Helena Kennedy QC

Helena Kennedy QC0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a lawyer. A passionate defender of civil rights and an advocate of constitutional change, she's never allowed her suspicion of convention to act as a barrier to success. She was born into a close working-class family in Glasgow and entered the inns of court where old-fashioned attitudes and prejudice against her sex only served to fuel her radicalism. She took cases concerned with domestic violence, race, and clashes between strikers and police. She helped defend the Guildford Four and one of the men accused of the Warrington bombing.

Presenter1:02

In 1992, she published a now famous critique of the British legal system, entitled Eve Was Framed. A day in court is enough to convince most men and women that the legal system is a foreign country, she wrote. Today, as a QC and a newly created peer of the realm, she intends to carry her reforming zeal into the upper house. She is Helena Kennedy, now Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws, which is a wonderfully lyrical title. Which Shaws? Where? What? Oh, Shaws, S-H-A-W-S, and it's the south side of Glasgow, and it's where I spent most of my childhood and where my mother still lives. So lyrical for you, but perhaps. Yes, lyrical for me.

Helena Kennedy QC1:38

Yeah, it's lyrical.

Presenter1:40

The most remarkable thing about your career is is that you, an outsider, have succeeded in penetrating all the way to the heart of the establishment, you know, from the Glasgow tenement, you, a female, all the way to the House of Lords.

Presenter1:52

But along the way you must have thought, this situation is appalling, this is sexist, this is snobbish, I hate this. You must have taken a conscious decision not to rock the boat too much so that you got tipped out, but to stay on the inside and fight from within. Well, I've always been a boat rocker and I but I think that I I've made a conscious decision that when rocking the boat you have to win people with you to be persuasive. I mean I think that's part what advocacy is all about, is to get people on side.

Helena Kennedy QC2:16

Uh

Speaker 42:16

Uh

Helena Kennedy QC2:16

Man.

Presenter2:19

And on the whole, I've made an assumption that people would come with me if they saw the reasoning. And for example, when I went on to the Bar Council, I went on really because one of the head of the Bar Council at the time said, Helena, there's no point in saying things have to be done for women on the outside. You've got to come in and do it. And so I stood for election and I went in and, sure enough, argued my case and got people on site. Yeah, you make it sound very easy in hindsight, but at the time. It was hard, I have to admit, there were times when it did seem fairly hopeless. And there were times, I have to say, when being an outsider was very painful. I mean, there were times, for example, when one was trying to draw attention to the problems with the Irish cases and the way in which things had at times gone wrong.

Presenter3:06

When one was made to feel the icy chill of those who didn't agree with you and who felt that criticising the legal system was unacceptable for a member of the bar. And those times were hard and quite painful times. What would your father, who was a newspaper packer and a very active and ardent trade unionist, and he died 20 years ago, would he have been impressed or appalled to think of his daughter as Lady Kennedy? I think he'd have been thrilled. I think he'd have been thrilled because he really did believe that change happened bit by bit. And I think that he also felt that too many working class people really were kept in their place. And so I think he would like, it would rather amuse him, the idea that I was in the position that I'm now in. Tell me about your first record.

Presenter3:52

Well, I've chosen it because, well, I think that Judy Collins is a wonderful singer, and I love many of her songs. This one is called My Father, and it has always reminded me of my own father, because he was a very ordinary working-class man in many ways, but he was special in that he was very committed to his children having an education. He was quite a sentimental, emotional man, and expressed his emotions when perhaps at that time a lot of men didn't.

Presenter4:18

Um I I loved him and he wanted things for us, which we hadn't always possible. And so this song is about all of that.

Speaker 34:26

My father always promised us that we would live in France.

Speaker 34:38

We'd go boating on the sand

Speaker 34:43

And I would learn to die.

Presenter4:54

Judy Collins, singing My Father. I mentioned that there have been times when you were appalled by the system. There was one deeply humiliating incident, I think, when you were eating one of your statutory dinners in Gray's Inn and uh your your dress was questioned. Tell me about it.

