From Mock The Week to legal drama

Hugh Dennis is to appear alongside Lord Leveson in a new play about a legal pioneer.

The Disappearance of Miss Bebb tells of of fight of a brilliant law student who couldn’t be awarded a degree – despite coming top of her year in Oxford – nor practise as a solicitor because she was a woman.

Gwyneth Bebb sued the Law Society over the rule in 1913, sparking a six-year legal battle that eventually allowed women to become lawyers. Tragically she died just two years after her victory, because of complications in childbirth.

The play telling her story is being staged as a £90-a-ticket fundraiser for The Kalisher Trust, a charity that encourages diversity in the legal profession, in London’s Middle Temple Hall on April 2. (Tickets)

Sir Brian Leveson is turning actor to portray Mr Justice Joyce, who heard the original case, while Lady Hale, deputy president of the Supreme Court, will play Chrystal MacMillan, the suffragist who organised the case.

Laura Main, from Call The Midwife, will play the title role, while Dennis is John Waller Hills Conservative MP for Durham and supporter of Bebb's cause in the House of Commons. 

Published: 23 Mar 2017