Jean Alys Barker, Baroness Trumpington, DCVO, PC (née Campbell-Harris; 23 October 1922 – 26 November 2018) was a British Conservative[1] politician and life peer.

On the family's return from India they rented Rowling House, Goodnestone, near Sandwich, Kent, where Doris specialised in interior decorating.

Educated at Princess Helena College, Trumpington, aged 15, left school never having taken an exam, although she was fluent in French, German and Italian.

When war broke out, she returned to England She had two brothers educated at Eton; the elder, Alastair, was at Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.

Initially during World War II, Lady Trumpington was attached to Lloyd George's Sussex arable farm, where she worked on the land with his daughter, lodging with his then secretary/mistress and later wife Frances Stevenson.

[2][6][7] She was billeted at Great Brickhill with W. J. Locke's family, before moving to Passenham Manor, home of banker George Ansley.

[9]At war's end, she spent four years working for the European Central Inland Transport Organization, shipping and distributing supplies to the war-torn continent with the same job description, filing clerk.

Resident at 1 Place d'Alma, she worked briefly for the suave British ambassador Duff Cooper, whose wife, previously Lady Diana Manners, was a former actress she used to visit on Broadway.

[10] Moving in political circles, she returned to London to work for an imperial Conservative, Victor Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbroke.

[15] Whilst in America, she met an Englishman, (William) Alan Barker, a master at Eton College and formerly a captain in the Royal Artillery,[16] wounded in the leg in Normandy on 16 June 1944.

She was forced to apply for a licence to the Solicitor-General so that they could become the first couple in modern times to hold a wedding at the Chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, which took place on 18 March 1954.

They invited the local dignitaries Edward Heath MP and the Duchess of Kent with the Prime Minister of Singapore to an open day.

She granted the Freedom of Cambridge to RAF Oakington, revived the town's market, installed a travel centre, and built an entrance hall to the railway station.

She opened the Elizabeth Way Bridge with former Conservative cabinet minister Rab Butler, High Steward of Cambridge University.

Before the local government and administration of justice re-organisation, it was usual for the upper classes to sit on the bench as a matter of public duty.

[23] The binding Official Secrets clause was repealed, privatisation followed, and profitability indexation restored to Air Mail services.

At the UN she crossed the floor to greet Suzanne Mubarak, who made a brave speech for advancing peace in the Middle East.

[31] Moving to the Ministry of Agriculture, which suited her temperament better than social security, at the height of the Thatcher boom period from 1987 to 1989, she was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary.

Acting in the capacity as a whip and a courtier, she felt compelled to attend at the bedside of Sally Mugabe in a London Hospital.

On several occasions during the 1990s, Lady Trumpington became acquainted with the New Labour opposition leaders, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at Court.

She was one of the few officials on hand in 1990 to recognise the new State of Mongolia, subsequently travelling to Ulan Bator to deal with KGB-backed Russian investors on a construction project.

She voted often in favour of university tuition fees and raising the cap to £9,000; opposed constitutional reform, telling the Lords that she believed in the first-past-the-post system; and against the ban on fox hunting.

This tied in closely with ongoing visitations to Pentonville Prison, as Crimestoppers' emphasis was specific to schoolchildren and youth offending.

She opposed "walking free" and community sentencing; her disarming charm when discoursing about conditions in Britain's jails alerted the Lords perspective on the significance of public participation in crime reduction initiatives.

[2][35] When she tried to debate the "plight of rural veterinary practices", the peeress pretended to be deaf: she had long railed against the most absurd forms of political correctness.

[clarification needed] In 2000–01, she was made President of the South of England Agricultural Show, taking the opportunity to promote animal health, a cause for which she had in 1995 been awarded an Honorary Membership of the British Veterinary Association, in response to her work in that ministry.

[37] Throughout her career, she was notable for having raised uncomfortable truths about topics most politicians have avoided, such as the plight of women in prisons, or the fate of single mothers with mental health issues.

[citation needed] In December 2012, she acknowledged the campaign for the government to give official recognition to the work of Alan Turing.

[citation needed] As a castaway on Desert Island Discs in 1990 she chose as her luxury item the Crown Jewels in order to maximise her chances of being rescued.

[46] She was referenced as suffering from the fictional "Slimmels disease" in the spoof news and current affairs satire The Day Today.