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.

Lord Shaftesbury campaigned tirelessly to limit factory hours, to stop the use of boys as chimney sweeps and children in coalmines, and to develop a universial education. This book details his upbringing, education and work as a politician. It considers how he combined political and legislative action with voluntary Christian societies.