Remembering Daniel Batty

Daniel (Dan) Batty joined Number 2 House at Malvern in 1990 from the Llandaff Cathedral School where he had been for 3 years after his primary education at Pendoylan Church in Wales School in the Vale of Glamorgan. He was born in Reading in 1976 where his parents were lecturers at Reading University and Oxford Polytechnic and his family moved to Cardiff in 1979 where his dad was Professor of Town Planning at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology. In 1990 when Dan went to Malvern, his mum and dad went to the United States where his dad ran a research centre at the State University of New York at Buffalo and his mum did a PhD in Political Science. Like his parents, Dan had a Green Card, travelling to and living in the US in the school holidays, and like all such card holders, was to all intents and purposes on the track to becoming a US citizen.

But Dan always intended to go to University in the UK as was also assumed by his parents. In 1995, he was admitted to Kings College London where he studied for a BA in History from 1995 to 1998. He then took an MSc in Economic History at the London School of Economics from 1998 to 1999 before developing skills in information technology. His mum and dad also came back from the US just before he entered Kings, working as academics at University College London. Dan developed a very wide and strong network of friends that he built up at Kings and they spent many times together, sailing, playing football, and travelling to various parts of the world. Latterly he attended various short courses dealing with complex systems which mirrored his interests in information technologies.

Dan had a great sense of humour which at times got the better of him. In 2003 a couple of days before the US invaded Iraq, flourishing a new Passport and a Green Card, he entered America at Dulles Airport but immediately fell foul of the immigration officers who told him he couldn’t hold a Green Card and work in London. Of course, this was entirely incorrect but nevertheless, they confiscated his card and told him to report to the Immigration Court 6 weeks later, on the charge of “Green Card Abandonment”. He duly did so bringing along one of his American friends who was a trainee lawyer to argue his case, but he was soon rumbled by the judge who told him to come back after another couple of months with a ‘proper lawyer’. Anyway, he ended up staying in the US for 6 months having a wonderful time, eventually leaving the country but, in the interim, working as a software tester in Marina Del Rey near Venice Beach in Los Angeles. Of course, he lost his job as a “Wine Advisor” at Odd Bins in Chelsea once he became trapped in the US but when he returned to the UK, he decided to pursue a course in Microsoft Systems and then went to work in the IT department of the Bank of England where he remained until July 2024.

Dan lived quite close to his parents in central London having spent most of his time since his going to Kings living within the “Circle Line”. Leaving the Bank of England, he decided to pursue a new career as an epidemiologist and in September 2024, he was admitted to the MSc degree in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He had completed one term of the course when he was struck down close to where he lived in central London with an internal brain haemorrhage. There was no warning, no prior symptoms of any kind. He did not recover consciousness and he died in the ICU of the Royal London Hospital on 12^th January 2025.

Life is cruel. He had so much to offer as was attested to by his many friends who attended his funeral. He was a talented, amusing friend, with a wicked sense of humour. He will be sorely missed, and he was already making an impact in his chosen new career. On his passing, his classmates at the London School (LSHTM) put together a memorial tribute and a prize will be set up in his memory. His great enthusiasm for wanting to help combat epidemics of various kinds and the methods being developed for doing this that he was so interested in will live on.  It is one of the great ironies of his life that his intentions and ambitions were cut so short just as his long term ambitions were set to be fulfilled. But his intellect, his ambitions, and his quest for improving the human condition will live on in our memories of him, amongst all of us, his friends at Pendoylan, Llandaff, Malvern, Kings, the LSE, the Bank of England, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and of course his family.

28^th September 1976 to 12^th January 2025