His father, who fought in the trenches during World War I and later worked as a cashier for Newcastle City Council, died when Davidson was nine.
Having previously been employed as a primary school teacher in the East End of London, his mother then returned to work to support Davidson and his older sister, Katie.
From 1937 to 1944, he was a pupil at Heaton Grammar School, and obtained a state bursary to study mechanical sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge.
[3][4][5][6] After receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1947, Davidson joined Rolls-Royce in Derby, where he served two and a half years in the Mechanical Development Department.
In 1957, he became the college's steward responsible for the entire household, including organisation of receptions of the royal family.
In 1948, Davidson married Susanne Hedwig Ostberg, a Holocaust refugee he met in the engineering department at Cambridge.
The couple had a son, Peter, a chemical engineer, and daughter, Isabel, a government lawyer who married future Conservative MP Oliver Letwin.