Michael Ventris

Michael George Francis Ventris, (12 July 1922 – 6 September 1956) was an English architect, classicist and philologist who deciphered Linear B, the ancient Mycenaean Greek script.

A student of languages, Ventris had pursued decipherment as a personal vocation since his adolescence.

After creating a new field of study, Ventris died in a car crash a few weeks before the publication of Documents in Mycenaean Greek, written with John Chadwick.

Ventris was born into a traditional army family.

His grandfather, Francis Ventris, was a major-general and Commander of British Forces in China.

His father, Edward Francis Vereker Ventris, was a lieutenant-colonel in the Indian Army, who retired early due to ill health.

Edward Ventris married Anna Dorothea (Dora) Janasz, who was from a wealthy Jewish and Polish paternal background.

Michael Ventris was their only child.

The family moved to Switzerland for eight years, seeking a healthy environment for Colonel Ventris.

Young Michael started school in Gstaad, where classes were taught in French and German.

He soon was fluent in both languages and showing proficiency for Swiss German.

He was capable of learning a language within a matter of weeks, which allowed him to acquire fluency in a dozen languages.

His mother often spoke Polish to him, and he was fluent by the age of eight.

At this time, he was reading Adolf Erman's Die Hieroglyphen in German.

In 1931, the Ventris family returned home.

From 1931 to 1935 Ventris was sent to Bickley Hill School in Stowe.

His parents divorced in 1935.

At this time, he secured a scholarship to Stowe School.

At Stowe he learned some Latin and Ancient Greek.

He did not do outstanding work there – by then he was spending most of his spare time learning as much as he could about Linear B, some of his study time being spent under the covers at night with a torch.

When he was not boarding at school, Ventris lived with his mother, before 1935 in coastal hotels, and then in the avant garde Berthold Lubetkin's Highpoint modernist apartments in Highgate, north London.

His mother's acquaintances, who frequented the house, included many sculptors, painters, and writers of the day.

The flat was furnished with the works of Marcel Breuer.

The money for her artistic patronage came from Polish estates.

Ventris's father died in 1938 and his mother, Dora, became administrator of the estate.

With the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Dora lost her private income, and in 1940 her father died.

Ventris lost his mother to clinical depression and an overdose of barbiturates.

He never spoke of her, assuming instead an ebullient and energetic manner in whatever he decided to do, a trait which won him numerous friends.

A friend of the family, Russian sculptor Naum Gabo, took Ventris under his wing.

Ventris later said that Gabo was the most family he had ever had.

It may have been at Gabo's house that he began the study of Russian.

He decided on architecture as a career, and enrolled in the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

There he met his wife-to-be Lois Knox-Niven, known as Betty, daughter of pilot Lois Butler and stepdaughter of Alan Samuel Butler, chairman of the De Havilland Aircraft Company.

A fellow architecture student, her social background was similar to Ventris's: her family was well-to-do, she had travelled in Europe, and she was interested in architecture.

She was also popular and very beautiful.

Ventris did not complete his architecture studies, being conscripted in 1942.

He chose the Royal Air Force (RAF).

His preference was for navigator rather than pilot, and he completed the extensive training in the UK and Canada, to qualify early in 1944 and be commissioned.

While training, he studied Russian intensively for several weeks, the purpose of which is not clear.

He took part in the bombing of Germany, as aircrew on the Handley Page Halifax with No. 76 Squadron RAF, initially at RAF Breighton and then at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor, both in East Yorkshire.