The small woman with an inquisitive face peers at the book I'm holding: "What's that you're reading? Chinua Achebe. He's wonderful. My eldest son is studying a poem by him, `The Vulture'," she says thoughtfully, and describes the various layers of meaning contained in the poem, quoting lines from it as she discusses its thesis. What strikes Helena Kennedy QC about the poem is the way it shows the cruellest man is capable of great kindness and, equally, the most gentle can perpetrate evil.
Her response to the poem expresses her fascination with the law: "I see my job as trying to help people understand why an individual has done terrible things; what are the reasons, the circumstances?" She is lively and spontaneous, opinionated and above all, herself. Her only flamboyance is a long, silver-grey, shawl-like scarf, which she repeatedly tosses over her shoulder, and the lacy white top worn under a pin-stripe trouser suit which is softer, less angular in cut than such outfits usually are. There is no performance, no rhetoric. She has confidence without arrogance.
Lawyers are not popular; barristers in particular are, at best, despised as cold-hearted actors without Equity cards, at worst as opportunists making money out of the failings of others. This unpopularity bothers few of them. Many actively cultivate an aura of snobbery and privilege. Occasionally there emerges one or two who enjoy playing the role of son of the earth, but this pretence is quickly shed on entering the courtroom.
Kennedy, one of Britain's leading criminal lawyers, has worked extensively in the area of the miscarriage of justice and acted in the Brighton bombing trial as well as the Guildford Four appeal. The television series Blind Justice was just one of her many projects as a broadcaster, while she also presented the BBC's Heart of the Matter throughout 1987, Raw Deal - which examined medical negligence, and The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Journalism has always interested her and she contributes articles on all aspects of the law and has tended to specialise in equality and women's rights.
It is no surprise, then, that she wrote a book about women and the law - Eve Was Framed (1992). A tone of common sense dominates it. "I happen to be of the currently unfashionable school that thinks crime for the most part has its roots in social or emotional deprivation, whether you are male or female. But there is much greater willingness to adopt this view in the case of women, and this in turn feeds into the notion that women are mollycoddled. And because we feel differently about women committing crime, we go to lengths to avoid defining them as criminal, preferring the idea that they have emotional problems; they are mad rather than bad."
It is a good title, how did she come by it? "I was talking at a dinner party and it . . . came to me. I remember thinking it was good, so I had better write a book so I could use it." Central to her success as a communicator is the fact she does not allow technical language to obscure her beliefs.
It is a lively narrative, based on fact and learning, but rooted in reality. "A probation officer at Holloway prison told me she thought most women were in jail either because of a man or because of not having a man. This sounded like the flip-side of holding women responsible for male misdeeds, with men this time carrying the can. However, she was highlighting the reality of many women's lives, where involvement in crime arises out of doing something at the behest of a man, or as a result of the hardship of dealing with children alone when the man has left, or of the mess created by sexual abuse suffered when they were children, or their experience of violence at the hands of husbands.
"One of the main reasons men commit crime is because it enhances their sense of masculinity, but the reverse is not true; far from it. Femininity is diminished by crime and women who commit it are reduced as women by the process of criminalisation because they know they are perceived differently from their male counterparts."
Kennedy is direct and practical, rather than campaigning, on the subject of gender: "Women do get a raw deal. You don't have to be a feminist to know that - I did not come to the Bar as a feminist looking for slights against women - it is a fact that life is harder for women." Now married to a surgeon, she has three children and lives in Hampstead in London. Is she wealthy? "Well, I am a successful lawyer and my husband's a surgeon - of course we're comfortable." There is nothing defensive about her response. Kennedy can remember the misery of an earlier long-time relationship ending as her then partner walked out, leaving her with their son.
Unhappiness is a great teacher and she refers to her father once consoling her over a disappointment. "It was when I was at school and I had been left off some team or other and came over as if the world had ended. I threw myself on my bed and cried. My father told me that disappointments are very important and they have a way of making us into better people. I've not forgotten that."
Kennedy has never had to resort to theatrics to illustrate her uniqueness. Nothing about her is typical - in a line-up of mystery occupations it is unlikely she would be picked out as a career advocate. Her background is southside Glaswegian, working-class Catholic. On arriving in London she entered the world of Evelyn Waugh in which most of the players possessed Oxbridge educations and accents to match. When she began studying at the Bar she spoke with "the voice of the people" and still does.
