Joan Jackson

Apr 18 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

SHE belonged to an England which has gone now, faded into an eternal memory. For many it never existed, except in ambitious dreams, sepia images and forgotten photo albums in junk shops.

It was the England of flower-arrangers in high-spired churches, tennis courts, butter soaking into scones, curates with Adam’s apples over their dog-collars, little cafés, mowed lawns on Sundays, bone china, Agatha Christie and Jane Marple.

More than that, though, it was the England protected from the intrusion of reality by a poem called A Subaltern’s Love-Song – “Miss J Hunter Dunn, Miss J Hunter Dunn, furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun. Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy, the speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, with carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.”

And she had true flesh and blood, this figure adored in the words of John Betjeman.

Joan Hunter Dunn was the daughter of George Hunter Dunn, a GP in Farnborough, near Hampshire.

After excelling in lacrosse and tennis at boarding schools, she obtained a diploma at King’s College of Household and Social Science, leading her to the catering staff at the University of London.

Its Senate House became home to the films division of the Ministry of Information, where Betjeman worked as the commissioner of short propaganda films.

One day he and a friend walked by Miss Dunn, who was advancing down a corridor. “Gosh, look,” said Betjeman, who was instantly infatuated by Miss Dunn, despite being married with a son.

Later, he was to kneel before her, saying he had written the poem, which was included in his collection, New Bats in Old Belfries. They had lunch, which she found to be “a marvellous break from the monotony of the war”.

Although invited, Betjeman didn’t attend her wedding to Harold Wycliffe Jackson, a civil servant, in 1945. They had three sons and settled in Malaya, where he ran a radio station. In 1957, he accepted an invitation to launch the BBC service in Rhodesia. Harold (“Jackie”) died from a coronary six years later.

She returned to Headley in Hampshire with her sons. There, they would be photographed by Lord Snowdon, having tea off a silver service.

In 1984, she attended Betjeman’s memorial service.

Joan Jackson, girl in a poem; born October 13, 1915, died April 11, 2008.