Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

From Bletchley Park to Take Your Pick – this baroness’s memoir is a blast

A review of Coming Up Trumps: A Memoir, by Jean Trumpington, who moved through life with the sceptical wit of a highly intelligent scullerymaid

Baroness Trumpington and Lord Harris of High Cross. Defiant pipe and cigar smokers from both houses of Parliament light up to mark national no-smoking day. Photo: William Conran/PA Images 
issue 17 May 2014

Jean Trumpington’s memoir, published as she closes in on her 92nd birthday, is an absolute blast from the opening page. She was born in 1922 to a posh but poor English father and a loaded but nouveau American mother. ‘The paint business’ filled the coffers. They lived in a Georgian townhouse with ten servants, just north of Hyde Park. ‘Kensington and Chelsea were not posh at all then. Kensington was very much cheap flats for the respectable retired.’

The money vanished in the Wall Street crash and they moved to a smaller place in Kent. At 15, Trumpington left school without a qualification or a care in the world,  and set out on an amazing series of adventures and affairs that took her to Bletchley Park, to New York, to Connecticut, to Eton, to Cambridge and finally to the House of Lords. Describing herself as six foot tall and ‘rather dull’, she moves through life with the glittering and sceptical wit of an untaught but highly intelligent scullerymaid.

Though drawn to the upper crust she has no interest in titles, wealth or showiness.

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