It is only in recent years that I have wondered if this was a sign of some kind of deep & morbid disturbance in one so young – prompted to such worry by the outbreak of what I call post mortem porn in modern crime fiction in print & on tv & film – which I cannot stand either to read or to watch
In fact I think it a sign of something possibly more disturbing. All the jobs mentioned in the careers literature in my small country grammar school seemed to involve pretty routine application of a cookbook of techniques with known results. Pathology seemed to be the only job I might aim for which did not involve simply giving the ‘right’ answer – meaning one that was already known to my interrogator or examiner. A true intellectual challenge.
I did not have much doubt that I could get in to medical school if I really tried, but it was a worry that this would mean asking my parents to support me through 6 years of study – first year junior house officers did not earn what could be called a salary in those days
But the insuperable barrier was the surgical part of the training. Although I could contemplate with reasonable equanimity the idea of dispassionate dissection of a corpse, I did not think I had it in me to slice in to living flesh
Having given up on the idea of pathology my thoughts turned to the criminal law – I quite fancied being a latter day Marshall Hall. But not badly enough to want to go into battle against the enormous odds that training for the Bar involved back then. Bad enough for a boy from the wrong sort of class, well nigh insuperable for all but the most determined young lady with no family connections. And I could not even imagine that I could be a solicitor – which involved articles which I was quite sure would not be on offer to me from any of the solicitors in our small rural town
I am recounting all this to explain why I am so pleased to have finally found the answer to a question which has puzzled me for some years now: just how did Cherie Blair decide to go into the law?
I am a decade older than she is. But the first time I read anything about her must have been around the time her husband became Labour leader. Typical newspaper accuracy said she had graduated from LSE in 1972. Which meant she started in 1969, & must have made her decision earlier than that. Although things had been changing rapidly, I did not think they had changed that much less than a decade after I had made my own decision to abandon the idea of the law
It seemed unlikely that the nuns had given her the support & encouragement that she would have needed
Now I have the answer, having finally got around to reading Speaking For Myself
Her aunt was the first to put the idea into her head. The surprising thing is that her formidable Irish Catholic Liverpudlian grandmother was enthusiastic too, because she was a fan of Rose Heilbron, who was famous as the first woman to be appointed as a judge in the 1950s. I had not realised until now that she was also a Liverpudlian who made her career there
So there we have a telling example of the power of role models, not just in inspiring the young directly, but also in inspiring the vital support of families who do not have the direct experience themselves
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