Coming Up Trumps: A Memoir

The Top 10 Sunday Times bestseller

Jean Trumpington became aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of India. Educated privately, she later became first a land girl and then worked in naval intelligence. She began her political career as a Cambridge City councilor in the early 1960s, rising to become Mayor of Cambridge in 1971. In 1980 she was made a life peer, choosing the title of Baroness Trumpington of Sandwich. She has served in two Conservative governments, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Health and Social Security from 1985-1988, and as Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food from 1989-1992, which, at the age of 69, made her the oldest female minister ever. Today, she is still an active member of the government front bench in the House of Lords and, in November 2012, aged 90, was the oldest-ever guest to have appeared on Have I Got News for You.