Presenter5:09

Well, it was um I mean coming to the Inns of Court was absolutely extraordinary for me from Glasgow. I mean I really had hardly been outside of the south side of Glasgow, never mind anywhere else. And I came down and of course the majority of people then in the late 60s were from upper middle class families and we had to eat these dinners in hall at refectory tables and very grand surroundings and we always had to dress in black and wear a gown. And of course as was the mode at the time, I was wearing a mini skirt. It was a little black crocheted dress, which was, I thought, reasonably decent in that I had a slip under it. And there was a process in which people were taught advocacy and so they would stand up and they would challenge each other and they would have a sort of mock trial. And in this room in which I was probably one of a handful of women, suddenly I heard my name being mentioned and a challenge was being made to Miss Kennedy, who was inappropriately dressed. And they could see through my little scheme. I had only been, I think, in the dining hall twice before. And then the senior in hall bid that I come forth so that he could examine the scene of the crime.

Presenter6:14

And I was propelled forward up to the front, and uh the bottle of port was awarded to me on the basis that I was very appropriately dressed, said this gentleman, having had a good old look at me.

Helena Kennedy QC6:23

This gentleman having

Presenter6:28

I have to say it was it was part and parcel of that world at that time. Because it wasn't the only incident, was it? Oh no, there were a lot of people. There were lots of things. It was part of that world, but it was part of the ritual of the Inns of Court in in that sense. And so therefore, to an extent it must still go on.

Helena Kennedy QC6:31

Yeah.

Helena Kennedy QC6:32

Oh no, there were lots of things.

Helena Kennedy QC6:36

But

Helena Kennedy QC6:40

Yeah.

Presenter6:43

Well, quite a lot of it does. I mean, happily, the women are now in in greater greater numbers and of course you create a critical mass. Once you've got enough women then they make objection to these things. And of course there are men now at the bar who realize just how unacceptable that is and who are now in senior positions. So a lot of it is gone. But at that time, my God, it was terrible. It was you must have been very shocked. I think you've written that it was like stepping

Helena Kennedy QC7:03

It was

Speaker 47:03

Yeah.

Helena Kennedy QC7:03

See

Presenter7:08

out of the equivalent of a comprehensive school in no mean city, but into the pages of an evil in war novel.

Presenter7:13

How miserable? I mean, did you lose sleep over it when you Oh, yes. I mean it was it was it was it was at the time awful. I was pretty wretched. But I knew that I couldn't go back. I kn there was something I suppose it's it's the thing that is about who I am.

Helena Kennedy QC7:23

Some

Presenter7:26

I couldn't turn to my parents and say that I I'd made a terrible mistake. But why did you choose to come South and why did you choose to go into the law, which you know, such a a bastion of white middle class males?

Helena Kennedy QC7:31

Why did you

Helena Kennedy QC7:34

I'm such a

Presenter7:38

It was partly that I came down in the in the vacation before I was due to go to university in Scotland, which everybody did. You know, if you went to university at all, you went to the one that was on your doorstep. And you had a place to read English at Glasgow. And I and I and that was what I intended to do. But then I uh

Helena Kennedy QC7:50

Yeah, and I

Presenter7:54

I came for the summer holidays to London and I suddenly had my eyes open to a wider world, which was exciting and uh and particularly at that time in the late sixties. And I just wanted to spread my wings. I wanted to taste new things. I wanted a bigger canvas, I suppose.

Presenter8:10

Echo number two.

Presenter8:12

This is um The Greenfields of France, and it's uh sung by the Furies. I love it because it's it's about the horror of war, and I've always felt very strongly anti-war. I I my own grandfather, my grandgrandpa Kennedy, was one of the uh first soldiers to be killed in the First World War. You know, he went off young.

Presenter8:30

green, innocent, newly married, and he uh he w he died in the first days of the war actually.

Presenter8:37

Uh

Speaker 48:37

I see even

Presenter8:37

Uh

Speaker 48:37

Uh I'm great.

Presenter8:38

Uh

Speaker 48:38

Stone, you were only 19 When you joined the Great Fallen in 1916

Speaker 48:50

I hope you died well, and I hope you died clean.

Helena Kennedy QC8:50

I

Speaker 48:55

Our young Willie McBride, who was it slow and opsy?

Presenter9:02

The Furies and the Greenfields of France. So, Helena Kennedy, you're an Irish-Scottish woman, born and brought up in a Glasgow tenement.

