Michael Davies obituary

When the history teacher Michael Davies, who has died aged 65 of cancer, took a group from Lancaster Royal grammar school on a field trip to Israel and Palestine, for the first half of the trip he plunged them into the story of Israel, visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and learning about Israel’s background. For the second he took them to Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, where they played football with boys in a refugee camp and listened to their story.

Michael, a friend of mine for almost 40 years, could see how utterly transformational the trip was for the group. The following year he wrote an article for the Guardian arguing that rather than ignoring contentious history, a “dual narrative” approach was the only way to fully understand why any conflict endures.

On reading the piece, the hi-fi retailer and philanthropist Julian Richer got in touch with Michael and offered him a financial lifeline to build his vision. In 2018 they launched the educational charity Parallel Histories.

The basic idea was to immerse the students in one side of the narrative, getting them to examine the sources and argue for it. The process was then repeated for the opposing narrative. It taught the students not to balance rights and wrongs, but how to debate and how to think, but not what to think. With the help of his headteacher, Chris Pyle, Michael made history-learning participatory and gave youngsters access to topics that were previously considered too hot to teach.

Parallel Histories has enabled Muslim and Jewish faith schools to debate the conflict now taking place in Gaza. It has brought together Catholic and Protestant students to debate the Troubles in Stormont. And it is now being rolled out in America, in both Democratic and Republican states, to teach the history of the civil rights movement.

The Parallel Histories organisation has a staff of five, and 1,200 schools are downloading its bank of resources, predominantly primary sources such as letters, official documents, posters and cartoons, with some passages from historians’ arguments. Thousands of young people across Europe are involved in debate conferences, both in person and remotely. The former Labour government minister Bill Rammell has succeeded Michael as the organisation’s CEO to ensure its continuity, and Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s adviser with a key role in negotiating the Good Friday agreement of 1998, serves as its patron.

Born in Windsor, Berkshire, Michael spent part of his childhood living in a conflict zone. His father, John, a Welsh Baptist management consultant, moved with Siobhan (nee Bailey), an Irish Catholic nurse, to the Lisburn suburb of Belfast along with Michael and his sisters, Rosamond and Geraldine.

It was 1966 and the Troubles were evident all around them in the smashed windows and the brick-strewn streets. Amid the mayhem, Michael was sent to a Friends’ school, a Quaker establishment, in Lisburn. He remained a Quaker throughout his life.

Related: The Jewish story, the Arab story … and a plan by Mr Davies

When the family moved back to England he went, in 1970, to Dulwich college, south-east London. He then studied history at Christ Church, Oxford (1977-80), and as a rower took the position of stroke, setting the pace, in the college first eight. At university he met Carys Bowen-Jones, a modern languages student; after their marriage in 1985 she went on to write novels and short stories as Carys Davies. They had four children, Celia, Gabriel, Basil and Abigail.

Michael’s first job was with Procter and Gamble, selling soap to shopkeepers. He drove a company Cortina with a boot full of promotional Daz oven gloves. He never forgot being greeted one day by a grocer who said “Fuck off, Procter”. He soon got out of detergents and into Frosties and Bran Buds, working for Kellogg’s in Manchester.

In 1988 he was offered work at the Michael Peters design agency in their New York office. He moved on to Christopher Bielenberg’s REL management consultancy, setting up their Chicago office in 1995. He and Carys loved the US, but his passion for history was unfulfilled. So he returned to the UK and did teacher training at St Martin’s College, Lancaster, and in 2000 went to Lancaster Royal, then an all-boys school, at the age of 41.

Related: The Islamic school that ensures its boys understand the Israeli point of view

Fun was his method. He taught feudalism by getting the 11-year-old boys to pile up chairs and desks and form a social pyramid, the serfs groaning at the bottom. He recreated the Battle of Hastings (even the staff dressed up for it and a horse was involved), now an annual event at the school. He organised trips to Paris to study the French Revolution, and to Northern Ireland where he arranged for the group to meet former IRA hunger strikers and Orangemen alike. This eventually led to his breakthrough trip to Israel and Palestine.

In the summer holidays he and Carys travelled around Europe in an old camper van. After giving up his Lancaster job, in 2018 they moved to Edinburgh, where he ran Parallel Histories. Michael was diagnosed with a sarcoma in his leg in August 2022 and it was successfully operated on. However, when the cancer returned a year later, it was found to be untreatable.

Michael’s book, The Parallel Histories of Israel and Palestine: Everything You Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask, is to be published this autumn.

He is survived by Carys, their children and his sisters.

• Michael Elfed Davies, teacher, born 11 February 1959; died 28 July 2024