meant the most to Barrie. Davies attended Eton College, where he had difficulty adjusting to life away from his family, and he exchanged letters daily with "Uncle Jim" Barrie. He also suffered from nightmares, which he had experienced since childhood. Nonetheless, he made a number of friends and excelled at his studies, including art and writing poetry, and was generally described as a "brilliant boy", one destined for great things. Adulthood After finishing at Eton, Davies attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he continued to correspond regularly with Barrie. He briefly decided to study art at the University of Paris, but returned to Oxford. Several friends from Eton joined him there, but he also became very close to Rupert Buxton, the son of Sir Thomas Fowell Victor Buxton, 4th Baronet and a former pupil of Harrow School. The two became inseparable friends, spending time both at the university and on holiday together. Buxton was also a poet, and had an interest in acting. Buxton was one of the few friends of Davies whom Barrie reported getting along with. In an interview taped in 1976, Conservative politician Robert Boothby, who had been a close friend of Davies at Eton and Oxford, spoke about Davies' relationships during this time. When asked if Davies were homosexual, Boothby – who was reported by newspapers to have had homosexual relationships as an adult – replied it was "a phase... I think he might have come out of it." Boothby also said, "I don't think Michael had any girlfriends, but our friendship wasn't homosexual. I believe it was – fleetingly – between him and Senhouse". (Roger Senhouse was a friend of Davies at both Eton and Oxford.) Boothby reported that he had discouraged Davies' relationship with Buxton, warning of "a feeling of doom" he had about him. Although Boothby criticised the relationship between Davies and his surrogate father Barrie as "morbid" and "unhealthy", he dismissed the notion that there was a sexual aspect to it. However, he admitted that there had been a sexual relationship between Davies and Buxton. Death About a month before Davies's 21st birthday, he and Buxton drowned together in Sandford Lasher, a pool of water downstream of a weir near Sandford Lock on the River Thames, a few miles from Oxford. The closeness of Davies and Buxton, combined with the uncertain circumstances of their deaths, led to speculation that the pair had died