The Baroness and the Bedtime Story

Dr Andrew Gilbert, Senior Lecturer in Law, writes about being read a bedtime story by Lady Brenda Hale.

Last month I attended the Association of Law Teachers annual conference, hosted online by Aston University. Much as I enjoyed hearing about all the interesting work going on across law schools, the highlight was recently-retired President of the Supreme Court, Brenda Hale, reading us a ‘bedtime story’ (it was actually only 6.45pm) about her life. Adults and children were transported into Lady Hale’s claret-coloured study via Zoom for a sacred 15 minutes while she read Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court.

Lady Hale spent her formative years growing up in the North Yorkshire town of Richmond, and the book has a neat way of weaving the town’s past and present into the story. The story features Ama, a fictional child, and her class on a school trip to London where they visit the Supreme Court and get to meet Lady Hale, which ‘was even better than chocolate cake’. The judge tells them about her life: how she wasn’t particularly good at sport or art at school but she ‘was interested in justice and…noticed when things weren’t fair’, and how she graduated in law from Cambridge University (Girton College) at the top of her class. Girton produced a number of the first women lawyers, including the suffragette Elsie Bowerman, but Brenda Hale rose higher than any of her predecessors to lead the UK’s highest court.

The book is beautifully illustrated and written in a lively, rhyming prose suited to children aged about 7 to 10. Themes of justice, fairness and equality pervade the story. It covers a range of Hale’s cases, including Isle of Wight Council v Platt [2017] UKSC 28, which held that Platt was rightly convicted when he took his daughter to Disney World during term time. The children in the story are clearly conflicted: They ‘looked at each other with Disney World in their thoughts but agreed it would’ve been very sad to miss the Supreme Court.’ It would also have been sad to miss the Baroness’ bedtime story, and I’m glad I didn’t. If you know any pre-tweens, buy them this book!

Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court (2019) is written by Afua Hirsch, illustrated by Henny Beaumont, and published by Legal Action Group.