BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
Every week I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
I hope you enjoy listening.
My castaway this week is Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond.
She recently retired after three decades as a judge, leaving behind a legal career distinguished by a long list of firsts.
She was the first woman and the youngest person to be appointed to the Law Commission, and in 2004 became the UK's first woman law lord.
She also made history as the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, later becoming its Deputy president, And then in 2017, its president, despite leaving a skyscraper's worth of glass ceilings in her wake.
It was in September 2019 that she was thrust into the spotlight when she announced the Supreme Court's judgment that the prorogation of Parliament had been unlawful.
It was a landmark moment and a cultural flashpoint.
That announcement and her chosen accessory that day, a twinkling spider brooch, captured the public imagination.
She was called the Beyonce of the legal world and had a double page spread in Vogue, a far cry from the Yorkshire village where she grew up.
Another famous spider person observed, with great power comes great responsibility.
Her own motto below her coat of arms is, women are equal to everything.
As for how she got there, she says, I just set out to be the best I could be at whatever I was doing at the time.
And remember, I've been around a long time.
Lady Hale, welcome to Desert Island Discs.
Thank you so much for having me.
So you're very keen for others to follow in your footsteps, then?
If you had to pitch the idea of pursuing a life in law to a young person listening to this, I wonder what your opening arguments would be.