Baroness Trumpington: I don’t consciously power-dress to go to Parliament as it would be exhausting

I don’t consciously power-dress to go to Parliament as it would be exhausting. Female politicians have a hard time when it comes to wearing the right thing. You’ve got to be as neutral as possible. You don’t really want people to pay attention to your clothes if you’re a serious politician.

Margaret Thatcher had some wonderful clothes, but her statue by the doors to the Commons is perfectly awful. She’s wearing a suit that makes her look stubby; she never was, she was an elegant woman.

I sit next to a very nice Labour peer, Baroness Turner of Camden, at lunch at the House of Lords. One day we were wearing exactly the same tweed jacket. We rather loved it.

During the war we were very inventive. There was clothes rationing so if I needed an evening dress, it would be made out of blackout or curtain material, which wasn’t on ration. I remember turning up to a dance in a white curtain.

I once got £15 for my birthday, which was a hell of a lot of money in the 1940s. I went with my mother to Selfridges, where there was a sale, and bought a black fur jacket made of skunk. It looked very nice but if it rained, boy, it smelled.

When I came up from Bletchley — where I was a code-breaker — for the night, I’d wear a black dress from Fenwick. I wore it to every nightclub in London, including the 400 Club in Leicester Square. I don’t remember the men being that dapper — proper gents don’t really care what they wear.

I was born in the 1920s. It was not a very good time for fashion because waists were not where waists were and skirts were short. If you look at brides from that decade you’ll see they look faintly uncomfortable.

Growing up in Knightsbridge, I lived the life of a London child. I had an overcoat for going to Hyde Park and a best dress for special occasions. When my mother had a lunch party I had to come down in my best, walk around the table and shake hands with or curtsey to every guest. Afterwards I used to rush back to the nursery to change into comfortable clothes.

When I was seven I wore a Russian dancer’s outfit with an organdie blouse to a charity dance matinée at the Hippodrome. I simply hated it.

I was working in New York when I got engaged. A friend at Vogue got me an introduction to the best wedding-dress maker there — I chose a broderie anglaise dress and had it fitted.

As my husband [Alan Barker, a master at Eton] and I were going down the aisle we heard somebody say, ‘What a waste!’ We were never quite sure who said it, or which way it was spelled, but I had dieted like mad so I didn’t really have a waist.

I buy everything from catalogues now. I love reading them and when I fall in love with something, I want it delivered the next day.

Coming Up Trumps: A Memoir by Jean Trumpington is out now (Macmillan, £16.99)