"[2] Despite her upper-class background, Dunn moved in 1959 to Battersea, made friends there and worked for a time in a confectionery factory.
[4] After her marriage to Jeremy Sandford in 1957, they gave up their smart Chelsea home and went to live in unfashionable Battersea where they joined and observed the lower strata of society.
Dunn came to notice with the publication of Up the Junction (1963), a series of short stories set in South London, some of which had already appeared in the New Statesman.
The book, awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, was a controversial success at the time for its vibrant, realistic and non-judgemental portrait of its working-class protagonists.
[6] Dunn's first novel, Poor Cow (1967) was made into a film in the same year, starring Carol White and Terence Stamp, under Loach's direction.
For some time the family lived on a small hill farm called Wern Watkin, outside Crickhowell in South Wales.