 Born and brought up in Llangeitho in Ceredigion, Davies spent his working life in the newly industrialised coalfields of the Rhondda Valley.The sometimes bleak conditions of his early life, especially as his early adulthood coincided with the economic despair of the depression, is reflected in his plays.Davies was part of the Cadwgan Circle, a literary group of likeminded writers from Rhondda, that centred their image of Wales on the new industrialised society they were brought up in.