At the age of 15 she ran away from home to live with a maternal uncle, and in 1942 she joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, then the Royal Corps of Signals. In 1951 Juanita signed up with the merchant navy, at a time when only two British cargo ships took on women. She loved being at sea and worked in that profession for some 17 years. She also worked as a safari guide and joined a circus.

Spent many years in Merchant Navy

Web - Interview by Sandy Dacombe - …. Whatever I had expected, it wasn't a lady-sailor. Someone said "The Honourable Juanita Carbery" and she rose and shook my hand, a grip as firm as a hawser. Real Merchant Navy sailor, not just weekend yachtie. Tough as a rope of chewing tobacco, black polo-necked sleeveless tee-shirt showing sinuous shoulders each with a cluster of tattoos - an elephant, an albatross, an anchor. Her shoulder-length hair was held off her angular face with an Alice-band, her clear jawbone framed by big dangley-silver earrings that looked like obscure naval instruments. She wore four or five rings on her long fingers and had an artless, uncompromising way of sitting. I pictured her swilling rum and swapping raucous stories in a smoky tavern while puffing on hand-rolled cigarettes. Through cheerful social tea-cup chatter I realised I was wrong on most counts. Juanita prefers milk to alcohol and always has. Perhaps it’s the key to her remarkable looks. She could be in her late 50's. She is 76. Not a smidgen of surplus fat on her, and muscles that look as taut as a forty-something athlete. I mentally scrapped the tavern scene and asked if she remembered Beryl Markham. "Oooh," she exclaimed with relish, "I hated her! She was a superb horsewoman and used to ride my pony. She could stretch down from the saddle at full gallop and pick a handkerchief off the lawn. That was MY pony! And there she was, doing all these things I couldn't do!" I doubted that her arms had been long enough at the time, but her possessive jealousy surrounding her pony is understandable. As an unwanted responsibility, the scorned and rejected "brat" terrorised by her sadistic father, the only creatures to accept and return her affection were her pets. Animals have none of the vicious spite of humans. After the horror of growing up as John Carberry's whipping-boy, Juanita must have found life beyond his reach blissfully without fear. She secured her distance from him by joining the Merchant Navy at 17. Her eyebrows rose in reminiscence. "I hadn't even touched a dish-towel before I joined the Navy - you can imagine the shock," and she nodded a few times. "But it was the making of me!" It gave her the freedom to explore the world on her own terms. She joined up on ships bound for places like Antarctica or the Amazon, and simply signed herself off on arrival to wander into the unknown interior, unhampered by company, timetables, taboos or too much luggage. Freedom from fear, for Juanita, is almost total freedom. Almost. She has lived too long with fear to be able to ignore it today. Nightmare memories of her father's demonic cruelty to animals and her own love of them makes her deeply sensitive to their fear, most of it man-induced. Retired from navy larking and living in a flat in London, her days are filled with campaigning for a better life for animals. When teams of rescue workers were sent out to assist in the Indian earthquake aftermath, Juanita went along to see to the well-being of animals trapped or injured by the same disaster. So here is the last of the notorious Happy Valley set - a fierce campaigner for, amongst others, the rights of camels in Kenya. Barely into her teens when the Erroll murder took place, and she's just published the paperback edition of her account of her life at that time, called "Child of Happy Valley". The title makes me smile. It sounds like "Son of Superman" and I hope this is a money-spinner for her. She signed a copy for me with a large and childlike flourish. She said "I really wanted to write about my life in the Navy, but the publishers said there was not enough sex and violence. They told me to write my Happy Valley memoirs and to stop at sixteen." It’s a sad comment on life when there is more sex and violence prior to the age of consent than there is after. But there is no clearer indication of the woman's personal strength of character. I felt honoured to have met the Honourable Juanita. I'm glad she's claimed her title, she suits it. She deserves a less cynical publisher.

Mischief - Her father told her she was Maxwell Trench's daughter not his. A sadistic father and governess, Isabel Rutt - 'Ruttie'