import itertools
import operator
from operator import itemgetter
import pprint
l = [
{'firstname': 'joe', 'surname': 'bloggs'},
{'firstname': 'john', 'surname': 'smith'},
{'firstname': 'joe', 'surname': 'bloggs'},
{'firstname': 'jane', 'surname': 'bloggs'}
]
getvals = operator.itemgetter('firstname', 'surname')
l.sort(key=getvals)
result = []
for k, g in itertools.groupby(l, getvals):
result.append(g.next())
l[:] = result
pprint.pprint(l)