Betjeman’s muse Joan Hunter Dunn dies

Sad news. Joan Hunter Dunn - the muse of John Betjeman immortalised in one of his best-known poems, A Subaltern's Love-song - has died aged 92 in a London nursing home. The pair first met during the Second World War at the Ministry of Information. He was in the films division and she was a member of the catering staff.

But Betjeman elevated her from this mundane reality, casting her as the heroine of his much quoted 1941 poem, which begins 'Miss J Hunter Dunn... Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun', which was suggestive of some sort of romance.

In real life, however, although Betjeman wrote that he had fallen in love with "a beautiful girl with red hair", their friendship remained platonic. Joan eventually married a civil servant named Jackson and went to live in Rhodesia. When her husband died, Joan returned with her three sons to England in 1963. Betjeman made contact with her again but the relationship never blossomed.

According to Bevis Hillier, Betjeman's biographer, Joan always played down her role in Betjeman's work. "She said he was such a gentleman, and there was never any question of him making a pass at her."

Joan described her appearance in Betjeman's poem as a "marvellous break from the monotony of the war. It really was remarkable the way he imagined it all," she told the Sunday Times in a rare interview in 1965. "Actually, all that about the subaltern, and the engagement, is sheer fantasy, but my life was very like the poem."