Coming Up Trumps: A Memoir

By: Jean Trumpington

Narrated by: Sarah Badel

In this witty, candid and utterly fascinating memoir, Baroness Trumpington looks back on her long and remarkable life. The daughter of an officer in the Bengal Lancers and an American heiress, she was born in 1922 into a world of privilege and luxury. But her mother lost most of her inheritance in the Wall Street Crash and the family retrenched from Mayfair to Sandwich, in Kent, where her mother became a succesful society interior decorator.

Leaving school at fifteen, without ever taking an exam, the young Jean Campbell-Harris was sent to Paris to study art and both French and German, but two years later, with the outbreak of the Second World War, she became a land girl - on a farm owned by Lloyd George, a family friend. She loathed the outdoor life and soon changed direction, putting her German to good use by joining naval intelligence at Bletchley Park, where she stayed for the rest of the war. After the war was over, she went to New York and worked on Madison Avenue as an advertising copywriter. It was in New York that she met her husband, William Barker, a history teacher. They returned to England and married in 1954, where Barker became first a master and then headmaster at the Leys School in Cambridge. In this witty and winning memoir, Jean Trumpington recalls her early life, growing up in London and Kent in the 1920s and 30s, her wartime experiences, her life in the world of Madison Avenue's 'mad men' and - perhaps the happiest period of her life - her years as a headmaster's wife. The book ends with her embarking on what was to become a distinguished political career. It is vivid, forthright and funny, and will appeal to readers who enjoyed the Duchess of Devonshire's Wait for Me as well as to the many people who warmed to Lady Trumpington after her triumphant appearance on Have I Got News for You.

A delight to listen to

I found this book a delight to listen to. Sort of reminded me of the stories my British grandmother us to tell. Jean Trumpington is in her nineties and tells the story of her long and remarkable life. She was daughter of an officer in the Bengal Lancers and an American heiress. Jean Campbell-Harris was born into a world of privilege, but the Wall Street crash of 1929 entirely wiped out her mother’s fortune. Leaving boarding school at fifteen she was sent to Paris to study French and German. At the outbreak of WWII she returned to England and became a land girl on the farm of Lloyd George. She then joined naval intelligence at Bletchley Park where she stays until the end of the war. After the War she lived in Paris with the family of the England’s Ambassador to France. She then went to New York City to work on Madison Avenue. She met many of the prominent families of U.S. wealth and politics. While in the U.S. she met her future husband British historian Alan Barker. The married in 1954 and had a son Alan, she lived the life of a headmaster’s wife before embarking on a distinguished political career, as Cambridge city councilor, mayor of Cambridge, and served in two conservative governments first as Parliamentary under-secretary of State in department of Health and Social Security and second as Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. In the 1980’s she was made a life peer and becoming Baroness Trumpington of Sandwich. She still serves in the House of Lords. Baroness Trumpington is forthright, witty and opinionated. The stories read as the who’s who of the era. The book is a wonderfully readable account of a well lived interesting life. Sarah Badel did a marvelously job narrating the book.