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Listen: Our new Chancellor on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs

12 Apr 2022

Find out more about our new Chancellor Nazir Afzal as he picks his favourite tracks, book and luxury item

Nazir Afzal

Nazir Afzal OBE will take up the position of our new Chancellor in August 2022. We look back at his appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs last year, with presenter Lauren Laverne.

Nazir describes growing up in Birmingham, and while he recalls a happy, tight-knit family background, his childhood was marred by bullying, which he didn't tell his parents about at the time. He says this experience inspired him to pursue a legal career, as he saw law as a tool for change and felt it was important to give a voice to those who are unheard. 

After completing his legal training, Nazir started his career as a defence lawyer, but he details an incident that happened which was the catalyst for him moving to prosecution.

He reveals a love of dance, trance and hip-hop music that he says he would listen to on his way to court: "There's no big tunes about justice and law." In fact, his love of dance music saw him 'moonlight' as a club promoter and DJ in the 90s - although the late musician and DJ Andrew Weatherall advised him to give it up.

As director of prosecutions for London, he turned his attention to so-called honour-based violence and brought successful prosecutions against the perpetrators of these crimes. He says he was brought to tears hearing the harrowing details of the cases, adding: "The names of the victims are etched on my brain." Nazir reveals he still visits the grave of one victim: "To remind myself why it is I do what I do."

Moving to Manchester as Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, he took on possibly his most high-profile cases - the 'Rochdale grooming gang'. He details how this made him and his family a target for far-right groups: "Mentally, it took its toll. There was a long, long period of time afterwards where I questioned doing the job - and the great news is, my response was, let's do this job even more."

"I've never celebrated a successful case, because as I've said [before], no-one should be harmed in the first place."

Nazir says his children keep him grounded - so how would he cope surviving on the proverbial desert island?

"I can knock up a shelf, I can do a bit of DIY...let's put it this way, I don't think I'd last very long."