New Zealand aviatrix Jean Batten was BOTD in 1909. Born in Rotorua to a middle-class family, she initially trained as a pianist and dancer, becoming interested in aviation after reading about the trans-continental flights of Charles Lindbergh and Charles Kingsford Smith. After her father refused to pay for flying lessons, Batten moved to London on the pretence of attending the Royal College of Music, learning to fly and earning her pilot’s licence in 1930. She became an international celebrity after a series of record-breaking flights, including the first solo flight from England to New Zealand in 1936. During World War Two, she unsuccessfully applied to serve as a pilot, working instead for the Anglo-French Ambulance Corps and later in a munitions factory. She and her mother moved to Jamaica after the war, befriending Noël Coward and Ian Fleming, and travelled extensively through Europe. She made a return to public life in the 1970s, eventually settling in Tenerife in the Spanish Balearic Islands. She died in 1982 aged 73, apparently following an infection from a dog bite. Nicknamed “the Garbo of the Skies”, Batten never married and appears to have had no intimate relationships. Her well-reported aloofness towards men often led to speculation that she was a lesbian. Her life and achievements have made her a feminist icon, while her androgynous appearance radiated lesbian chic. She was played by Kate Elliott in the 2016 biopic Jean, co-written by New Zealand novelist Paula Boock.