Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A radical British QC handling the Birmingham Six, Marchioness disaster, Stephen Lawrence trial, and Jean Charles Jimenez case.
On the island
Eight records
I think he loved the whole experience because it was only when I saw posters on the wall in his house and I suddenly realized that, you know, here is the drummer of the Pink Floyd. And then he invited me and my family to go and see the wall. And you know, this is terrible admission. I hadn't really been to a pop concert before. And I think when you hear the track you'll realize you just get enveloped. And I want this on an island so that it fills the island.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)
The Massed Bands of the Guards Division
The eldest brother had joined during the war the Scots Guards, and after the war he stayed in the Scots Guards as a bandsman. He used to play in all the big, um occasions and the one that he found the most moving and the most important and significant was the cenotaph. And I just remember standing at the cenotaph as a boy with my parents, and very difficult for tears to be held back, very emotional.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Jean-Bernard Pommier, Hallé Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster
We arrived a bit late, and I came in the middle of this most brilliant piece of me. I'd never heard it. Arachmaninoff's second piano concerto, and I d you you know when the sort of hairs on the back of your head bristle and all the rest of it, and I just sat there, again captivated by this brilliant perform I don't know who the pianist was, but you have a recording of the Halle playing it, and it takes me back to that and you drift away with this.
This is spoken word because I'm thinking of the island and I'm thinking of the fact I'm not very good at being on my own, I have to say. If I'm at home, you know, I tend to have the radio on in every room. On my own, I'd probably be quite hopeless. So I would want to listen to this. Because it would remind me of why I've done the things I've done because in this poem is measured anger.
What's the Time, Eccles?Favourite
Right, this piece has me in fits of laughter. I'm going to control myself on this. I'm a great goons fan, I have to say, brought up with the goons on the wire, less as it was then called. And I met Spike some years later because he was interested in the same kind of issues as I was.
Homegrown Sounds featuring Freddie Mansfield and Iona Rowan
Well, amongst the children there are a number as Jonathan my eldest and Kieran and Freddie the youngest who are deeply interested in music, and in Freddie it's kind of rap. And I'm very proud of all their achievements, but this leads into homegrown sounds. And this particular number, Won't Wait for Hope, is to do with consumerism.
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge conducted by Christopher Robinson
Well, this is for Yvette. Uh Yvette's been a member of a a a rather large uh chorus, as it were, or choir in South London, the festival chorus it's called. And they have three concerts a year, and over the last sixteen years, I think something like that, I've been to all of them. So I've listened to many pieces. And the piece that would take me back is Herbert Howell's Requiem.
Yvette and I were wondering what to do. We wandered to Balatitan or and there in Barcy Town Hall was Antonio Fortioni. So we got to know him very well, and we've been to nearly every gig he's had, certainly in the United Kingdom. He plays brilliantly, but he's also very funny. And it's called Touch Wood, and there'll be plenty of that on the island.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:04Were you told that as a young lawyer [you've got to be impartial], and have you followed it?
Professional distance in a sense that you stand off, a bit like surgeons, I suppose, and each case comes along its body. And you mustn't become identified or involved because you get too close, you lose your sense of judgment. Well, it seemed to me the only way I really wanted to do the job was to get inside the shell, the shoes, of the person or persons that I'm representing. You have to live their lives in order to communicate the feelings and understand how they've gotten the position they're in.
Presenter asks
1:29Has [your personal safety] ever been a problem with the type of cases you've been doing?
Oh, yeah, personal safety certainly can be timed almost with the Irish cases, particularly the bombing campaign that took place from 1973 onward. And I was affected directly. My own car got blown up with the first one outside the Old Bailey. And people quite naturally were hugely hostile... And so I found myself marginalized for doing these cases, and there were people who felt that I should receive death threats and so on, which I did do. And so I have to watch my back.
Presenter asks
10:04Did you know that [your father] was ill?
I didn't. I didn't. He worked extraordinarily long hours, difficult hours, but he never let on that he'd in fact got throat cancer. I went away with some friends to Torquay on a tennis holiday... I got a phone call from my mother. That not only was my father in hospital, but he was seriously ill. In fact, he was dying, and I had no idea. So I rushed back, obviously. I I got back too late. He he was dead.
The keepsakes
The book
Naguib Mahfouz
I would want a book I haven't read, I know nothing about, other than by reputation. Now what I would like to take. It is in fact one book, but it's a trilogy the Cairo trilogy by Mahfouz. It's set in Cairo and Egypt, and I think it's intricate. And I think I would need something that would consume my interest from day to day.
The luxury
I'd like a drum kit. So I could bang out SOS on that in Morse code and do some rather bad drumming to the birds.
Presenter asks
18:09How did you come to be involved [in Stephen Lawrence's case]?
They're always, in a sense, partly by chance. And partly because the connections that you already have formed with people. And I knew the solicitor who was originally approached by the Lawrences and he approached me about this, so I just said, Yes, fine, I'll certainly take this on. Unusually, though, representing not a defendant, but a family. But of course, the longer one became familiar with the sequence of events that had affected Doreen and Neville, then you then begin to appreciate the magnitude of the injustice.
Presenter asks
26:00Was [the Saville Inquiry] worth it?
Absolutely. It's not just for my sake I say that. I think you ask any of the families because they felt, quite rightly, that the truth about what happened in nineteen seventy two, when people died on the streets of Derry, shot by British military forces, had never been uncovered... I think it's worth every penny.
“Well, it seemed to me the only way I really wanted to do the job was to get inside the shell, the shoes, of the person or persons that I'm representing. You have to live their lives in order to communicate the feelings and understand how they've gotten the position they're in.”
“I don't applaud and I don't support any kind of violent terrorism. Anywhere in the world. I'm not somebody who's ever done that. But on the other hand, I do understand the origins of a lot of what makes people in the end. Often it's not mindless. There is a political background. It doesn't justify, but it does explain.”
“I was upset about it. I thought, you know, this shouldn't be. He shouldn't have been convicted. Is it my fault? So I've got to re-examine this. How am I going to do this? So I just walked home about seven miles. You know, pounding the pavements is pretty good exercise. It's also very good for just letting it drain out.”