Pperhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned in my life – certainly one that applies to parenthood – is the need to give free rein to a child’s ambitions. My son just turned six and, as with most children, is changing what he wants to be when he grows up with the wind: marine biologist; paleontologist; treasure hunter; film director. The list goes on.
My reaction to his ambition is just not the one my parents would have had. Their response would have been typical of their time, reminiscent of the old Eddie Izzard routine: ”I want to be a taxidermist. “You’re British, boy, think smaller…”‘
But it wasn’t mine. Instead, I found my response was, “Well, we know a movie director. Maybe we can talk to him.”
I was no different than my son in terms of all the things I wanted to be. There was the astronaut, the archaeologist, the journalist (because if it was good enough for Clark Kent). But then I passionately wanted to become a criminal lawyer from the age of 14. Or, more specifically, a criminal lawyer: for me, the wig was the key.
But I didn’t come from a world where these kinds of careers were even considered. My family were builders and tar makers and roofers. That’s what we all did. We went to school until we were allowed to leave, then we went to work on the construction site. It was what was expected – it was where I was going. Certainly not to the Old Bailey. At least not through the front door.
My life was laid out and it was the same path that almost everyone else had walked before me. Because it was just the way it was. At least until the day I first stepped into a crown court.
I was 14 when I visited Aylesbury Crown Court – the age when most of us undertake our first school-based work experience. But that’s not why I was there.
Together with my parents, I supported my eldest brother. Five years older than me, he was tried by a jury and a crown court judge, accused of robbing a jeweller’s shop. A trial that would begin that day. This was a serious charge and, if convicted, would carry a serious sentence.
By this time my brother had been in trouble for several years – almost always on the run for crimes and behavior he admitted to. Things he actually did. And I’m sure he won’t mind me telling you that this Aylesbury case wasn’t his last attack on the law. Now over 50, he has more than a decade of good behavior behind him, but for a long time he was a regular “customer” of the court system and an irregular “tenant” of the prisons that support it.
But this trial was different. On this occasion we knew my brother was innocent. By that I don’t just mean “innocent”. I mean he didn’t. He was – to use a term I picked up from the ’80s TV shows I was probably too young to watch – “careful”.
The details of the case don’t really matter that far down the road. Everyone involved in the trial is long retired and, to be honest, 32 years later, I probably remember some of it. But what I can never forget is the effect that trial – what there was of it – had on me. Because what I didn’t know when I left the house that morning was how it would change my life forever.
I have always been a different type of boy than my older brothers. We were brought up the same way – initially on a rather tough west London council estate, where fighting back was the first thing you had to learn – and I’ve always been very capable when it came to all the physical things that come with it.
But at the same time I tended to live too much in my own head. This set me apart from not only my brothers, but also from my many cousins. And yet the expectation on me was the same as on all of them. I would leave school as soon as I could and learn the trade. That was the plan. It was a plan that ended up in Aylesbury Crown Court. Looking back, I can’t pinpoint when it happened. It might have been the moment I walked in. I didn’t know it at the time, but I walked into one of the few traditional courthouses left. Big, dark, sweeping stairs. Wood-panelled lobby areas with antique courtrooms and a raised seat against the back wall from which the judge could dispense justice, unchanged since the days of George Jeffreysalso known as “the hanging judge”.
(Of course, Jeffreys never sat in Aylesbury Crown Court, which was built in 1740, 50 years after his death. But come on, I was 14.)
My memory now tells me that I was smitten at that moment. That I felt like I was somehow living a piece of history. And yet I doubt that was what made me think, “This is the life I want”. It came as soon as the action started.
I didn’t even exchange two words with my brother’s lawyer that day, or on the two days that followed. I only saw him from afar. A man in the odd garb that seemed to command a level of respect my parents usually reserved for… well, no one, really. I have never seen this before. My mother even seemed a little in awe of him. Fifteen minutes into the hearing I saw why.
I am now more than 20 years into my career and specialize in criminal defense and particularly in allegations of the most serious and organized crime. I can’t count how many jury trials I’ve defended in that time and now I can see that my brother’s attorney had a lot of material to work with. This is not to take anything away from him; you won’t find a lawyer who hasn’t had big ammunition and seen it go down the drain. He did a wonderful job. But I can see now how he did that job.
All I knew at the time was that this man was taking police officer after police officer on the witness stand – police officers I knew, remember, these were our local buyers and they weren’t the best of them – and he was tearing them apart pick up They told lie after lie and my brother’s lawyer exposed them all and brought down the house of cards that led to the trial ever starting. It was like nothing I had ever seen, not even on TV. And that made up my mind on the very first morning. He was what I wanted to be.
There are so many stories I could tell about the three days I was in that courtroom. How he proved that no stolen items were found at my parent’s house, despite four police officers demanding it. How he showed the coercion used on my brother to elicit a false confession.
Suffice it to say, my brother was acquitted. The judge found there was no case to answer after the lead officer in the case called in sick on what was supposed to be his second day of testimony, having been exposed in cross-examination the afternoon before. The jury was told to find him not guilty. Trial over, everyone moved on with their lives.
Everyone but me. Because from that day on there was only one life I wanted. And I am incredibly happy, more than three decades later, to say that this is the life I live.
It wasn’t a smooth ride from there, not at all. For the first few years I didn’t even mention it to anyone other than my mother, who – with the then understandable view that “lawyers don’t come from where we come from” – told me: “That’s great, but don’t tell anyone, because they will laugh at you.” I might as well have told her I had decided to be the pope.
Even when I got through university, through bar school and applied for traineeships (the apprentice stage of our training) I still had that old council estate paranoia that put me off applying to the top barristers’ chambers and try the ones I’ve never heard of.
A decision that backfired in the best possible way when I applied to 2 Bedford Row, not realizing they were literally the top set in the country but had recently changed their name to match a change of address. They took me on as a trainee and later as a full member of the chambers, and I spent my formative 12 years as a solicitor with the best in the business.
If only there was enough space for all these stories. Or maybe it’s better that there isn’t, since so many of them are either incredible or completely unprintable. But all of them, good and bad, are part of a career that has been – and still is – everything I could ask for. A career – a life – going back to that first day at Aylesbury Crown Court.
The Shadow Network by Tony Wyatt (pen name of Tony Kent) is published by Elliott & Thompson, buy it at guardianbookshop.com for £8.99
