Frank Davis’s farewell

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From Emily:

Frank Davis passed away peacefully in his sleep on October 8, 2021. A funeral service was held in Hereford on November 5, and his lovely family was kind enough to make the service available live as a webcast via Obitus. Readers and friends were watching live online in the UK, US, Denmark, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.


Three readers of Frank’s blog – friends of Frank’s and regulars on the Smoky Drinky Bar – attended the service in person. Among them were Bucko the Moose, Mrs. Bucko, and 20Rothmans. Bucko posted a really lovely writeup on his blog and it also includes an embed of the recording of the service, if anyone would like to watch it. 


The service began with a procession to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” by the Platters followed by a moving reading by Frank’s brother-in-law, Ian Stone. Ian recounted Frank’s fascinating autobiography and travels around the world as a child and his work as an architect, computer programmer, and research assistant.


One of Frank’s nephews, Matthew, then read “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost which seemed a very fitting tribute. Another nephew, Daniel, then read from some of Frank’s blog posts, including reflections on how the smoking ban in the UK in 2007 decimated his favorite pub and destroyed his social life.


Hilary, Frank’s sister-in-law, read aloud comments on Frank’s last post, as well as Underdogs Bite Upwards, from commenters Fumo Ergo Sum and Stewart Cowan, as well as a tribute from Simon Clark.


Finally, Frank’s brother, Andrew, read a very moving account of Frank’s scientific work including Idle Theory, orbital simulation, his glaciation model, and mentioned a new work Frank was writing entitled “The Philosophy of Time.”


It was a bittersweet goodbye to Frank – our dear friend, and a great man. I thank his family for arranging the webcast and very graciously letting us all be a part of it.

9 thoughts on “Frank Davis’s farewell”

  2. Gosh. I don’t know what to say. Well, not much anyway. Other than Bon Soir. So much nicer than Good Night.

    My youngest son never reads my Blog. He is saving it until I am dead, he says He isn’t half going to have to wait. God knows what I can come up with in the next twenty years. But it will never be about Family. Other than the ghastly Dachshund of course. He is Family. Isn’t that nice. But then I always have liked dogs better than people.

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  3. Many thanks, Leggy. That is a wonderful piece from Emily. Frank was a truly original thinker and a man of courage. Discovering his blogs, finding there were others out in the world who were as angry as me about the smoking ban, was a huge comfort to me. I’ll always be grateful to Frank and I miss him.

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  8. Thank you Emily and to Leggy for hosting the post. What a lovely service Frank’s funeral was and I was very glad that his family spoke about the impact of the ban on Frank’s life. I never met Frank, even virtually, my IT skills not running to video conferencing but I’d like to have known him (and also the people who comment on this blog) because of shared values and also because he was an intelligent and interesting person. Like Frank, I will go to my grave railing against the smoking ban. These days I post on YT to draw the parallels between the ban and the handling of the pandemic in the hope of at least some people joining the dots.

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