Education
Dunwoody was educated at Street Paul"s School, then trained as a doctor at King"s College London, and Westminster Hospital Medical School.
Dunwoody was educated at Street Paul"s School, then trained as a doctor at King"s College London, and Westminster Hospital Medical School.
A surgeon, he worked in Devon as a senior house physician at Newton Abbot Hospital from 1955 to 1956 and as a General Practice and medical officer in Totnes District Hospital from 1956 to 1966. Dunwoody contested the safe Conservative seat of Tiverton in 1959, and came close to winning Plymouth Sutton in 1964, losing by just 410 votes in a seat that David Owen would later hold for several years for Labour. He was a health minister from 1969 until 1970.
A well-regarded orator at Labour Party Conference, Dunwoody was spoken of as a future leader of the Party.
However, he lost his seat in 1970 and did not return to Parliament. Dunwoody had campaigned hard for a total ban on smoking, before its negative health effects were universally recognised, and became the first director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
He served as Chairman of the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Area Health Authority 1977-1982, Chairman of the Family Planning Association 1981-1987 and Chairman of the Bloomsbury District Health Authority 1982-1990. From 1996 he was Vice-Chairman of the Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth Local Medical Committee.
He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1986.
Dunwoody married Gwyneth Dunwoody (née Phillips), daughter of a General Secretary of the Labour Party and a Baroness, in 1954. She also became a Labour Member of Parliament in 1966 and had a long parliamentary career, till her death in 2008. He died aged 76 after an accident at his home at Béziers, France.
He was active in the Socialist Medical Association.
44th United Kingdom Parliament]
He became Member of Parliament for Falmouth and Camborne at the 1966 general election, succeeding Labour"s Harold Hayman in a long-term three-way marginal.