Mslexia

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Bedside Table

Shami Chakrabarti

From Issue 31 ◊ Oct/Nov/Dec 2006

Reading at the moment

I spoke at a children’s book conference a few weeks ago and was talking about how human rights messages might be conveyed through children’s fiction, using the Harry Potter series as an example. Someone very kindly sent me Thud! by Terry Pratchett suggesting it was representative of what I had been discussing. I’ve only read a few pages, but it looks like a very intriguing read, a good read to ease me into summer.

I’ve been dipping into Karl Popper’s Open Society while reading George Soros’ new book The Age of Fallibility which is about the war on terror, but much broader than that. He’s such a Popper devotee that it was very interesting to read them together. I’ve also just been sent a new novel by a young Asian writer The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. I haven’t started it yet, but it’s on my holiday list.

I love the Harry Potter books. As far as I’m concerned, The Order of the Phoenix is a thinly veiled metaphor for the war on terror. J K Rowling used to work for Amnesty International and major issues such as racism pervade the series as a whole.

Couldn’t put down

My friend Camilla Batmanghelidjh works at Kids Company in South London, an extraordinary project. It’s like a drop in centre but so much more than that for kids who have nowhere else to go. She’s been working with kids for twenty years and just published a book called Shattered Lives. It’s a series of letters from Camilla to some of the kids she’s worked with, children who had been really abused and neglected all the way through their young lives.

She sent me an advance manuscript and I sat up all night reading it, tears streaming down my cheeks. Not just because of the content; the way it was written was so personal and so poignant.

Covered with dust

David Blunkett’s biography by Stephen Pollard. No disrespect to Blunkett – I started reading it when he was still Home Secretary – I felt I must get to the bottom of what’s motivating him to be so hostile to human rights – but it was heavy going. Then he wasn’t Home Secretary anymore and I just stopped reading it, which I think was a sign that the book wasn’t gripping me. He’s a fascinating political character, the book just wasn’t well-written.

Secret indulgence

Harry Potter was a bit of a guilty pleasure before my son was born. Now I have a bit of an excuse, but not really because he’s only four. I didn’t think I was supposed to like them because they are for kids; now I know better.

SHAMI CHAKRABARTI has been Director of Liberty (formally the National Council for Civil Liberties) since September 2003. A barrister by background, she worked as a lawyer in the Home Office from 1996 until the summer of 2001. She was recently appointed a governor of the London School of Economics and sits on the Advisory Board of the British Institute of Human Rights and the Executive Committee of the Administrative Law Bar Association.

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