Sydney Kentridge was initially a member of the Johannesburg Bar: a highly successful general practice included several significant political matters — inter alia the Sharpeville inquiry (1961), the Treason Trial (1961), the Steve Biko inquest (1977), the trial of the Dean of Johannesburg (1971) — and he later moved to practise in London. A longtime member of Brick Court Chambers, he was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1984 and a Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn in 1985, retiring from full-time practice in 2013. He was knighted in 1999 for his international human-rights work. He has sat as a judge of appeal in Botswana, as a Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey and as an Acting Justice of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.