powers are capable of pulling down the wall of silence that surrounds Diana's pregnancy and engagement, and lay bare the racism and snobbery of her killers. It is only through Mansfield's sheer diligence and his honourable regard for the British legal process that respected professionals like holistic healer Myriah Daniels and alternative therapist Simone Simmons have been called to the stand.

It wasn't always like this. Mansfield's big break came in 1972 during the trial of the Angry Brigade, the anarchist organisation which had bombed several ministers' homes. After he had brilliantly undermined the prosecution’s scientific evidence, Mansfield’s client walked free.

He forged a reputation as one of Britain's foremost QCs by taking on miscarriages of justice and 'defending the indefensible'. He won

tough acquittals for the Birmingham Six, the Irishmen sentenced to life in 1975 for killing 21 people in two pub bombings; for the Bradford Twelve, a group of Asian teenagers who had made petrol bombs to defend themselves against racist attacks; and for the Newham Seven, another group of Asians who'd fought skinheads outside an East London pub.

More recently he acted for the families of Jean Charles de Menezes and Stephen Lawrence, and he overturned Angela Canning's wrongful conviction for the cot deaths of her two sons.

Now this Diana inquest looks like being Mansfield's crowning achievement. How are the mighty risen!