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, and the maternal grandmother (by her first marriage) of
George Osborne.
Lambray incident In 1979, five years after his retirement, Dunnett spent '50 minutes' with the
transvestite prostitute Vicky de Lambray, who stole his chequebook. This incident drew the attention of the press as a result of Lambray's association with the Soviet naval attache
Anatoly Zotov. An investigation by the
Metropolitan Police found no security issue. == References ==