Speaker 49:07

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:10

Did you always feel that strong sense of who you are, strong with family about you? Oh, absolutely, and still do. Um I my mother's still alive, she's in her eighties, and I have three sisters who are, you know,

Presenter9:25

very much part of my life with all of their children. And I just feel that I have this great supportive network, all of whom are there for me. And was it in the beginning more than all of that as well? Did you also have a a sense of your own worth?

Presenter9:41

Yes, I mean I my my I think probably I had it even more than the others because I was the first child that my father was was around to see as a baby. He was in the army for six years during the Second World War. And then my mother lost uh a son who was born in 1948 and then I was born in 1950. So I suppose psychologists would say that you know I was the replacement son and I was also the one who really did have the input of my father as a very small child. And it's right that he and I were very particularly close. And I think that I always felt that I was special and he made me feel that. So I think it's very nice for a child to be brought up in that way. And was it acknowledged that that you were clever?

Helena Kennedy QC10:18

I mean

Presenter10:21

Yes, I think it was. That you were going to do something the rest of the family had never done, which is go to university or.

Helena Kennedy QC10:22

That you

Presenter10:25

Oh, well no, b I mean, all of my sisters are clever and and we I think we were all rather clever at school. My older true sisters really were in during their adolescence. It was a very bad time for our family. My father became unemployed and so on. And so

Presenter10:40

I'm afraid that they didn't get the choices that were available to me because they had to let the you know, they left school because they felt that they

Presenter10:47

They should. And in fact, came back to education later. It's one of the reasons why I feel so passionately about giving those opportunities to people. But I think that we were all considered to be rather clever at school. What about that early life? How much has it been of use to you in the job that you eventually came to do? I mean, it did it h give you insights? Well, I certainly knew about not being well off. I knew about hardship and I knew that the struggles that working class people had. I also knew from my father how people were frightened of the law. I mean, he was aware of that, being involved with his union, that people were often very anxious about even, you know, suing for personal injury when they were obviously likely to succeed. The idea of becoming involved with lawyers and the law was very intimidating to ordinary folks. Which is why you'd say it would be a foreign country. You understand why people would be intimidated by wigs or the words and vocabulary that's used. Just and the whole business of and the fear of it being expensive and being about people who speak in grand voices and who don't really know about the lives of ordinary people.

Helena Kennedy QC11:36

Yeah.

Helena Kennedy QC11:38

Vocabulary.

Presenter11:52

But your first case, I think, was to defend a woman shoplifter, a mother of three, who ended up being taken away to Holloway and shut away from her children. I mean, that that must have been a terrible experience, understanding what you understand. I went home in the bath and wiped.

Presenter12:07

It was terrible.

Presenter12:08

Why did you lose it?

Presenter12:10

Well, if she was you know, she had, um she was uh

Presenter12:15

in breach of a suspended sentence, so it was a fairly automatic thing. But I I still remember it very powerfully. I thought, maybe I shouldn't be here doing this at all. Maybe I'm

Presenter12:24

Maybe I'm not tough enough. Maybe I'm not

Presenter12:27

Um I can't stand back enough. Maybe maybe I'm not good enough at it.

Presenter12:32

And so I became determined that I was going to be ve I was going to become very good at it.

Presenter12:36

Record number three.

Presenter12:38

This is this is um the Misa Luba. I loved the fact that it was the Mass, but it was the Mass in a different language from the one in which I was brought up with it. It wasn't in the Latin, but it was somehow it was about other peoples in the world and it was embracing other experiences and cultures. And so this is an African Mass and I loved it.

Speaker 413:18

Some really

Presenter13:59

Part of the Sanctus from the Missaluba from the soundtrack of the film If with the Troubadours of King Baudouin, directed by Father Guido Harzen.

