Researching Dick Davis

Davis had the distinction of being the first Catholic elected to a statewide office in Virginia history. Davis would remain the only statewide Catholic elected in Virginia history until the 2001 Virginia General Elections, when Tim Kaine was elected lieutenant governor, the same office Davis once held. Four years later, in the 2005 Virginia General elections, history was made again when Kaine won the governor's race and Bob McDonnell won the attorney general's race. The elections of Kaine and McDonnell created a new record in Virginia history at that time: two Catholics elected to statewide offices.

While Lieutenant Governor, Davis served in the executive branch with two fellow Democrats: Attorney General Gerald Baliles, who would be elected governor in 1985; and Governor Chuck Robb, who had preceded Davis as lieutenant governor.

Davis owned the Tidewater Sharks in the Southern Hockey League from 1975 to 1977.

Born into a working class family shortly before the end of World War II, Davis grew up in the Yorkshire fishing village of Withernsea during the 1950s, where an experimental school made it possible for Davis to become the first member of his family to attend university.

Shortly before graduating from Cambridge University, Davis was left heartbroken by the suicide of his schizophrenic brother and decided to begin living and teaching abroad.

After teaching in Greece and Italy, in 1970 Davis fell in love with an Iranian woman, Afkham Darbandi, and decided to live permanently in Tehran during the reign of the last Shah. As a result, he taught English at the University of Tehran, and married Afkham Darbandi, about whom he has since written and published many love poems, in 1974.

After the Islamic Revolution turned Dick and Afkham Davis into refugees, first in the United Kingdom and then in the United States, Davis decided to begin translating many of the greatest masterpieces of both ancient and modern Persian poetry into English.

Davis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has been called, by The Times Literary Supplement, "our finest translator from Persian." Davis' original poetry has been just as highly praised.

Davis' poetry collections have been chosen as books of the year by The Sunday Times (UK) in 1989; The Daily Telegraph (UK) in 1989; The Economist (UK) in 2002; The Washington Post in 2010, and The Times Literary Supplement (UK) in 2013.