Joan was educated from the age of six at Queen Anne's School, Caversham, near Reading, Berkshire, where she played tennis, became captain of the lacrosse team, and was head girl.
She studied for a diploma at King's College of Household and Social Science, and joined the catering department at the University of London.
Although married for seven years, he was struck by her beauty, he fell in love, and composed a 44-line poem fantasising about them being engaged and playing tennis together in Aldershot:[1] Miss J.
Betjeman invited Hunter Dunn 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.
She married Harold Wycliffe Jackson, a civil servant in the Ministry of Information, in January 1945, at St Mark's Church in Farnborough.