Presenter14:08

The person who wields a lot of power in barristers' chambers is of course the clerk, a barrister self employed and generally speaking there's a sort of cab rank principal and

Presenter14:16

Whatever instructions come in next, go to the next barrister who's free. It didn't it sounds very democratic, but it didn't work like that for you, did it? Well, it's certainly in the day when I started at the bar, the the clerks were all male. And they really were in I mean, talk about the bar being a conservative profession. I mean, the clerks were absolutely conservative in that they really did not think that uh lawyering was for women, and particularly not the criminal law, which was what I was interested in doing. Of course, they earn their money as a percentage of the barrister's fee, certainly it matters to them who gets it. Yes, and so they have a great sort of way of promoting certain people whom they you know, what they describe as is backing horses. You know, they talk about their stable of young men.

Helena Kennedy QC14:41

Yeah.

Helena Kennedy QC14:44

Yeah.

Presenter14:56

And they really do push the people they think are good and who will make them a lot of money because of course they're going to that's how they're going to make their own living.

Presenter15:05

And so they weren't very keen on women because women are bad investments. You know, they go often have babies and marry folk and do all of that. And they also just didn't think they were any good at it. So they really had no time for women. And I remember I used to go into the clerk's room and they would ignore me. They pretended I wasn't there. And they would actually speak to the next person who came in and I was there like the wallpaper. Now he was there, wasn't he, in the television series which you helped to create, Blind Justice. He's a very nasty piece of work. The the U character, the woman Bowser, was played by Jane Lapotaire.

Helena Kennedy QC15:30

Did you pay no

Presenter15:35

Uh he he was very much there that clock, which is why I think to bring it up. Has it improved now?

Presenter15:40

Well, for example, in my own set of chambers, we have our senior clerk as a woman, we have male and female clerks in chambers, and we have a senior woman practice manager. But that drama, Blind Justice, was riddled with cynicism, it seems to me. The female barrister, Jane LaPotere, I remember saying to a woman offender before she goes back into court for sentencing, I'm going to make you sound like orphan Annie in there, so keep your mouth shut. Which was a sort of pretty frank admission that she was going to.

Presenter16:09

Warp the facts to get the best deal for her client. I suppose that's the job, is it? Well, I think that I I mean, part of the thing about creating a drama series is that, of course, you you have a certain amount of license, and so of course you play with it. And yes, it's true that obviously one tries to present one's client in the best possible light. With women, particularly, there's a problem in that courts have

Presenter16:30

very stereotyped ideas of what a good woman is. And so, you know, when your client turns up in a in a lurex jumper and fishnet tights, you know that they're going to assume that she's some sort of harlot. And so the way that women present themselves matters. The way that women have conducted their lives often can militate against them. And obviously naming those things has been helpful in unraveling some of the problems and judges are much more sensitive and conscious of it because we've ha we've started having a debate about the way in which those unspoken realities operate. But until recently it wasn't acknowledged and so one had to make sure that one

Presenter17:09

Got the system too.

Presenter17:11

Work in one's favor.

Presenter17:13

Record number four.

Presenter17:14

I wasn't brought up in a household which was familiar with classical music at all. And it was only when I came to London and I started making friends with people who were much more musical than I was and had a real knowledge of music that I learned about classical music. And so it was more than about studying. That period in London became very exciting because it was about learning about so many new things.

Presenter18:39

Renata Tibaldi as Mimi, singing the aria Mi Chiamino Mimi, from Act one of Puccini's Laboem, with the Orchestra of the Academy of St. Cecilia in Rome, conducted by Tulio Seraffine.

Presenter18:51

You set up your own chambers when you were twenty four, I think, with five other barristers. That was really quite brave, wasn't it?

Presenter18:58

Yes, I know, but it was really innocence. You know, it was about saying, Well, all these chambers are terribly stuffy and why can't we set up a set of chambers that is going to be quite different and make them our own? But of course I recall in Blind Justice again that uh you know

Presenter19:12

The barrister refuses an invitation to join such a practice and says, I don't want to sit around drinking Maxwell House listening to second-rate lawyers talking about Nicaragua. I mean, is that what it was like? Well, there was a touch of that, I have to admit.

Helena Kennedy QC19:22

Yeah.

Presenter19:23

But it was fun and it was wonderful. It was a great time. You see, we I remember when I was doing my pupillage, a rather senior member of the bar taking me on one side and I was doing lots of work for tenants against their landlords who were overcharging them and living horrible slums. I was doing work for employees who'd been injured at work. And he took me on one side and he said, you know, Helena, it's a very bad idea to mix a practice of law and politics.

