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. Warmth, fun, nice clothes and a good booze-up are her principal concerns. When ostentation catches her eye it comes out like this: ‘They were so rich they ate off solid gold plates and so down to earth they washed them up themselves.’ Once or twice she refers to someone as ‘lower class’, but it’s the lack of manners, never of money, she censures.
Always skint herself, she earned cash on the side by selling needlework and by speculating in antiques and at the race track. She won prizes on TV game shows too, and she bagged a brand new bathroom suite on Take Your Pick.
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