She is straightforward Scots to the bone. Ask her if Scotland will vote for political independence and she says: "Not at all, the Scots are too practical." Somewhat unexpectedly, she stresses: "I'm proud to be British." Her parents were clever people who, as the eldest children of poor families, had had to leave school at 14. Books were always important in the Kennedy home, as were trade union politics. Born in 1950, the third of four daughters, she says she really belonged to two families. There was also a boy who died as a baby from scarlet fever because there was no money for a doctor. "My elder sisters were nine and 10 when I was born. My father had been away at the war. I was a cherished child of an older father. He had been born during the first World War in which his father had died - in those days there were so few men and the fact my grandmother later remarried was almost held against her - the fact that at a time when many women never married she had had two chances . . . but, getting back to my grandfather, like a lot of Irish he was canon fodder, and died in northern France. You know how people tend to forget about the numbers of Irish who served in the British army."
How important is her Irish connection? "I'm conscious of it. But I'm a Scot." Kennedy's father told her and her sisters about how his parents had emigrated from Ireland to Scotland. "My mother grew up in the Gorbels during the Depression and the discrimination of being a Catholic there was very like Northern Ireland in microcosm."
Outsiders have always attracted her. It is a condition she understands, without complaining. She knows she is an outsider in the British legal world and refers to the outcry which greeted James Kelman's 1994 Booker triumph with How Late It Was, How Late. "There was all this outcry about it and claims it was not literary because it was written in speech as spoken. I think he is a wonderful writer, very real, and he has given voice to people who are socially excluded - what it's like to be on the broo" (the dole). "Kelman is like James Baldwin, they are creating literature but it is a literature rooted in the way some people live. Outsiders always suffer. They are the victims of prejudice. Look what happens in the courts; what happens when the defendant is black, homosexual, unemployed, a woman."
She sits on a sofa, the design of which she disapproves, in her office at the British Council. The view from the window includes Admiralty Arch close enough to touch, while in the distance stands Big Ben. Having become chairwoman of the council last September - she applied, and then underwent a series of interviews for the post - she speaks of the organisation's image. The council represents the cultural arm of Britain's diplomatic effort. Its brief is culture: the arts, science, education, language, Britain's political culture and law, human rights. Her conversation is dominated by references to books and theatre, "my great passion". She attends the council three times a week and continues to have a large legal practice. Last year she was involved in a major international criminal case, the elements of which included money-laundering, drugs and seven major players. It went on for most of the year.
Does she believe in the law? "I think it is important to know that the law and justice are two different things." Kennedy remains convinced by the jury system. "I think it is valuable. Judges become case-hardened." The de-mystifying of the law has always concerned her: "It must be accessible, otherwise it means nothing." She also pioneered the use of expert witnesses in cases and mentions the initial opposition to them. "It was felt that they, not the judges, were making the decisions."
She is 49 next week and, as she recalls her years at a local Catholic co-educational school, she says she did a lot of debating. She also benefitted from what she calls "the democratic intellect". Her vision of literature goes far beyond a textual reading. Among the values of literature, she believes, is its connection with democracy. "It helps us understand the power of language and how it controls us."
As a girl, she had been destined for Glasgow University to study English. A summer spent in London changed her mind and she went to the Bar instead. "I didn't go to university - in those days you could do the Bar without going. You can't do that now. So here I am with 13 honorary doctor of law degrees and I never went to university." Rather than lament the fact she missed a privilege which has now become routine for most school-leavers, she says she turned it to her advantage. "I always was, and still am, a natural student. If I hear about something I haven't read, I go and read it. I love learning. I'm just naturally curious."
Her father worked as a despatch hand for Scottish newspapers and was an active trade unionist. "He had a passionate belief in the Labour movement and was very proud of the changes won in his lifetime. He was delighted at the idea of my doing law, although I'm not quite sure exactly where I picked up the notion I wanted to be a trade union lawyer. Politically, I've always been to the left. I think, too, that Catholicism as we experienced it was close to socialism."
Kennedy is a fast, witty talker, capable of making a point without being abrasive, and can tell a good story. "When some of my relatives were told I had joined the `Gray's Inn' and was studying for the `Bar' they imagined I had gone in for hotel management or catering and could not understand why anyone would pass up Glasgow University to do such a thing."
Getting started in the law was not easy, so she convinced some friends to join in with her to establish their own chambers. Her first case was not a triumph - she represented a woman pleading guilty to a shoplifting charge. Such cases usually ended with a fine. The woman was sentenced. In her early years Kennedy represented many fellow Scots, very often football fans. "I suppose I was instructed on the assumption that I would be able to translate. While every other woman in the law tells stories of being taken for the solicitor's secretary, I was generally taken for the defendant's sister."
