Jim Davies
BORN MAY 24, 1934 – DIED JANUARY 27, 2023, AGED 88
FORMER Daily Express foreign correspondent and feature writer Jim Davies has died peacefully in his beloved Cornwall, where he had retired after more than three decades of reporting with this paper.
In a distinguished career, he travelled to most of the world’s trouble spots.
In the 1950s he worked with the Intelligence Corps and was in Cyprus when a guerilla group launched an armed campaign against British rule.
He was also on Soweto’s streets in South Africa in 1976 as more than 100 people were shot dead when black schoolchildren protested against apartheid.
He risked his own safety too in the mid-1980s, managing to interview Iraq leader Saddam Hussein.
And there was further peril during a bloody civil war in Lebanon.
Readers were also given
an insight into the violence in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Davies was there when internment was introduced in 1971, and more than 300 Catholics were arrested in a bid to stop spiralling bloodshed.
A passionate environmentalist, he also joined pop star Sting on a trip up the Amazon to witness the destruction there.
Colleague Terry Manners said: “Jim was a lovely gentleman. We have been lucky to have been part of that Fleet Street era with such a collection of wit, knowledge and friendship.”
Jim worked for the Daily Sketch in Manchester before joining the Express.
As a talented jazz pianist, he loved to tell how he was sent to interview American jazz great Blossom Dearie when she was in London – and ended up singing at Ronnie Scott’s in London while she accompanied him on the piano.
He is predeceased by his wife Pat and survived by a son and daughter.