Ludovic James Dunnett
GCB CMG
Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Defence
In office
1966–1974
Preceded byHenry Hardman
Succeeded byMichael Cary
Personal details
Born12 February 1914
EducationUniversity College, Oxford
OccupationCivil servant

Sir Ludovic James Dunnett, GCB, CMG (12 February 1914 – 30 December 1997) was a British civil servant.

Early life

Born in India, he was the son of Sir James Macdonald Dunnett, a senior official in the Indian Civil Service. He grew up in Edinburgh before attending University College, Oxford. His siblings included the diplomat Denzil Dunnett (1917–2016) and Sir George Sangster Dunnett.[1]

Career

He entered the civil service in 1936 as an official in the Air Ministry. From 1938 to 1945, he was private secretary to the Permanent Secretary. In 1945, he moved to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and later moved to the Ministry of Supply, where he was a deputy secretary. He was then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transport (from 1959 to 1962), the Ministry of Labour (from 1962 to 1966) and the Ministry of Defence (from 1966 to 1972).

In retirement, he was chairman of the International Maritime Industries Forum from 1976 to 1979, and president of the Institute of Manpower Studies from 1977 yo 1988. His second wife was the Hungarian-born artist Clarisse, née Feher. She was the widow of Grantley Loxton-Peacock and the insurance executive Sir Anthony Charles Grover,[2] and the maternal grandmother (by her first marriage) of George Osborne.[3]

Lambray incident

In 1979, five years after his retirement, Dunnett spent '50 minutes' with the transvestite prostitute Vicky de Lambray, who stole his chequebook.[4] This incident drew the attention of the press as a result of Lambray's association with the Soviet naval attache Anatoly Zotov.[5] An investigation by the Metropolitan Police found no security issue.

References

  1. ↑ "Denzil Dunnett", The Times, 7 June 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2021.
  2. ↑ Frank Cooper, "Dunnett, Sir (Ludovic) James [Ned]", The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed., Oxford University Press, 2004). Retrieved 15 September 2021.
  3. ↑ Robert Mendick, "George Osborne Speaks of His Delight after Discovering He Is Jewish", The Daily Telegraph, 11 May 2018. Retrieved 15 September 2021.
  4. ↑ "A former defense ministry official has admitted to having... - UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
  5. ↑ "ANOTHER VOICE » 13 Sep 1986 » The Spectator Archive". The Spectator Archive. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
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