Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest

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Hello, I'm Krista Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2009.

Music My castaway this week is the lawyer Anthony Julius. He was already renowned in legal circles when in 1996 he moved into the public arena representing Princess Diana in her divorce.

He became her confidante and after her death the founder of her memorial fund.

A passionate defender of Israel, the case that's meant the most to him, he says,

was successfully taking on the Holocaust denier David Irving.

He's also a writer and academic. He's published books on literary and art criticism and is a visiting professor at London University. Envious colleagues have nicknamed him Anthony Genius, while Stephen Fry says he's probably the cleverest person I've ever met. Of the high-profile cases he's fought, he says,

you're on a higher wire stared at by a larger number of people,

but in the end, the only audience that matters is your own client.

Let's talk then, Anthony Julius,

about that most particular of audiences, Princess Diana.

How did you come to represent her 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?

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.

This, of course, was not any old divorce case, which, you know, they're ten a penny these days, sadly.

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