Memorial Service: Baroness Trumpington DCVO

The Reverend Jane Sinclair, Canon of Westminster and Rector of St Margaret’s Church, paid tribute to Tory minister Lady Trumpington, in her bidding prayer.

‘Jean Trumpington was never afraid to stand up for what she knew to be the truth; she had no time for cant or dissembling,’ said the rector. ‘Youtube and her autobiography alike bear witness to her unsurpassed ability to diffuse difficult situations with a witty remark or gesture.’

This was widely recognised as a reference to the occasion in 2011 when she was filmed raising two fingers to Tom King in the House of Lords. Lord King, who attended her service at Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey, didn’t bat an eyelid. He said later that he regarded Jean Trumpington as a lifelong friend.

Among her many honours, Lady Trumpington won an Oldie of the Year Award in recognition of her unconventional behaviour in the Lords.

Lord Deben, the former Tory minister John Selwyn Gummer, said, ‘Hers was a good life … right up to the very last.

‘She took her title from Trumpington, the village where she lived, but she could have called herself Baroness Six Mile Bottom. The fact that she mentioned this indicated that she had considered it but, underneath it all, she had a real sense of decorum.’

Another Tory colleague, Lord Elton, said she was a breath of fresh air when she arrived in the Upper House – albeit with a smell of tobacco. We were told how, when her husband, Alan Barker, was headmaster of the Leys School in Cambridge, one boy had on leaving given her 500 Woodbines as a present. We also heard how she had jumped into the school swimming pool when her husband was making a speech and all the boys joined her.

Her son, Adam Barker, read from her memoir, Coming Up Trumps. ‘I seem to have stumbled into fascinating events without really trying despite being rather dull myself,’ she wrote. ‘That’s one piece of luck. I have also been lucky in my family life. My final piece of luck has been finding a second life, and a second family, in the House of Lords.

‘Some say fortune favours the wellprepared. Well, I certainly wasn’t well-prepared. There has been no design to my life at all; no plot, no plan. I’ve lived by the skin of my teeth and taking chances at village dances.’ JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW