Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Lawyer best known for representing Princess Diana in her divorce and successfully suing Holocaust denier David Irving; also a writer and academic.
On the island
Eight records
Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109
I listened to this piece of music thirty or forty times in my room during the course of the day, and um it means a huge amount to me.
The Call (from Five Mystical Songs)
Vaughan Williams was my really my first love. I used to listen to him with my very best friend at school, Geoffrey, from I suppose thirteen or fourteen...
the opening is just thrilling and I remember being I'm just so excited by it.
String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10: II. Assez vif et bien rythmé
Again, I started listening to Debussy in my late teens. This is a string quartet, which is wonderfully intelligent and clearly articulated.
It was composed in the early months of 1967 and of course as a result of the Six Day War it had a special resonance.
This actually is a piece of music that I listened to a lot with Chloe and Theo driving around backwards and forwards, and we became um obsessed with the i intro which we could all recite by heart.
Petite messe solennelle: Kyrie
This is uh this is a piece of music that I first heard at the Pompidou Centre... It's surprising because it has such a modern feel to it.
The Promise of Living (from The Tender Land)Favourite
Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Aaron Copland
It's a large hearted and very moving piece of music and um it always leaves me a bit choked actually.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:12How did you come to represent Princess Diana in her divorce?
I acted for her when some photographs of her exercising in a gym were published in a Sunday paper, and so we sued the paper. And then about four or five months later, she telephoned me and said that it had been suggested to her that she should divorce. And could I come over and talk to her about it? I went over and we began speaking about what might happen next. And I said to her at that point, You have to understand that I'm not a divorce lawyer, I don't do divorce cases. If I were to act for you, this would be the first divorce case I'd ever done as a lawyer. And she said to me, Don't worry, it's my first divorce, too. We'll learn together.
Presenter asks
2:12Were you able to separate the amount of attention [the Princess Diana divorce case] was getting from the job you were doing?
I I I mean I was conscious that it was receiving a lot of attention, but I um I didn't read the papers unless I I had to, and I just got on with the case as another case. If I had become preoccupied with what people were saying and writing about the case, it would have been at the very least a huge distraction and probably just thrown us altogether off course.
Presenter asks
6:34Is it right that you went into the law because you thought you wouldn't be clever enough to be an academic?
The keepsakes
The book
Leo Tolstoy
I've decided to take Anna Karenina. It is my favourite novel. My little boy Elon, his middle name is Lev, which is named after one of the principal characters, Levin, and I can't imagine ever being bored by the book, however many times I re-read it.
The luxury
if I could have San Pellegrino on tap, I could drink it, wash in it, brush my teeth with it, and survive alongside it.
Yes, yes. I sold most of my books and walked off, which was a slightly histrionic gesture, I think, now that I look back on it. But in the end, it's all turned out quite well. It seems to me that I've been able to do both.
Presenter asks
7:50How comfortable are you with your public profile?
Um well, I don't particularly like it, but I don't really spend any time thinking about it. When I started acting for The Princess of Wales I realized that the huge light that uh she shone everywhere would shine on me along with others that she had relationships with and that inevitably I would look luminous. But that was an illusion.
Presenter asks
13:00Was your father encouraging his children towards an academic path?
No, I don't. I think he was, um Actually, um he was a little frightened about it. He was a little intimidated by the thought that uh that his son would uh would take that path. I remember when I brought home my Cambridge University application form with great pride and excitement. He he smiled quite wanly, I mean only kindly, but said to me, Don't grow away from the family and handed it back.
Presenter asks
26:10What do you want for your children?
What do I want for them? I want all the conventional things. I want them to lead happy, fulfilled lives. I want them to realise themselves. I want them to be able to look back on their lives at some terminal point and think that they had done everything that they wanted to do and they had been the best kind of person they they could be. So, you know, quite modest goals.
“When I started acting for The Princess of Wales I realized that the huge light that uh she shone everywhere would shine on me along with others that she had relationships with and that inevitably I would look luminous. But that was an illusion.”
“I don't have a carapace. In fact, mostly I I deal with it by not reading it. Right. That's the way I I protect myself.”
“what a lawyer really needs is good judgment. I mean, intelligence helps and a facility with words, but to be able to make judgments about what's in the interest of the client, what would be sensible to do, what would not be sensible to do, when to sue, when not to sue, when to settle, what will matter to the client, not today perhaps, but in three months or six months' time, and to focus on that rather than the passions of the moment.”
“I sometimes think of them as limbs that are s stretched out from my own body. I have no real control over, could be injured at any time, would cause me pain as if I was injured myself. But I also think of them as fully autonomous adults, or adults to be, pursuing their own lives, and one's constantly divided between the sense of them as being extensions of oneself and the sense of them as being their own people.”