I am a 35-year-old criminal barrister from London. Last year I was chairman of the Young Bar and heavily involved in pressing the case for the preservation of a functioning system of legal aid. When not immersed in my briefs I escape into open-water swimming and am a member of the Serpentine Swimming Club and online standard bearer for the Thames Baths project. I have swum in the Arctic Circle in winter; it was 1,000 times warmer than the Ministry of Justice’s affection for legal aid lawyers. I’m also a balletomane and a huge admirer of the dedication, discipline and rigour required to perform ballet at the highest level. Grace and art as an expression of single-minded endeavour seem completely at odds with a modern expectation of instant success achieved without effort. Drawing an analogy with the day job, it has been said that great advocacy is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration without betraying that fact.
I have been reading the Guardian for over 10 years, latterly almost exclusively online. This follows a Damascene conversion in my political sensibilities reflected in my being a teenage subscriber to the Telegraph. I am drawn to the Guardian’s fearlessness. Any proper defence advocate requires courage to stand up to vested interests and the state and the Guardian has not shied away from doing the same. As well as its campaigning for greater transparency and greater social mobility and great gender and ethnic diversity, I particularly enjoy A letter to … and Experience, both of which illuminate in the most personal way imaginable how multifaceted and extraordinary human experience can be. I will, in particular, never forget the man who caught the plague from his cat.
I am occasionally nervous that the Guardian might succumb to the tidal wave of clickbaitery that has infected many other websites and occasionally the newspaper falls prey to sanctimony which is never attractive. My aunt, a committed socialist, has always read the Guardian and I imagine I always will unless commercial imperatives start corrupting its instincts.
I don’t follow the Guardian itself on Twitter but follow many of its correspondents and writers. Occasionally I comment on articles and always do so in my own name – I am mystified by the desire of people to engage in conversation without revealing their identity. It seems to me to be the best possible safeguard against bad manners and general horridness.
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