Early and Private Life
Dunwoody was born in Fulham, London, where her father was Labour parliamentary agent. She belonged to an experienced political dynasty: her father, Morgan Phillips, was a former coalminer who served as General Secretary of the Labour Party between 1944 and 1962; her mother, Norah Phillips was a former member of London County Council who became a life peer in 1964, serving as a government whip in the House of Lords, and as Lord Lieutenant of Greater London from 1978 to 1986. Both of her grandmothers were suffragettes, and all four grandparents were Labour party loyalists.
She attended the Fulham County Secondary School for Girls, now known as the Fulham Cross School and the Notre Dame Convent. She left school aged 16, and became a journalist with a local newspaper in Fulham, covering births, marriages and deaths. She joined the Labour Party in 1947, and spoke at the 1948 Labour party conference in Scarborough. She worked as an actress in repertory and as a journalist in the Netherlands, learning fluent Dutch, before suffering a bout of tuberculosis.
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