[2] Her mother, Janet Cameron née Sandison died of influenza when Duncan was 10 years old, and her brother, John, was sent to live with their grandparents.

[1] She enlisted as World War II began to serve as a Flight Officer (Intelligence), WAAF alongside the choreographer Frederick Ashton.

Her first posting was the Operations Room then promoted to an officer in Photographic Intelligence, officially at RAF Medenham, but possibly was a part of the top secret Bletchley Park codebreakers.

[1] As a young 'widow', Duncan then returned to Scotland, to Jemimaville, near "The Colony", in 1958, to live with her uncle George, at Rose Cottage,[2] where she wrote her later novels.

[2] Her brother Jock Cameron and his children Seonaid, Neil, Donald and Ian lived in rural Aberdeenshire and Duncan visited them there.

"[2] The Scotsman ran an article feature on Duncan after her death, in which her niece, Seonaid, noted that despite feeling 'a bit in awe of her', when writers such as Ian Grimble and Eric Linklater visited, had found in her aunt a real life confidante.

[6] In the four-novel Jean Robertson sequence (1969–75), notionally written by Sandison (who herself becomes an author), the heroine and part-narrator moves from bleak beginnings in the town of "Lochfoot" (based on Balloch, West Dunbartonshire) to become a house-servant in the interwar period, influencing for good the lives of many around her.

[citation needed] The five-book "Camerons" series for children have a contemporary setting (being inspired by the author's niece and nephews, "The Hungry Generation") and are notable for including the main character young Iain who has learning difficulties (Down Syndrome), one of the first novels to do so .

[7] To mark the centenary of Jane Duncan's birth, Millrace Books have re-published My Friends the Miss Boyds,[8] launched at Waterstone’s bookshop in Inverness on Thursday 24 June 2010.