Hello, I'm Krestey 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. My cast away 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 confidant and after her death the founder of

her memorial fund. A passionate defender of Israel, the case that's meant the most of 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.

And 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 her 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 it.

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 law 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 to we'll learn together. This of course was not any old divorce case which you know they're

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