[2] He was educated at Haileybury and Merton College, Oxford,[3] where he began reading English, but after war service in the Royal Navy, returned to study History.
[4] Before he graduated, Davie was offered a job as diplomatic correspondent by David Astor, editor of The Observer, but the post had been filled by the time he had left Oxford University.
[6] Following his retirement, he wrote a biography of the press baron Lord Beaverbrook with his wife which was published in 1992.
His other books include a study of President Lyndon B. Johnson LBJ (1966); In the Future Now (1972), a contemporary account of the social changes and sun-rise industries in California; The Titanic (1986) and (with his son Simon) The Faber Book of Cricket (1987).
Michael Davie married twice, his wife from 1975 was the writer and journalist Anne Chisholm.