William Robertson Davies (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto. Biography Early life Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario, the third son of William Rupert Davies and Florence Sheppard McKay. Growing up, Davies was surrounded by books and lively language. His father, a member of the Canadian Senate from 1942 to his death in 1967, was a newspaperman from Welshpool, Wales, and both parents were voracious readers. He followed in their footsteps and read everything he could. He also participated in theatrical productions as a child, where he developed a lifelong interest in drama. He spent his formative years in Renfrew, Ontario (and renamed it as "Blairlogie", in his novel What's Bred in the Bone); many of the novel's characters are named after families he knew there. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto from 1926 to 1932 and while there attended services at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. He would later leave the Presbyterian Church and join Anglicanism over objections to Calvinist theology. Davies later used his experience of the ceremonial of High Mass at St. Mary Magdalene's in his novel The Cunning Man. After Upper Canada College, he studied at Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, from 1932 until 1935. According to the Queen's University Journal Davies enrolled as a special student not working towards a degree, because he was unable to pass the mathematics component of Queen's entrance exam. At Queen's he wrote for the student paper, The Queen's Journal, where he wrote a literary column. He left Canada to study at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a BLitt degree in 1938. The next year he published his thesis, Shakespeare's Boy Actors, and embarked on an acting career outside London. In 1940, he played small roles and did literary work for the director at the Old Vic Repertory Company in London. Also that year, Davies married Australian Brenda Mathews, whom he had met at Oxford, and who was then working as stage manager for the theatre. They spent their honeymoon in the Welsh countryside at Fronfraith Hall, Abermule, Montgomery, the family house