WEBVTT

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(soft piano music)

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- When I was about 16, I was pretty clear

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about what I wanted to do, it was a pretty bold,

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(laughs)

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enormous ambition to change the world.

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The altruism that one has at that age,

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I see it in young ones that I talk to now.

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I'd always had in the back of my mind doing law,

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but you know, when I was talking about it at 16

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in my last year at school, people said to me,

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women don't do that, you can't do that.

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Anyway, in my third year, I changed into arts law.

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So I am often asked the question about

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what motivated me to make the choices that I did.

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It was very much about the times and the opportunities,

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the advantages of having parents

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who were committed to our having careers,

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having independence as well as a family life.

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I am very conscious of the depth of gratitude

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I owe to my parents,

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really for their focus on our education.

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How lucky we were as a family of girls in the 40's to have

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a mother and father whose top priority was giving us

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the best education they possibly could.

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And I had

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some role models.

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I remember I used to have this photograph of one of the

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first women judges in England,

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Rose Heilbron.

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It was all sort of cut out and stuck up,

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sticky taped in my school Bible.

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(laughs)

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I remember the first girl I knew to go to University

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and to do science, that was a big thing.

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Most women were in a very narrow range of occupations

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and you became conscious of that, leaving school

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looking at what girls were going to do.

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The beautiful flowers were used as a symbol

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for the work I was doing

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in domestic violence.

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We used the protea in different ways and

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it has a concept of justice and strength about it.

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It's a great privilege to be painted

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by a portrait painter like Michael Zevros.

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It's scary too.

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(laughs)

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He's a person who I've known for a long time.

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I went to some of his very earliest exhibitions.

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We didn't talk about the portrait a lot.

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I really thought I should just leave that to him.

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We talked a lot while he was doing sketches.

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But not so much about how he was going to do it or

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what it might look like but became obvious as I was

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sitting and standing but not the emphasis or

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the interpretation that it would present.

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This is a "pinch me" moment for me talking about these

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things that are so close to my heart but

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in the context of a portrait, my portrait,

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hanging in the National Portrait Gallery.

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The magic of portraiture or portrait painting that some how

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fascinates us all.

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Anything I've ever achieved in my life has been with

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wonderful support and encouragement.

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I'm always conscious of the enormous debt that I owe to

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women who worked in solidarity

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to open up opportunities

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for me, for my generation in education in particular.

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Women in deed do have an enormous role in the

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economic life of their country and

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all women need independence.

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That's why the Women's Movement has been so powerful and

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so important, women supporting each other.

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Men have to be in that too, this is about family life.

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That is at the heart

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of our society.

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I feel very deeply about

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equality and opportunity in a true sense.