Joan Hunter Dunn

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Joan Hunter Dunn" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Joan Jackson, née Joan Hunter Dunn (13 October 1915 – 11 April 2008) was the

The poem was published in Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine in February 1941. Betjeman invited her to lunch, and presented her with a copy of the magazine containing the poem, begging her forgiveness. In an interview in The Sunday Times magazine in 1965, illustrated with photographs by Lord Snowdon, she said: "It was such a marvellous break from the monotony of the war. It really was remarkable the way he imagined it all. Actually, all that about the subaltern, and the engagement is sheer fantasy, but my life was very like the poem."

Later years

She married Harold Wycliffe Jackson, a civil servant in the Ministry of Information, in January 1945, at St Mark's Church in Farnborough. Betjeman was invited, but was unable to attend. The poem was republished in Betjeman's book New Bats in Old Belfries in 1945, and was later mentioned in Flanders and Swann's "Tried by Centre Court".

Joan Jackson accompanied her husband to

She returned to their home, in Headley, Hampshire, to raise their three young boys. Despite straitened finances, all three attended Winchester College. She attended the memorial service for Betjeman at Westminster Abbey in 1984. Her letters from Betjeman, contained in a bureau, were stolen in a burglary in 1996.

She was survived by her three sons, one of whom continued the family's sporting tradition by representing

References

• Obituary, The Guardian, 18 April 2008
• Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 18 April 2008^{[dead link]}
• Obituary, The Independent, 18 April 2008