Early Life
Born to a single mother, Betty Brown, in York on 23 December 1948, Davis was initially brought up by his grandparents there. His grandfather Walter Harrison was the son of a wealthy trawlerman and was disinherited after joining the Communist Party; he led a hunger march to London shortly after the more famous Jarrow March, which did not allow Communists to participate. His father, whom he met once after his mother's death, is Welsh. When his mother married a Polish-Jewish printworker, Ronald Davis, he moved to London. They lived initially in a flat in a "slum" in Wandsworth before moving to a council estate in Tooting, London.
On leaving Bec Grammar School in Tooting, his A Level results were not good enough to secure a university place. Davis worked as an insurance clerk and became a member of the Territorial Army's 21 SAS Regiment in order to earn the money to retake his examinations. On doing so he won a place at the University of Warwick (BSc Joint Hons Molecular Science/Computer Science 1968–71). Whilst at Warwick, he was one of the founding members of the student radio station, University Radio Warwick. He went straight on from there to London Business School, where he got a Master's Degree in Business (1971–73), and, later, Harvard University (Advanced Management Program 1984–85).
Davis worked for Tate & Lyle for 17 years, rising to become a senior executive, including restructuring its troubled Canadian subsidiary, Redpath Sugar. He wrote about his business experience in the 1988 book How to Turn Round a Company.
He met his wife, Doreen, at Warwick. They have three children.
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