20 Questions With Lord Sumption

Lord Sumption has been described as the "biggest brain in Britain". After a distinguished career as a silk, he moved straight from being a QC to the Supreme Court, skipping the High Court and Court of Appeal. He has just completed the fifth and final book in his history of the Hundred Years' War. Here he explains how he has managed to combine a career in the law with writing history, gives his take on the merits of leaving the European Court of Human Rights, reflects on the lockdowns imposed during the Covid 19 pandemic, discusses the state of the English legal system, outlines the differences between being an advocate and sitting as a judge, addresses his record of speaking out on political issues despite a convention that former judges do not do so, and reveals his passions beyond work.