the Sussex-based Centre for Pagan Studies prior to her death from pancreatic cancer. Valiente's magical artefacts and papers were bequeathed to her last High Priest, John Belham-Payne, who donated them to a charitable trust, the Doreen Valiente Foundation, in 2011. Having had a significant influence in the history of Wicca, she is widely revered in the Wiccan community as "the Mother of Modern Witchcraft", and has been the subject of two biographies. Biography Early life: 1922–52 Valiente was born Doreen Edith Dominy on 4 January 1922 in the London outer suburb of Colliers Wood, Mitcham, Surrey. Her father, Harry Dominy, was a civil engineer, and he lived with her mother Edith in Colliers Wood. Harry came from a Methodist background and Edith from a Congregationalist one, however Doreen was never baptised, as was the custom of the time, due to an argument that Edith had had with the local vicar. Doreen later claimed that she had not had a close or affectionate relationship with her parents, whom she characterised as highly conventional and heavily focused on social climbing. During her childhood they moved to Horley in Surrey, and it was there, according to her later account, that she had an early spiritual experience while staring at the moon. From there her family moved to the West Country and then to the New Forest. In either late 1934 or 1935, Doreen's mother left her father and took her to live with maternal relatives in Southampton. Valiente first began practising magic at age 13, performing a spell to prevent her mother being harassed by a co-worker; she came to believe that it had worked. Her early knowledge of magical practices may have derived from books that she found in the local library. Her parents were concerned by this behaviour and sent her to a convent school. She despised the school and left it at the age of 15, refusing to return. She had wanted to go to art school, but instead gained employment in a factory, before moving on to work as a clerk and typist at the Unemployment Assistance Board. During the Second World War, she became a Foreign Office Civilian Temporary Senior Assistant Officer, in this capacity working as a translator at Bletchley Park. In relation to this work, she was also sent to South Wales, and it was there, in the town of Barry, that she met Joanis Vlachopolous,