In the second week of June, 2007 I got a telephone call from Helena Kennedy. Helena is a barrister, a QC; she is a baroness, a Scot, a famous civil rights and human rights lawyer and campaigner, a mother and wife, a Catholic, a very disobedient British Labour peer and a writer. In my previous incarnation I had been her book publisher, and she had become my friend. If Helena asked me to jump off a roof I would do it.

So when she rang to ask me if I would appear as an expert witness in a court case she was doing, I immediately said no. I had no time, and I know nothing at all about the law, and could not imagine myself having anything relevant to say about a young Muslim woman who was being tried for terrorism.