
Davies divides his time between his family, his business ventures and his seven chosen charities which includes helping the education of under-privileged children in Asia as well as making life more comfortable for British soldiers injured in combat overseas. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Davies revealed that he had decided to give his private yacht away to a charity called Sail 4 Cancer (a charity which provides families suffering from cancer with respite break sailing holidays). He also donated the use of his private jet to The Celebration of Life after Cancer charity who successfully auctioned the prize to raise funds for people who were living and coping with cancer.
In addition, Davies is a Governor of Malvern College and is the influence and benefactor behind the George Davies Centre For Retail Excellence at Heriot-Watt University.
Davies is also a trustee of the Mvumi School Trust, which oversees the DCT Mvumi Secondary School in Tanzania.
Davies was found guilty of drink driving in June 2011 following a 5 mile police chase in May 2010.
Read more about this topic: George Davies (retailer)
Famous quotes containing the words personal, life, charity and/or support:
“In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“Reputation is not of enough value to sacrifice character for it.”
—“Miss Clark,” U.S. charity worker. As quoted in Petticoat Surgeon, ch. 9, by Bertha Van Hoosen (1947)
“A clergyman, again, can hardly ever allow himself to look facts fairly in the face. It is his profession to support one side; it is impossible, therefore, for him to make an unbiased examination of the other.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)