Lady Rae appears on Desert Island Discs

Lady Rae, who is rector of the University of Glasgow, grew up in Airdrie. She was a shy child but earned the nickname “The Last Word” from her parents because of her need to argue her case when she felt something wasn’t right. She was inspired to become a lawyer by her maternal grandfather, a noted advocate and anti-fascist from Naples.

Her parents met in a munitions factory in Italy where her mother was working. Her father was a Scottish bomb disposal expert helping to dismantle munitions after the war. They married and moved to Scotland, but Lady Rae and her brother were not accepted by her Scottish family because of their Catholicism.

She became a solicitor in 1974, entering a world that was dominated by men. When told by a senior colleague that women were “emotionally unsuitable for court work”, she set about proving him wrong.

She became a partner in her firm at the age of 27, and was called to the bar in 1982, one of just 13 female advocates in Scotland at the time. She was made a sheriff in 1997 and a judge of the Supreme Courts in 2014.

In 2021 she was elected rector of the University of Glasgow, the first female working rector in the university’s 570-year history.

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