Janet Dunbar Leads A “Double Life”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29378, 3 December 1960, Page 2

Janet Dunbar Leads A “Double Life”

“What do you want most out of life?” That is the question Janet Dunbar, the well-known English writer and broadcaster, believes every woman—married or single—should ask herself, and then make a decision and pursue it.

“I, myself, lead a double life,” she said in Christchurch yesterday. “But I put first things first, by living a normal domestic life.”

The great danger was allowing one life to push out the other, but if anything had to go it should not be the home life, she said. Happy women were the ones who put home first. A lively person with a very real interest in people, Janet Dunbar was one of the lucky ones who married a man who has always been “extremely understanding and co-operative”—a man whose leisure-time interests she shares. They share a love of travel and a home—a Regency house in London.

Travel Adviser Miss Dunbar, in private life, Mrs Clifford Webb, is visiting New Zealand to compile a travel series on the Dominion for “Women's Journal,” a publication for which she is travel adviser.

The author of several books, Miss Dunbar’s latest is a biography of Flora Robson, whom she met when both were associated with the 8.8. C. Flora Robson read Miss Dunbar’s book “Golden Interlude” (about the Eden family in India of 100 years ago) and asked Miss Dunbar to write her biography. “We have become good friends and it is amazing how many interests we have in' common—patchwork is one of them,” Miss Dunbar said. “I do my patchwork while my husband reads aloud to me in the evenings.”

The day begins early in the Webb household. “We whip through our housework together —that is the time we use for

arguing: my husband says, it gets the jobs done quicker—then we do our shopping or go for a walk. My secretary arrives at 9 a.m and I begin about eight hours’ work for the day, reading, writing, doing research or preparing scripts for broadcasting.” "Gift of the Gab” Miss Dunbar says it was her “gift of the gab” that landed her in radio. She was one of the first speakers on the 8.8. C., beginning her broadcast career in 1925. She was on the staff of the 8.8. C. for a time, but has been mainly freelancing since, doing her own programme on a contract basis. Although Miss Dunbar does not have her own television programme, because, she says, she “looked like a hawk” before the cameras, she has sat in on every job in television and has written a book “A Career in Television.” “My terrific urge to write began at 17 and has been with me ever since,” she said. “My husband, since his retirement, writes for scientific magazines. He is also chairman of Questors Theatre in London and gives lectures on George Bernard Shaw.” Miss Dunbar will forego the opportunity to spend a Christmas in another land and has turned down many “exotic invitations” so as to be home with her husband, one of her daughters, and a grandchild on December 25. “I just cannot bear the thought of being away from home at Christinas and God willing, I’ll be there,” she said.