Shami Chakrabarti

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2008

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti. A pithy and incisive speaker, she is rarely out of the media spotlight and has been voted 'one of our most inspiring political figures'. She joined Liberty the day before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and, as the events unfolded on the television screens, it was, she says, impossible to predict just how much they would shape the civil rights debate in the years that followed. For her, it was not just a matter of philosophical or political principle - her son was born soon after the attacks and his birth, she says, influenced her own feelings: "I understood more what it is to be afraid, what it is to really worry about whether your family are going to be blown up on the underground."

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free by Nina Simone Book: To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee Luxury: A private screening room with movies.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
0:05.4	My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.
0:10.7	The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.
0:17.4	With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to helping
0:22.7	you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put together
0:28.7	by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life,
0:34.9	check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:41.8	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:44.9	The program was originally broadcast in 2008.
1:05.9	Music My castaway this week is Shami Chakrabati.
1:10.7	As Director of Liberty, she has used her barrister's training to huge effect,
1:15.6	adroitly parrying what she perceives as fundamental assaults on our civil liberties,
1:20.7	a recent high point for her the defeat of the government's 42-day detention bill for terror suspects.
1:25.7	Despite her diminutive stature and relative youth, she is still in her 30s,
1:28.9	she regularly slugs it out in the media with political bruises and has been voted one of our most inspiring political figures. Her inspiration
1:34.7	to kill a mockingbird. It's about walking around in other people's shoes, she says. Atticus
1:40.5	Finch is just the perfect human rights hero.
1:46.4	Shammy Chakrabati, you started working at Liberty then.
1:49.2	It was on the 10th of September 2001,
1:51.8	and that was the day before 9-11,
1:54.9	the events that have done probably more than anything else to shape the debate that we are currently in the middle of
1:58.1	about our human rights.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.