Valerie Bennett-Levy

Jul 15 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IT IS a profoundly religious ceremony, in which the monarch hands out Maundy money to the poor, on the day before Good Friday, in remembrance of Christ washing the feet of His disciples.

Traditionally, our monarch would carry a posy or “nose-gay” for the less than Christ-like purpose of protecting his or her nostrils from the smells or diseases arising from the beneficiaries, as they gathered for their coins.

Making this nosegay was for 44 years the job of a wartime “knob-twiddler”, whose twiddling had been part of Britain’s advance air-raid system.

But it was for wiring together delicately-hued flowers and fragrant herbs that Valerie Bennett-Levy would gain the Queen’s lasting gratitude.

Born Valerie Sinauer, the daughter of a Royal Engineers’ major, her potential as an artist was encouraged at the Slade School, London. But, on the outbreak of war, she volunteered for service and was sent to the secret radar station at Arundel, West Sussex. With other WAAFs, she transmitted and received electro-magnetic signals, as part of our air-raid warnings. Although with the “we’re all in this together” spirit, which flourished then, she dismissed her vital expertise as mere “knob-twiddling”.

During this time she met Richard Bennett-Levy, a naval officer, and they married.

After the war, she settled into the life of a mother of three children and an artist, who specialised in wood sculptures and oil paintings, living in London and then Edinburgh.

Her husband was on the board of a company which produced herbal remedies and had a Royal Warrant to provide the sweet herbs used by florists in making the Maundy nosegay.

This was a rather clumsy arrangement. The ideal solution was to marry Mrs Bennett-Levy’s skills as a flower-arranger with her husband’s supply of herbs.

So it was, on the Wednesday evening of Holy Week, 1960, she began work on her first nosegay, as she would each year until 2004.

Every flower had to be individually wired and then they were held together with a doily collar. Backed by a team of florists, she had to make between eight and 12 nosegays – the large ones had nine daffodils, white stock, narcissus cheerfulness, violets, cupressus, primroses, rosemary and thyme.

She was appointed a member of the Royal Victorian Order in 1989.

Valerie Bennett-Levy, nosegay-arranger; born February 25, 1917, died June 26, 2008.