Harriet Wistrich, lawyer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Harriet Wistrich is one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers. In 2016 she founded the Centre for Women’s Justice and over the course of her career, she has won landmark victories in very difficult legal cases. She has helped women imprisoned after killing their abusers regain their freedom. She’s also represented women seeking justice from the Metropolitan Police over their deployment of undercover police officers who have had relationships and children with female activists.

After studying PPE at Oxford, Harriet moved to Liverpool and began her career working in film and documentaries. She retrained as a lawyer in her early thirties and in 1990 co-founded the pressure group Justice for Women.

Harriet lives in London with her partner, the journalist Julie Bindel.

DISC ONE: I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor DISC TWO: No Woman, No Cry (Live At The Rainbow Theatre, London / June 1, 1977) - Bob Marley and the Wailers DISC THREE: Puff the Magic Dragon - Gregory Isaacs DISC FOUR: Rumanian Freilach - Daniel Ahaviel DISC FIVE: Back to Black - Amy Winehouse DISC SIX: Ain’t Nobody - Chaka Khan DISC SEVEN: Police And Thieves - Junior Murvin DISC EIGHT: Shame Shame Shame - Shirley & Company

BOOK CHOICE: Middlemarch by George Eliot LUXURY ITEM: A fridge with an endless supply of white wine CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	Eleven climbers appeared to have died on the world's second highest mountain K2.
0:06.0	It was one of the deadliest days in mountaineering history.
0:10.0	Rock falls, avalanches.
0:11.0	Huge pieces of ice. All are big enough to kill you.
0:14.0	He just flew out into Devoid and he was gone.
0:17.0	How did it all go so wrong?
0:19.0	And is it really worth risking death to feel alive? Why would
0:23.2	somebody pay to go to a place called the death cell on a vacation? Extreme, peak danger. With me,
0:29.9	Natalia Melman Petrazella. Listen to the full series now. First on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:40.1	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
0:43.8	Every week, I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:51.7	And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:56.4	I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the lawyer and campaigner Harriet Wisterich.
1:21.2	She's one of the country's most prominent human rights lawyers
1:24.0	and has spent over 25 years advocating for women and the powerless and pressing for
1:29.1	change within the legal system. She's won landmark victories in exceptionally difficult cases,
1:34.8	helping women imprisoned after killing their abusers regain their freedom, seeking justice
1:39.3	for the victims of the so-called black cab rapist John Warboys and representing the women at the centre of the ongoing spy cop scandal,
1:47.4	female activists who had relationships, sometimes children,
1:50.8	with men who were really undercover police officers.
1:53.8	Born and raised in London, she started her working life as a filmmaker,
1:57.7	sharing her ideas in documentaries,
	...

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