[1][2][3][4] Dorothy Butler was born on 9 November 1909 to Sir Montagu Sherard Dawes Butler and Anne Gertrude Smith, in Lahore, British India, where her father was Deputy Commissioner.

[1] The family later relocated to Cambridge, when her retired father became a master at Pembroke College.

[1] In the 1950s, Middleton was introduced by John Murray to some letters written by Isabella Bird.

A. Thomson (1959), and edited a reprint of The Art of Travel by Francis Galton (1971).

Middleton held a number of roles at the Royal Geographical Society, at a time when this was still a male preserve.