I N T ERV I EW
MY FIRST LONDON HOME
ALEX CHURCHILL Barrister turned novelist Alex Churchill on her thriller, The Night Lawyer, and life at the bar in Temple
I think a good crime novel depends on plot, but also on a convincing sense of place. Temple is beautiful and steeped in history. The first performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was performed here and there is a timber-framed Jacobean townhouse which is the only survivor of the Great Fire of London. It is an extraordinary place that becomes a huge part of your life as a barrister.
I love living in London. I can’t imagine living in any other city in the world. I was born in Dulwich and grew up in a rambling house. Reading Anthropology at Cambridge was the only time I really lived outside of the city. In Putney there is a lovely stretch of the river where you can walk along the Thames. You’re only a stone’s throw from Putney Heath. Occasionally you can get to Temple by boat from Putney pier. It is the same journey made by Thomas Cromwell – who was born in Putney. He worked in the courts under Henry VIII and it’s details like that are exciting.
32 The London Magazine
I have always wanted to write and I think there is a similarity between barristers and novelists because we both tell stories. You have to understand psychology and the use of words. You have to get your listener to empathise with what you’re saying. The book, The Night Lawyer is set in London’s courtrooms and newspaper offices with flashbacks to Moscow in the 1980’s . It gives the reader a glimpse behind the scenes in a criminal trial. The main character, Sophie Angel, is half Russian and a barrister, just like me. That was really inspired
I wanted to touch on what it is like being a woman in a male dominated profession. I know women the generation above me had a tough time but I think now it’s much easier for women coming to the bar. A generation ago, they didn’t dare complain because that would be the end of their career. Another big challenge is having children, it’s not terribly child-friendly. Another thing that inspired me to write was much more personal in that I was stalked myself. I was living alone in a onebedroom flat and involved in a rape case at the Old
Bailey, with a very dangerous defendant who was a serial rapist. I woke in the night to hear his voice coming from my sitting room. He’d managed to find my number and was leaving a message on my answerphone. Those two minutes lying there were probably the longest of my life. He’s up for release soon, which is partly why I’m writing under a nom de plume. Most of us go through life assuming that we’re never going to be involved in the criminal justice system, but you may be wrongly accused of something, you may be wrongly identified, you may be a witness or a victim. If you do find yourself involved, you want to know that you’re being properly protected by a barrister who has had time to prepare your brief and to listen to your concerns. And you want your case to be tried but fairly and impartially by a judge and jury. I wanted to start the conversation about the cut backs in the criminal justice system, which have been really savage. During Covid it just got worse. The backlog is now in the hundreds of thousands in magistrates’ courts and around 50,000 in the crown courts. This is hopefully smuggling what is a serious message into an entertaining story. BEHIND THE SCENES
Top left: Alex Churchill writes under a nom de plume left: The Night Lawyer, (RedDoor, £8.99)
PHOTOGRAPHS:CHRISDAWESPHOTOGRAPHY
by my mother because she was born in St Petersburg. Her entire family apart from her mother were shot by the communists for being enemies of the state. My mother escaped and came to England. Sophie recalls fragments of memories throughout the book – a literary device where a story is nestled in another just like a Russian doll.
