Though officially the secretary, Matheson served as an executive manager for the African Survey after Malcolm Hailey fell ill. During the Second World War, she ran the British Joint Broadcasting Committee until her death.

Matheson wanted to continue studying history at Cambridge, but left school at 18, when her father's health forced the family to move to Europe.

[1] After completing school in 1911, she worked as a part-time secretary for H. A. L. Fisher at New College, Oxford and later for David George Hogarth, the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum.

She recognised that neither lectures, speeches nor theatre were appropriate means of communication for the new medium of radio and developed models to create a more personal experience for the listener.

[3][9][10][11] Their dispute came to a head when Reith, who despised modern literature, refused to allow Harold Nicolson, Sackville-West's husband, to analyse Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Ulysses on air.

[3] Nicolson, who was aligned with the Labour Party and had supported the Welsh miners in the aftermath of the General Strike, was an irritant to many of the BBC's right-leaning listeners.

[1][12] In January, 1932, Matheson left the BBC and began working as the radio critic at The Observer, which was owned at the time by the Astor family.

Meanwhile Matheson went ahead and served more as executive manager to the endeavour than as his secretary,[16] canvassing scientists and administrators to help with logistics and plan the scope of the project,[17] while completing coordination of all the preparatory research.

[23][21][24] After finishing the survey, Matheson and Wellesley took a trip to the Riviera, where they joined friends: W. B. Yeats and his wife George, and a newly met Walter J. Turner, the Australian poet.

[23] The goal was to broadcast British opinion on foreign stations in neutral European and Latin American countries, using German and Italian.

[1] She died on 30 October 1940 of Graves' disease, after thyroidectomy surgery performed at Kettlewell Hill Nursing Home in Horsell, Surrey.