On my radar: Shami Chakrabarti’s cultural highlights

The politician and lawyer on Salman Rushdie’s remarkable new memoir, Manchester’s magnificent music students and powerful depictions of wars both real and imagined

The human rights lawyer and campaigner Baroness Shami Chakrabarti was born in Kenton, north-west London, in 1969. She studied law at the London School of Economics and worked as an in-house lawyer at the Home Office before becoming director of the advocacy group Liberty in 2003, a role she held until 2016. That year, she became a life peer and was appointed shadow attorney general for England and Wales (until 2020). Chakrabarti lives in south London and has one son. Her third book, Human Rights: The Case for the Defence ,is published by Allen Lane on 2 May.