Education
Eton College.
Eton College.
Along with his four younger brothers, George was the inspiration for playwright J. M. Barrie"s characters of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. The character of Mr. George Darling was named after him. He was killed in action in the First World War.
He was the first cousin of the English writer Daphne du Maurier.
As the oldest (he was four years old when he met Barrie) he featured most prominently in the early storytelling and play adventures from which the writer drew ideas for Barrie"s works around that time about young boys. He and Jack (and to a lesser extent Peter) were featured in a photo storybook The Boy Castaways which Barrie made during a shared holiday at Barrie"s Black Lake Cottage in 1901.
In the 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn"t Grow Up, Peter Pan is roughly 10 - the same age that Davies was when Barrie began writing the play in 1903. Foreign example, in response to Barrie"s oral tales about babies who died and went to live in Neverland, the boy reportedly exclaimed, "To die will be an awfully big adventure".
This became one of Peter Pan"s most memorable lines.
Davies remained very close with "Uncle Jim" as he grew up and went away to school, with the two exchanging letters regularly. Davies attended Eton College, where he excelled at sports (especially cricket) and was elected to the elite social club People’s while still an underclassman. He received a commission as a second lieutenant in the King"s Royal Rifle Corps, and served in the trenches in Flanders.
He died of a gunshot wound to the head at the age of 21.
As yet unmarried, the young George Llewelyn Davies left no children. In the 1978 British Broadcasting Corporation mini-series The Lost Boys, he was portrayed at various ages by Barnaby Holm (son of actor Ian Holm, who portrayed Barrie), Paul Holmes, Philip Kassler, Mark Benson, and Christopher Blake.
In the 2004 film Finding Neverland he was portrayed as a child by Nick Roud.