She spent most of her schooldays in boarding schools in India, since her father was a colonel in the Indian Army and therefore her parents travelled a lot.

When she was 20 she left home and moved to London to pursue her career, where she met and married her first husband, Aldon Richard Bryse-Harvey.

The marriage ended in divorce and June moved back to Hampshire, close to her family, for a couple of years until her career started to take off.

Thorburn began to win leading roles, in British comedies such as True as a Turtle (1957) and costume dramas such as Fury at Smugglers' Bay (1961) and The Scarlet Blade (1963).

She was pregnant with her third child when, returning to London from Spain on Iberia Flight 062, the plane crashed at Blackdown, Sussex, killing all 37 people on board.