Supreme Court: my confidential memo to HRH

To: HRH The Prince of Wales

Subject: Loyal

The packed courtroom is silent for the final three minutes before the justices enter. Is this the sound made by an unwritten job description within the unwritten British constitution?

This silence is far more dramatic than anything I saw at the play King Charles III which I left in the interval, beaten about the ears by cod Shakespeare. If you want to know about kingship, read the real thing. And on a different but relevant note, read Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.

The justices file in. What a relief. We are in The Queen's symbolic presence. The Supreme Court has opted not to display the royal coat of arms in its courtrooms, but if you look up, Your Royal Highness, you will see a portrait of Lord Bingham in the robe of the Order of the Garter (founded by Edward III).

And there's Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington, with his Garter robe slung on a chair. It reminds us of the Lady Jane Wellesley episode in your agonisingly documented romantic life. Goaded by photographers, she rounded on them: 'Do you really think I want to be Queen?'



So, sir, are your confidential memos to government departments a necessary and protected part of your role as, an Arthur without a Merlin, you prepare to be a king of 'heartfelt intervention'? R (on the application of Evans) v Her Majesty's Attorney General and another is examining whether they can be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, following a request from Rob Evans of The Guardian.

I leave at dusk. Over the weekend, the tide of Occupy was lapping at the walls of the Supreme Court in a protest about democracy. I assume the crimson paint on the wall is theirs. At Occupy I met the man who'd attended every day of the six-month Diana and Dodi inquest with DIANA AND DODI written on his forehead.

I head for the monthly gathering of Laydeez Do Comics and a talk by Jill Gibbon who draws covertly at arms fairs disguised as an arms dealer, wearing a suit and pearls as an act of subversion. My own fancy dress pearls express admiration, recognise what was good about 1963, and acknowledge that The Queen's life of exemplary service has intervened in more than one heart.


In The Queen's Jewels, Leslie Field describes the funeral cortège of King George V: the Maltese cross on top of the imperial state crown, placed on the coffin, fell to the ground and was retrieved by a Grenadier Guard. "Two Members of Parliament, Walter Elliot and Robert Boothby, who were watching from the pavement, heard the King [Edward VIII] mutter, 'Christ! What will happen next?', and Elliot remarked to his companion: 'A fitting motto for the coming reign.'"

Supreme Court: Pinsent Van Gogh

Installing it (designer David Mitchell)

I feel like the spacecraft Rosetta sundered from the little lander, Philae, which has to fend for itself on a comet. After what seemed like a journey of four billion miles, my exhibition of Supreme Court drawings, only one of them blood-stained, has landed right way up in the foyer of Pinsent Masons' Broadgate office. I guess I have to leave it there for a while.

Reflected arrow highlights Dominic Grieve QC MP

After dark I walk through the City. I pass urine-scented flowerbeds full of plastic-looking but real anemones. I navigate by the fixed stars of Christopher Wren's buildings.

A poem by Andrew Motion is chiselled on benches outside the court

 After Sir Joshua Reynolds

Judicial images: costume drama

A cluster of shop dummies are modelling sumptuous judicial robes not normally found together in the wild. Although headless, they appear to be engaged in conversation.

Christopher Allan, Court and Ceremonial Manager of Ede & Ravenscroft, reserves Jeevesian distaste for the mean-spirited modern civil robes designed by a committee.

New male civil robe

I'm at a Judicialimages.org workshop run by Professor Leslie Moran from Birkbeck and Professor Linda Mulcahy from the LSE.

The robes are a bargain. You wouldn't get a decent bespoke suit for four grand, the price of a QC's ceremonial outfit built on Tudor lines. Nor could you buy a couture evening dress with as much gold on it as a Lord Chancellor's robe for a mere £28k.

The audience are invited to try on wigs and gowns. I hold back as they would not fit me in more ways than one, but others succumb to the magic of silk damask, and begin to bear themselves with ritual grace.

These are outfits which, Mr Allan suggests, would get you arrested if you wore them on the Tube late at night.

'I'm surprised to hear them described as kinky,' muses Professor Alan Read of King's College, London, who has just shown us a photo of himself in a jailbait Fauntleroy outfit and long blond locks in the school production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Context is all. And you can't do it on the cheap. If the provenance of your party gear (right) is H&M, a jumble sale, Portobello, Oxfam and Claire's, then no amount of Rigby & Peller will get you back on track.

Coda: there will be an exhibition of my Supreme Court drawings at Pinsent Masons' Crown Place offices from 14 November until early January.

Supreme Court: the last of England

One for spotters: Pora v The Queen will probably be the last case from New Zealand in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Dame Sian Elias, the most senior lawyer in New Zealand, sits on the bench at Lord Kerr's right hand. Monitors are in position to show an extreme rarity in this court - evidence.

Meanwhile, the soundscape. Exotic ring tones (tsk tsk). Briefly, a mewling infant, which provokes some judicial throat-clearing.

And from the pavements below (one of the world's tourist hotspots), nothing. Lord Walker told me that he once saw, but did not hear, a helicopter land outside the court - the double-glazing is that good.

People shifting on the leather-upholstered public benches make them creak like a sailing ship. A girl in front of me has long swishy hair. My pen and brush swish on the textured paper, in her ear. She doesn't know she is hearing the rhythm of her hair being drawn.

