Keith Batey

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Keith Batey (4 July 1919 – 28 August 2010) was a British codebreaker at Bletchley Park during World War II. He and his wife, Mavis Batey (1921–2013), worked on breaking the German Enigma cipher machines.

Keith went to Carlisle Grammar School and studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he met Gordon Welchman, who helped build the codebreaking effort at Bletchley Park. He was recruited in 1940 and worked in Hut Six, which cracked German Army and Air Force Enigma ciphers. There he met Mavis Lever, who worked with Dilly Knox’s team on rebuilding Enigma machines; they married in 1942.

Keith wished to be a pilot, but was told his Ultra work made that too dangerous. He trained as a Fleet Air Arm pilot to defend Canadian waters, but was soon recalled to a new section called ISK (Intelligence Services, Knox). ISK helped run the Double Cross System, which used German spies in Britain to feed false information back to Germany.

In 1943, Keith helped break ciphers used by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and by Italian military attachés in Berlin. After the war he worked for the Commonwealth Relations Office and the British High Commission in Ottawa until 1951. He then served as private secretary to Philip Noel-Baker and later as Treasurer at Christ Church, Oxford, helping restore its buildings.

Keith kept quiet about his war work, while Mavis became well known through books and TV about codebreaking. They advised on the film Enigma (2001) and demonstrated Enigma machines to Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall in 2008 at Bletchley Park.