Presenter19:51

And he was a Conservative Member of Parliament, which I always thought was wildly amusing. But of course it was about the kind of work I was doing. And so this chamber's was about precisely that. The law centres had just started up and they briefed us. And I loved the work and I loved the people I worked for. And it was a really good way to, you know, learn trade.

Helena Kennedy QC20:11

Yeah.

Presenter20:12

At what point did you start getting weightier stuff? Well, I used to do work for the National Council of Civil Liberties and they often would brief us on particular things, for example around issues of public order. And so I started doing things where people would be arrested at the Grunwick strike or public order things around race. The anti-Nazi League was around at the time and there were issues often around the National Front and people would be arrested at demonstrations and so on. Then I did a lot of work around race, specifically around race. And then I was asked to do one of the early Irish cases. And already by that time we feared that there had been some miscarriages of justice. And so there sort of seemed to be a move in getting civil liberties lawyers to do the Irish cases and I was one of the lawyers they came to. And those, if I read you right, are what you like, the kinds of cases, perhaps they're the most challenging kinds of cases, like child murders as well.

Presenter21:11

Which arouse public passion and a kind of pressure for retribution so that it is even more difficult for justice to be done. Yes, I mean that's that's if any you know when I'm asked about my my work, that is essentially the thing I like doing, where there's a particular problem for the court because of those incredible feelings which are engaged. If a policeman did a terrible thing in Tottenham where that policeman was killed in a terrible way and then powerful emotions are released or around the bombings or I do a lot of work around the death of children and those sorts of cases just engage people so powerfully that it's very easy for misjudgments, miscalculations to be made about the weight of evidence and so on. And one can go on the emotion rather than what is really there in substance. What's the most satisfying victory you've ever had?

Presenter22:07

Oh, I do think that probably the Guildford case was a very satisfying result because it did open up that whole issue about miscarriages of justice. It meant that we were prepared to admit that we had had failures. And then, of course, it unraveled. Not just, of course, you know, the Irish cases like the Birmingham Six, but then there were the cases involving Stefan Kiskow, who was convicted of killing a child, a man who quite clearly was innocent, and the forensic evidence was there to show it. All that corruption in the West Midlands, which became exposed, and the miscarriages of justice there.

Presenter22:45

We it was a ghastly clearing out of terrible wrongs.

Presenter22:49

But um but it was a healthy thing to do and

Presenter22:53

You know

Presenter22:54

I think it's been humbling for us. It that the system did get things wrong. And justice is a very, very fragile thing. And you can't ever become complacent.

Presenter23:06

Record number five.

Presenter23:07

Oh, I want to do a bit of dancing on this desert island, and this is one that this is for my husband. This is for Ian. It's about.

Presenter23:16

The sixties and uh seventies and the time when I did most of my dancing, although I still do some still.

Speaker 423:21

When the night

Speaker 423:23

Has come.

Speaker 423:27

And the land is dark.

Speaker 423:29

And the moon

Speaker 423:31

The only night we'll see.

Speaker 423:37

No, I won't

Speaker 423:39

Feel free.

Speaker 423:41

Oh I won't

Speaker 423:43

Be afraid.

Speaker 423:45

Just as long

Speaker 423:47

As you stand

Speaker 423:49

Then by me.

Presenter23:52

Benny King and Stand By Me. You criticised so much about the our legal system in your book, Eve Was Framed. It wasn't just about women at the hands of the law at all. There was a positive battery of charges against judges in particular who don't listen, who don't believe that the police can ever behave improperly, who believe a rape victim in a mini skirt was asking for it and so on.

Presenter24:14

Did their attitude the judge's attitude change to you after that book was published?

