Michael Davie

Michael Davie (15 January 1924 – 7 December 2005) was a British journalist.

Born in Cranleigh, Surrey, Davie was the last of three children born to the head of a firm of stockbrokers. He was educated at Haileybury and Merton College, Oxford, where he began reading English, but after war service in the Royal Navy, returned to study History. 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.

After a brief period at the Manchester Evening News, he joined The Observer in 1950 as religious correspondent.

In 1977, he settled in Melbourne, Australia, where he became Associate Editor of The Age, becoming the newspaper's editor in 1979, a post he retained until returning to London and The Observer in 1981 for the remainder of his career. Davie retired in 1988. His final completed book was Anglo-Australian Attitudes published in 2000.

Michael Davie married twice, his wife from 1975 was the writer and journalist Anne Chisholm. With his first wife (Robin Atherton) he had a son and two daughters, and an adopted son (who predeceased him) with his second. Davie died in December 2005 in Ewelme, Oxfordshire.