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Mavis Batey

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Mavis Batey

MBE
Personal details
Born
Mavis Lilian Lever

(1921-05-05)5 May 1921
Dulwich, London, England
Died 12 November 2013(2013-11-12) (aged 92)
Nationality English
Spouse Keith Batey (m. 1942–2010)(deceased)
Children 3
Occupation Garden historian
Alma mater University College, London

Mavis Lilian Batey, MBE (née Lever; 5 May 1921 – 12 November 2013), was an English code-breaker during World War II. Her work at Bletchley Park was one of the keys to the success of D-Day.[1] She later became a garden historian, who campaigned to save historic parks and gardens, and an author.[2]

Early life[]

Mavis Lilian Lever was born on 5 May 1921[2] in Dulwich to her seamstress mother and postal worker father. She was brought up in Norbury and went to Coloma Convent Girls' School in Croydon.[3] She was studying German at University College, London at the outbreak of World War II, concentrating on the German romantics in particular.

Bletchley Park codebreakers[]

Initially employed by London Section to check the personal columns of The Times for coded spy messages,[4] in 1940 she was recruited to work as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park.[2] She worked as an assistant to Dilly Knox, and was closely involved in the decryption effort before the Battle of Matapan.[5][6][7] According to The Daily Telegraph, she became so familiar with the styles of individual enemy operators that she could determine that two of them had a girlfriend called Rosa and this insight allowed her to develop a successful technique.[8]

In December 1941 she broke a message between Belgrade and Berlin that enabled Knox's team to work out the wiring of the Abwehr Enigma, an Enigma machine previously thought to be unbreakable.[3] While at Bletchley Park she met Keith Batey, a mathematician and fellow codebreaker whom she married in 1942.[2][9]

Later life[]

Batey spent some time after 1945 in the Diplomatic Service, and then brought up three children.[10] She published a number of books on garden history, as well as some relating to Bletchley Park, and served as President of the Garden History Society, of which she became Secretary in 1971.[10][11]

She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal in 1985, and made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1987, in both cases for her work on the preservation and conservation of gardens.[12][13]

Batey, aged 92 and a widow since 2010, died on 12 November 2013.[1][3][14]

Works[]

  •    (1980). Alice's Adventures in Oxford. Pitkin Pictorials. ISBN 978-0853722953. 
  •    (1982). Oxford Gardens: The University's Influence on Garden History. 
  •    (1983). Nuneham Courtenay: An Oxfordshire 18th-century Deserted Village. 
  •    (1984). Reader's Digest Guide to Creative Gardening. 
  •    (1988). The Gardens of William and Mary. London: Christopher Helm. ISBN 0747016089. http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/11176214. 
  •    (1989). The Historic Gardens of Oxford & Cambridge. 
  •   ; with David Lambert (1990). The English Garden Tour: A View Into the Past. John Murray. ISBN 978-0719547751. 
  •    (1991). Horace Walpole as Modern Garden Historian. 
  •    (1995). Regency Gardens. Shire Books. ISBN 978-0747802891. 
  •    (1995). Story of the Privy Garden at Hampton Court. 
  •    (1996). Jane Austen and the English Landscape. 
  •    (1998). The World of Alice. 
  •    (1999). Alexander Pope: Poetry and Landscape. Barn Elms. ISBN 978-1-89953-105-9. 
  •    (2008). From Bletchley with Love. Bletchley Park Trust. ISBN 978-1-906723-04-0. 
  •    (2009). Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas. Dialogue. ISBN 978-1-90644-701-4. 
  •    (2017). "Breaking machines with a pencil (chapter 11)". The Turing Guide. Oxford University Press. pp. 97–107. ISBN 978-0-19-874783-3. 

References[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Mavis Batey". The Telegraph. 13 November 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/10447712/Mavis-Batey-obituary.html. Retrieved 7 December 2013. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Mavis Batey: from codebreaker to campaigner for historic parks and gardens, parksandgardens.org; accessed 16 May 2014.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Smith, Michael (20 November 2013). "Mavis Batey". Guardian News and Media Limited. http://www.societyofauthors.org/cholmondeley-past-winners. Retrieved 27 November 2013. 
  4. ↑ Barwick, Sandra. A cracking time at Bletchley The Daily Telegraph, 16 January 1999
  5. ↑ Friedrich Ludwig Bauer (January 2002). Decrypted Secrets: Methods and Maxims of Cryptology. Springer. p. 432. ISBN 978-3-540-42674-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=s9y9p2jP6pQC&pg=PA432. Retrieved 25 July 2013. 
  6. ↑ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (21 July 2011). Enigma. Orion. p. 254. ISBN 978-1-78022-123-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=yLnEK-kBcQEC&pg=PT254. Retrieved 25 July 2013. 
  7. ↑ Alex Frame (2007). Flying Boats: My Father's War in the Mediterranean. Victoria University Press. pp. 183–4 note 91. ISBN 978-0-86473-562-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=0kWcncvokjUC&pg=PA183. Retrieved 25 July 2013. 
  8. ↑ Tom Chivers (12 October 2014). "Could you have been a codebreaker at Bletchley Park?". Daily Telegrapg. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11151478/Could-you-have-been-a-codebreaker-at-Bletchley-Park.html. Retrieved 12 October 2014. 
  9. ↑ Francis H. Hinsley; Alan Stripp (2001). Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park. Oxford University Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-19-280132-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=j1MC2d2LPAcC&pg=PA129. Retrieved 25 July 2013. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Edward Fawcett, The Genius of the Scene, Garden History Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer, 1996), pp. 1–2. Published by: The Garden History Society. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1587088
  11. ↑ Mavis Batey (1996). Essays in Honour of Mavis Batey: President of the Garden History Society, Presented in Celebration of Her 75th Birthday. Maney. https://books.google.com/books?id=I55EOwAACAAJ. Retrieved 25 July 2013. 
  12. ↑ "Mrs Mavis Lilian Batey" summary, parksandgardens.org; accessed 16 May 2014.
  13. ↑ parksandgardens.org, "Mavis Batey: from codebreaker to campaigner for historic parks and gardens", p. 4
  14. ↑ Martin, Douglas (November 22, 2013). "Mavis Batey, Allied Code Breaker in World War II, Dies at 92". https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/world/europe/mavis-batey-world-war-ii-code-breaker-dies-at-92.html?hp&_r=0. 

External links[]

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