Presenter24:19

Well it was interesting. It created a lot of debate. I mean it was very funny because we did a number of sort of discussions on radio and television and I remember His Honour Judge Argyle who'd just retired from the old BA coming on with me and saying it w you know judges didn't notice that if the defendant was black or white and didn't notice whether they were male or female which I thought was slightly worrying. And so yes, there was for a short period a lot of

Presenter24:43

You know, denial. Not usually at the most senior levels. It's actually at a lower level than that, which many of the judges, the senior judges who are policymaking judges, don't see. And perhaps in parts of the jurisdiction that they don't visit often enough. And judges usually don't see each other in court. So it's one of the difficulties you have about their knowing what goes on. They also don't have any training for it, do they? I mean, they have been usually advocates themselves. Oh, we've changed yes, but we've changed a lot of that. The training is increasing now gladly. But I like to think that

Helena Kennedy QC25:06

They also don't have a

Presenter25:16

Publishing Eve was framed was quite important in creating a debate around the need for better training. And we now do have much better training and there's an expectation that those who end up being judges will have been temporary judges for a period of time during which they're assessed and so on. And so the old thing of being snatched one day from being a practitioner and then suddenly sitting in judgment doesn't happen anymore.

Presenter25:39

Record number six.

Presenter25:41

This is um the Miserere by Allegri, and it's oh, it's just one of those pieces of music where, you know, you think you've gone to heaven, you've died and gone to heaven when you listen to it. It's lovely. And um I think that I might want to be um have spiritual moments while I'm sitting on my desert island.

Speaker 425:59

Multitude of thy passions.

Speaker 426:04

To away my love and

Presenter26:58

The Treble Roy Goodman and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, singing part of the Miserare by Gregorio Allegri, directed by Sir David Wilcox. There is a certain

Presenter27:08

Irony in your going to the Lords, really, isn't isn't it? Oh, absolutely, of course there is. I mean, you've spent years campaigning for constitutional reform. So you don't want to abolish it then?

Helena Kennedy QC27:11

Oh, absolutely. Of course there isn't.

Presenter27:17

Oh, I think we need an upper house. I think that I think that having a single camera is not a good system. And I believe very strongly that you have to you should have two houses. And I think that the upper house, of course, I mean, one of the exciting things is that this government is committed to reform. And that makes a big difference to me.

Helena Kennedy QC27:34

So how do you

Presenter27:35

Well first of all I think that w we of course the plan is that by probably sometime late 98 we'll start the process of removing the rights of hereditary peers. It still wouldn't be a democracy that would be still people like you, you know, a chosen few who are there by accident of career rather than accident of birth. And we can't have that and I feel very strongly that the government should be making it clear

Helena Kennedy QC27:46

No, no, no.

Helena Kennedy QC27:51

Do we have that

Helena Kennedy QC27:52

Korea Ron Jackson

Presenter27:59

That there is a next stage. There should be a commission set up, and we should be looking at regional elections for the upper house. It may be that you end up with a hybrid house, a house which has a certain number of appointees. For example, the general medical council might be able to put forward a number of people. So you get your experts. But I certainly don't think it's enough to sort of sit tight and say, well, you just have full of appointments. I think you have to have certainly at the very least a whole tranche of it which is democratically elected.

Helena Kennedy QC28:18

So you get your expertise.

Presenter28:33

Education is uh another of your great interests other than the law. And you've recently published a a report on further education, the the Cinderella Service, as it's been called. You say there should be more of it. For whom?

Presenter28:45

Particularly for those who didn't benefit from their own early education. We have tended to be rather Janus-faced about education in this country and we sort of keep fostering those who succeed readily. Those who fail or who breathe in failure early on have a great difficulty in getting over that. It costs money. It does. And as I understand it, reading between the lines of your report, what you really believe should happen is that money should be diverted from the universities into further education. I think that in the overall pot of money, we're having to look at, if you like, redistribution. And we have to make sure that further education does not continue to be the neglected area. People should be allowed to have a second chance and should be encouraged to and supported in doing so. But the pips are already squeaking at the universities. How on earth are you going to get money out of that? Well, clearly we've been, I mean.

Helena Kennedy QC29:31

Uh

Presenter29:37

The Deering report has been very helpful in seeing our way through that. It's quite radical in what's happening. The idea that people should be making a contribution to their fees is a great departure and it's going to be a painful one at first, but I think it will be, as in Australia and other parts of the world, it will be accepted. Students in further education have always paid for their fees. That's the ghastly thing. The poorest folk have always been the ones who have paid. And the greatest educational subsidies have gone to, in fact, the children of the middle classes.

