Alexander Pope: The Poet and the Landscape

Mavis Batey was born Mavis Lever, in Dulwich, south London, England on May 5, 1921. She was reading German at University College London when World War II started. During the war, she was one of the leading codebreakers, breaking the Enigma ciphers that led to the Royal Navy's victory over Italy at Matapan in 1941 and to the success of the D-day landings in 1944. In the 1960s, her husband was appointed the chief financial officer of Oxford University and they lived on the university's Nuneham Park estate where the gardens, landscaped in the 18th century, had become overgrown. While researching the estate, she developed an interest in historical gardens. She wrote numerous books on historical gardens including Jane Austen and the English Landscape and Alexander Pope: Poetry and Landscape, and a biography of Dilly Knox entitled Dilly: The Man who Broke Enigmas. She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1985 and was appointed MBE for services to the preservation and conservation of historic gardens in 1987. She died on November 12, 2013 at the age of 92.