His brother, Alun Davies, became a professor of history at Swansea University.
[2] Davies was appointed a lecturer at Manchester in 1934, serving under H. J. Fleure.
He worked in naval intelligence for four years during the Second World War, after which, in 1945, he was appointed secretary to the council of the University of Wales, serving until 1963.
In 1963, he was appointed Permanent Secretary of the Welsh Department of the Ministry of Education; the next year, he took on the equivalent role in the newly formed Department of Education and Science.
[1] He was also a writer, producing works on transhumance and Welsh place names and rural communities.