Dame Linda Dobbs

Linda Penelope Dobbs was born on 3 January 1951 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to a Sierra Leone Creole mother and an English lawyer father who went on to serve as a High Court judge there himself. She came to Britain aged seven, was privately educated in Shropshire, and studied Russian and Law at the University of Surrey before earning a master's degree at the London School of Economics.

Dobbs was called to the Bar in 1981 and built a practice at Red Lion Chambers specialising in serious fraud, customs and excise, and regulatory cases, taking silk as a QC in 1998. She chaired the Criminal Bar Association's Race Relations and Professional Standards Committees, and in 2003 set up its first Equality and Diversity sub-committee.

In October 2004, having been appointed a Deputy High Court Judge the previous year, Dobbs was elevated to the High Court Bench, assigned to the Queen's Bench Division — becoming the first non-white person ever appointed to the senior judiciary of England and Wales. Of the appointment, she said she was "confident, nevertheless, that I am the first of many to come," though it would be another seven years before a second judge from a non-white background reached the same level.

During nine years on the Bench, Dobbs served as Senior Liaison Judge for Diversity and chaired international and equality committees within the judiciary before standing down in 2013. She has since led high-profile reviews, including reporting for Dame Janet Smith's BBC inquiry into Jimmy Savile, and continues to train judges and lawyers internationally, particularly across Africa and the Caribbean.