Survive & Thrive - The Literary Lawyer: Why do Barristers write and how do they get published? [ONLINE]

Members of the Bar have made a significant contribution to the world of literature. The members of this expert panel will share their personal insights into how a legal career can be supplemented, enhanced or diverted by writing and how an aspirant writer can get published. The panel will be followed by a reception.

With the following speakers:

Master Thomas Grant

Thomas Grant KC (Master Grant) is a commercial chancery practitioner practising at Wilberforce Chambers, specialising in amongst other areas, civil fraud, commercial litigation, confidentiality, professional negligence and company law. He is the author of a number of legal text books, most recently, Civil Fraud, published by Sweet and Maxwell in 2018 (supplement 2021), with a second edition coming out in 2026. He is also the author of a number of books for the general reader- Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories (2015); Court Number One: The Old Bailey Trials that Defined Modern Britain (2019);  The Mandela Brief: Sydney Kentridge and the Trials of Apartheid (2022). He is a former Visiting Professor of Politics and Law at Gresham College and a current Visiting Professor of law at the LSE. He also partially writes and appears in a yearly theatrical review at the Old Bailey, Trial and Error. 

David Headley

David has spent the last 25 years establishing Goldsboro Books and becoming a well-regarding agent, forging strong relationships with publishing houses throughout the UK. He created the UK’s largest collectors’ gook club and is influential is selling large quantities of hardback fiction in the UK. David has won awards for bookselling, and in the last ten years, has frequently been included in the Top 100 most influential people in publishing by The Bookseller.

Harriet Tyce

Harriet Tyce is the million-copy, Sunday Times bestselling author of four novels. She grew up in Edinburgh and studied English at Oxford University before doing a law conversion course at City University. After practising as a criminal barrister in London for nearly a decade, she subsequently completed an MA in Creative Writing - Crime Fiction at the University of East Anglia. Her first novel, Blood Orange, published in 2019 to huge critical acclaim and she has since written multiple Sunday Times Bestsellers. Witch Trial is her fifth novel. Harriet lives in North London.