When David Davies, who has died aged 89, was asked by John Prescott, the then deputy prime minister and transport secretary, to undertake an inquiry into the safety system on Britain’s railways after the Ladbroke Grove train crash of 1999, the BBC could not conceal its excitement. The report said: “Sir David Davies may not be a household name, but he is among the few people that the term genius can be applied to without overstatement.”
Davies – known universally as Den, taken from his initials – probably enjoyed this description. Aged 12, while at Llandaff Catholic school in Cardiff, he knocked on the headmaster’s door to complain he was not being intellectually challenged and asked, successfully, to be moved up to the next class. He went on to a glittering career in industry and academia.
