Family and Early Life
Davies was born in Blackheath, London on the 8 January 1916, the second son of Arnold Thomas Davies (1882–1966) a Chartered Accountant from Folkestone, by his wife Edith Minnie Harding (1880–1962) only child of Captain Francis Dallas Harding (1839–1902) - see Harding of Baraset - and Minnie Mary Malchus of Calcutta. Davies went to Windlesham House School in Sussex and St. Edward's School, Oxford. He followed his father into accountancy as an articled clerk from 1934; he had just obtained professional qualifications as the youngest Chartered Accountant in the country in 1939, when the outbreak of World War II led him to enlist in the Royal Army Service Corps. Davies was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and spent most of the war in the Combined Operations headquarters. From 1945 he worked for Combined Operations Experimental Establishment (COXE), and received the MBE on demobilization in 1946. On the 8th of January 1943, he married Vera Georgina Bates, only child of George William Bates, Managing Director of Barratts Shoes, by his wife Elvina Rosa Taylor. The marriage produced two children; a daughter - Rosamond Ann, and a son - Francis William Harding Davies.
Read more about this topic: John Davies (businessman)
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