Around the court, the Apple logo comes over loud and clear.

We are here because a woman was raped and murdered.

I wonder where to look for statistics on how many women around the world were reported to have been raped and/or murdered during the six hours and 45 minutes of this two-day hearing, leaving aside the unquantifiable unreported cases.

Here in court the dryness of the legal process mercifully cauterises emotion, beyond the more evident adrenalin surges of counsel when probed by the bench or temporarily losing the compass.

The appellant has a diagnosis of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. With sad timing, the Court of Appeal is examining whether it is a crime for a woman to drink excessively while she is pregnant.

More pictures if you scroll down.

Coda: there is an exhibition of my Supreme Court drawings at Pinsent Masons' Crown Place office from 14 November until early January.

Supreme Court art: crumbs of comfort

Lord Mance comments on the Supreme Court in The Times: 'I don't think that we've become excessively activist as a result of moving to Parliament Square.'

Excessive or not, there are activists out on the square - Occupy, plus the street people who accumulate around any open-air community if it keeps still long enough. A haggard man in black harangues impassive policemen about article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights with more vehemence than is customary in the Supreme Court.

I pop over to Tesco's. What shall I donate to the Occupy larder? (Don't be like that - I've drawn them a lot and I owe them something.) They've got bread and water. I have a limited budget. What would benefit most people in the best way? A chunk of Stilton? It won't go very far and there are a lot of vegans out there. I settle for cherry tomatoes, grapes, orange juice and, in a moment of madness, Jaffa Cakes.

Do the same thought processes go through the mind of the Secretary of State when allocating EU structural funding? R (on the application of Rotherham Borough Council and others) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is examining his allocation decisions. Did they breach EU principles of proportionality and equal treatment, so close to Occupy's heart? What is his margin of discretion?

A vicious cough and cold is claiming victims on the bench. They are battle-hardened though. At the end, Lord Neuberger congratulates counsel on their performance.

I return to the cold damp earth of the square and draw a weatherbeaten rough sleeper. He writes down his street name, which he says is not to be spoken: STYX. I should introduce him to @charonqc.

The policing style here is inconsistent but they've dropped a hint: a blanket is camping gear, hence forbidden on Parliament Square under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, but cut a slit in it and voilà, it's a poncho.

After I go home, someone out there is arrested for feeding a police dog a biscuit. I console myself that it can't have been a Jaffa Cake which of course the VAT tribunal ruled was not a biscuit but a zero-rated cake.

In a departure from the norm for me, the final drawing is fictitious.

I am merely saying that bears are under-represented among the senior judiciary. As Lord Mance asked in court today, 'What is the point of this?'

There will be an exhibition of my drawings in the City next month.

Supreme Court art: the right to occupy

It's easy to mock Occupy when they tweet that one of their aims is 'free pubic transport' [sic], but something beyond a chippy sense of grievance motivates the core group to spend cold nights on Parliament Square without a tent.

I stop in the square on my way to the launch of The First Miscarriage of Justice by Jon Robins. It would appeal to them. 'Can I come with you?' asks Tom, who yearns for the glory days of Occupy camped on chilly cobbles outside St Paul's Cathedral three years ago ('I want to get my hair cut outdoors smoking weed').

The book launch is in high-security Portcullis House. I can't risk it. Tom goes back to playing the guitar under the statue of Lloyd George.

Next morning I'm in Court 2 trying to pin down an iconic profile. Michael Paget is great-grandson of Sidney Paget, the first artist to depict Sherlock Holmes (the deerstalker was his idea).

Reports that the model was Sidney's brother Walter have been denied; maybe Sidney just set up two mirrors to study his own profile. Michael has inherited it.

In 2012 Michael Paget acted on behalf of Occupy in Corporation of the City of London v Tammy Samede and persons unknown, the St Paul's eviction trial in the High Court.

This morning Tammy and the litigants in person from that case are protesting on Parliament Square in the fag-end of a hurricane, one of them with Occupy Baby in a sling.

While a melodrama of kettling, chanting and arrests is going on outside, 'the right to occupy' is a mantra in court. In The Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Lambeth v Loveridge, Harry Loveridge was replaced as a secure tenant while on a long trip to Ghana (he'd still been paying rent by standing order). Damages are at issue. 'Have the valuers got a stone which is set or some sort of blancmange?' muses Jan Luba QC.

I never told Occupy that the friend I brought to visit their Holborn squat two years ago was a judge, but I dare say they wouldn't have minded.

For the curious, this blog has many posts about the day-to-day life in the Occupy camps as well as this one about Michael Paget:
http://isobelwilliams.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/case-of-high-profile.html

More pictures if you scroll down.

Sidney Paget

Kancer Sutra

I did these eight drawings in response to transcripts of interviews with cancer patients in remission.

The anonymous patients were asked what kind of visual presentation might inform people about how cancer and its treatment could affect their sex lives.

I am particularly grateful to the patient who said: 'Is it in danger of becoming a Kama Sutra stroke sex video? You know what I mean. Because it’s so explicit, it’s not something you can illustrate in a sensitive way. I can’t think of a sensitive way to be honest.'

These pictures, created for Sheffield University's Phoenix Project, are in the current issue of Configurations, the journal of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (and the Oxford comma), published by Johns Hopkins University Press in the USA.

More if you scroll down.