Credit: Elizabeth Allnutt
Geoffrey Robertson is disillusioned. The world-famous barrister has, at 74, lost his belief in the effectiveness of international law. “I have not lost faith in the ICC [International Criminal Court]. I still think it’s necessary,” he tells me by phone from London, his voice more redolent of duty than of conviction. “But its catchment area is quite small.”
Robertson’s flamboyant persona is instantly recognisable: the bouffant hair, the plummy accent he sometimes says was acquired as a means to fit into snobbish London when he went to the bar there, and sometimes says was there before he left Australia. His mind may be a legal steel trap, but he has never been above burnishing his image. He is a showman, what men of a certain age like to call a “raconteur”. He gives lively public talks about his rise and rise in which he recounts well-oiled anecdotes, as he will doubtlessly do on his national tour this month to publicise his new book,