Back in London she worked for two years at BBC Radio 4, producing its then arts magazine Kaleidoscope, before travelling again, this time overland through North, Central and South America, a trip that became research material for her first solo novel Snow Storms in Hot Climate (1988) a thriller about the early cocaine trade in Colombia *(1)

Dunant started writing in her late twenties, first with a friend, with whom she produced two political thrillers and a six part BBC1 drama series Thin Air, broadcast in 1989, before going solo.

In the 1990s she wrote a trilogy around a British female private eye Hannah Wolfe, spotlighting issues like surrogacy, cosmetic surgery, animal rights, and violence to women. Sexual violence was also at the centre of “Transgressions” (based on a mysterious series of incidents happening in her house*2) which tackled what might happen if a woman woke to an intruder in her house and live to tell the tale. The resulting furore over the actions of the heroine “caused the book to become a cause celebre which triggered a debate about rape and popular culture.*(3)

Her crime novels were three times shortlisted for the CWA Golden dagger award, and in 1994 she won a silver dagger for Fatlands. (8*) In 2010 Sacred Hearts was shortlisted for the first ever Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize, an award which highlighted the growing power and popularity of the form. (*9)

In 2000, an extended visit to Florence changed her working life. In what she acknowledged was something of a midlife crisis * 4 Her old passion for history was reignited, a she started to research the impact of the renaissance on the city in the 1490’s. The result was The Birth of Venus, the first of a trilogy of novels about women’s lives in the Italian renaissance. The commercial success of these books in America and elsewhere (*5) allowed Dunant to devote herself full time to writing and research concentrating of the most current work being done in renaissance studies, most particularly concerning the lives of women. (*6) The novel Sacred Hearts, a story of nuns in an enclosed convent in 16th Ferrara led to collaboration with the early music group, Musica Secreta: a theatrical adaptation using the music of the period and with a choir, performed in churches and at early music festivals around Britain.

In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters from Oxford Brookes University, where she is a guest lecturer on the Creative writing M.A. course.

As a Journalist she has reviewed for all of the Uk’s papers, edited two books of Essays on Political Correctness and Millennium anxieties, and currently reviews for the New York Times.