Illness and Death
Davies was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in 1978 and swiftly stood down from the Shadow Cabinet and from Parliament. Davies was granted the position of Steward of the Manor of Northstead on 6 November 1978. In the Queen's birthday honours list of 1979, he was awarded a life peerage, but on 4 July 1979 The London Gazette announced that "Gentle Davies dead" from a relapse before the patent of creation passed the Great Seal. Peerage history was made when, by Royal Warrant bearing the date 27 February 1980, his widow Vera Georgina was granted the style and title of Lady Harding-Davies, Baroness of St. Mellons, indicating the title Davies had intended to take; his children The Hon. Francis William Harding Harding-Davies and The Hon. Rosamond Ann Metherell were given the rank of children of life peers.
Read more about this topic: John Davies (businessman)
Famous quotes containing the words illness and/or death:
“Thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
But he once passed, soon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length
From hell continued reaching th’ utmost orb
Of this frail world;”
—John Milton (1608–1674)