Early Life and Family
June Muriel Brown was born in Suffolk in 1927. She was one of five children, although her baby brother died of pneumonia in 1932, aged 15 days, and her elder sister, Marise, died in 1934, aged eight, from a meningitis-like illness. Her parents were of Irish, Scottish, Italian and Sephardic Jewish descent from Oran, Algeria. On her maternal grandmother's side June is descended from the Jewish bare knuckle boxer Isaac Bitton. During the Second World War, she was evacuated to Pontyates, a village in Wales. During the later years of the war, she served in the Wrens (Royal Navy), and was classically trained at The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
At 23, she met and married actor John Garley; he suffered from depression and committed suicide in 1957. In 1958, she married Robert Arnold, a regular in the BBC television programme Dixon of Dock Green. They had six children, though her second daughter, Chloe (b. 1960) born prematurely at 28 weeks, died after 16 days. The surviving children are Louise (b. 1959), Sophie (b. 1961), William/Bill (b. 1962), Chloe (b. 1964), and Naomi (b. 1966). Chloe suffered paralysis, but Brown is reported as saying that it went away after she prayed for healing. Brown and Arnold were together for forty-five years, until he died in 2003 of Lewy Body dementia. Since then she has lived alone in their house in Surrey.
She is a supporter of the Conservative Party.
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