Eve was Shamed: How British Justice Is Failing Women
HELENA KENNEDY
(CHATTO & WINDUS, 352 PP, £20)
Tablet Bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064

The problem that Helena Kennedy confronts in this compelling narrative was amply demonstrated recently when I caught part of an interview with her on the radio. She was discussing some aspect of the law as it applies to women in today’s court system – it may even have been with reference to this book – and she described in the clearest terms the manifest disadvantage at which women can find themselves. What she was saying made perfect sense and did not even sound controversial. And then came the comfortable, mellifluous tones of historical opposition and – what sounded like – yes, oppression. She was wrong, he said. It had all changed, he said. Of course women were treated equally before the law, he said. That was the meaning of British justice! He didn’t call her hysterical, but he implied as much. I didn’t get his name. I was driving. But he was, of course, a judge.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, in her previous book Eve Was Framed, Kennedy set out some of the inbuilt injustice in the legal system which led to some reforms and a degree of improvement. But times change faster than the law.