Presenter30:07

Record number seven.

Presenter30:08

Oh well, you know, in all those years of uh campaigning as you describe it, I mean one of the the campaigns dearest to my heart was of course the anti-apartheid campaign for South Africa. And

Presenter30:20

There was something so wonderful and magical about the moment when South Africa, you know, became.

Presenter30:27

free and new and that hope that came with that, hope for South Afr for not just for South Africa, but hope about Ireland, hope about the Middle East, that somehow there can be a way through these things. And I continue to be optimistic.

Speaker 430:45

Since he lived our freedom

Speaker 430:56

Please forget me down.

Speaker 430:59

Etou bossi si gela.

Speaker 431:07

Oh, sing, sing baby.

Presenter31:13

Afrika, God bless Africa from the soundtrack to the film Cry Freedom. You have three children, Helena, aged uh fourteen, eleven and eight. You've got a husband who's a surgeon, a very demanding full-time job of your own. You write, you chair these committees, television, charity, now the Lords.

Helena Kennedy QC31:23

Yeah

Presenter31:31

What's going to give round here? I mean, who suffers other than you? As well as you. Oh, well, I mean, I always point to people, the bags under my eyes out to people, and then I always also say that, you know, people say this to my mother, and my mother once said, Oh, I know, but you should see her skirting boards. So my mother does think I fall down on the old domestic front. I'm not sure that's totally true. I think I'd do reasonably well on that too. Could you have time to cook or to eat together to just be a family in that normal domestic side? Our weekends are pretty sacrosanct.

Helena Kennedy QC31:47

I fall down on the

Helena Kennedy QC31:58

Are we

Presenter32:02

And we we really do a lot of nice things together. You must have things to read, things to do. You must constantly be shutting yourself away, saying, I look at it.

Helena Kennedy QC32:04

Nice things to get you marked.

Helena Kennedy QC32:09

Complete it, yeah.

Presenter32:11

And I suspect that as the children get older, that might get actually harder. I haven't found that it gets easier as your children get older. I find actually it's it's more difficult. It's it's about juggling it and trying to keep it all in all the balls in the air. Is it a happy business doing this? Yes. I mean that's the interesting thing, is that you see, I like those challenges. I only ever do things that I really like doing, and I think that what happens is.

Helena Kennedy QC32:23

Is that

Helena Kennedy QC32:24

Yeah.

Presenter32:33

you time manage beca and it works effectively because you love what you're doing. You just have to make sure you don't do the bits that you're not interested in. And I and I really do concentrate on things that I care about passionately.

Presenter32:46

Last record. This is Barce Cello Suite, and I'm

Presenter32:51

We'd like it to be the first one, although they're all wonderful. And I've asked for Pablo Casalles to play it because he was the person on the original uh record that I had of this, and it's just such an exquisitely wonderful piece of music.

Presenter34:02

Pablo Casal's playing part of the prelude to Bach's cello suite number one in G major, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty eight. If you could only take one of those eight records, Helena, which one do you think it would be? Oh

Presenter34:14

Oh, probably the Pablo Causales, I think the last piece, yes. What about your book?

Presenter34:19

You know, I I had I had a terrible difficulty with this, Sue. I I I know that I'm allowed to have Shakespeare and the Bible, um, which would provide me with some substantial reading. I don't know whether you'd let me do this. I'd like to take Virgil.

Presenter34:32

And I'd like you to let me have a sort of Latin primer with me so that I can seek to translate it myself. We can tuck it in the back. Tuck it in the back. Make it one volume, and you can have it. I always found Latin at school was like doing a puzzle, you see. And so this would be like bringing a whole collection of the Times Crossword. It would keep the old.

Helena Kennedy QC34:39

Tuck it in the

Helena Kennedy QC34:41

You can have a

Presenter34:48

Green atom moving. What about your luxury?

Presenter34:52

Ooh, I um I'd like to have a very, very luxurious goose down duvet.

Presenter34:59

Because I think it would be

Presenter35:01

the second best thing to a cuddle. And I think I'd need lots of them if I was going to be on my own on a desert island.

Presenter35:07

Helena Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of the Shores, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Helena Kennedy QC35:21

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.