Burke Trend, Baron Trend

Who was Burke Trend, Baron Trend?

Burke St John Trend, Baron Trend, GCB, CVO, PC was a British civil servant and later Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.

Trend was educated at Whitgift School and Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained first class honours in classics. He then joined the Civil Service, spending most of his career in the Treasury. He became Cabinet Secretary under both Harold Wilson and Ted Heath between 1963 to 1973. He was made a life peer as Baron Trend of Greenwich in Greater London in 1974.

He led an investigation in the 1970s into allegations of penetration of the British Secret Services from before World War II until the 1960s. His conclusion was that there was insufficient evidence to support the allegations. Peter Wright in his memoirs, Spycatcher, discusses Trend and his report.

His son, Michael Trend, was a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1992 until 2005. He also had another son named Patrick and two grandsons called Alexander and Hector, and two granddaughters called Cassandra and Tabitha.