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Given your knowledge with youth justice, how do you explain the fact that serious offenders are getting ever younger?

At first the fact that our life is lasting longer puzzled me as it shifts later in time everything happening in our life. A consequence of this, for example, is that people have children at an older age. The truth is that something odd is happening to our life. Adult life is generally starting earlier than before. This means we are asking the whole society to be more mature earlier in life. We did this by giving people the right to vote at 18, by stressing children's rights and their freedom. Hence life gets longer and longer and we become 'old' later than before. It is now even offensive to say to someone “you're old”. That's why, in my opinion, children have now the freedom to do things that they would have done at 20, such as committing crimes. Little children don't commit crimes, youngsters do. And the more mature they think they are, the younger they are in reality, and the more crimes they commit.

Does punishment rehabilitate offenders?

What is punishment? Society has to protect itself from the wrongdoings. If somebody steals we've got to make sure they don't steal anymore. Punishment works as a deterrent. There is also rehabilitation and assistance not to re-offend. The balance is difficult. Different types of research have supported both the approaches. I personally believe that there must be a punishment. I also believe that no punishment helps society if it is not connected to rehabilitation and with the attempt to teach different ways to behave for youngsters not to re-offend. There must be a mixture of the two.

Hornby and Levy, founded in 1979, was the first law firm in the UK to create a department dedicated to domestic violence. What inspired this decision?

At that time we were a legal firm which represented people on a legal-aid basis, therefore we represented the poorest part of the population. We dealt with criminal and civil matters and domestic violence issues. I dealt with the latter. It was my partner's idea, Marcia Levy – who now is a judge – to have a dedicated section for domestic violence. We were the first in the country and we are both very proud of it. It was difficult to convince our colleagues and partners about the validity of our project. One of the things we tried to achieve, for example, was a deal with judges and social services in order for help people quickly. We reached an agreement with judges according to which if we phoned to courts before 11 o'clock they would have given us a hearing within the day. They were willing to help but they had to change their own system. They needed to have an employee who knew we were supposed to be given priority on that particular matter. On the other hand, the agreement with social services was that we would have helped people they referred to us only if they came before a certain time, otherwise we couldn't see them. We have been proud to be able to bring to court by 2 o'clock a lot of people coming to us before 11 that same day. But it was difficult. And the irony of it is that when we tried to look for a lawyer to deal with these cases specifically, the best candidate was a man: all the feminists were furious with us but he was the best for the job.

Do you believe that child abuse can be better prevented these days?

I don't think that child abuse can be prevented any better in any place. Child abuse has always existed. Yet I think there are better ways of handling it. In Britain, child abuses have been unveiled only over the 50 years, before that they were hidden. In other countries like Italy, it is an even more recent discovery. We are therefore the pioneers in prevention and assessment of child abuse. Like it often occurs to pioneers, our methods might be a bit gross. I believe that we tend to be tough with the partner of the abuser by forcing them to accept that their partner is guilty even if they haven't been tried yet. It's a prerequisite to leave the children with the alleged offender. I think that's tough and cruel to children.

Do you think that, as it stands, the legal system does enough to protect children?

I think we do quite a lot. I think our system on paper is without doubt, the best in the world. The Children Act of 1989 is superb legislation. What is happening now is that because of inefficiency, financial cuts and a number of other problems, the quality of the court system has lowered. Nowadays, when I go to court for example there should be a guardian appointed to represent a child within four weeks. I'm told that in some cases, the case is decided without a guardian for the child to prepare a report for the court. That is irresponsible. The court provided for that. In many cases there are four, five six different social workers within a year for a child or a family. This is absurd because in a job which is so highly based on human contact, it's endangering for people to repeat their problems to different social workers every time: people with a low self esteem lose it completely. There are therefore lots of things that are wrong in our system.

Is it funding at the heart of the problem?

Not only funding. I think it is professionalism. Pride in the profession and how you do a job. Obviously funding is essential but I wouldn't call it at the heart. You can pour a lot of money in, but if you haven't got competent people or people who are dedicated, it doesn't make any difference.

Given your literary successes, do you think that one day you may devote yourself to writing full time?

I hope not. I became a writer when I was 55, so I have been writing for the last ten years. I like writing. I don't like a lot what goes with it. I don't like to leave London, to travel around, because I leave my friends and family and my work.

As a mother and as a lawyer, there must have been times when you must have empathised with your young clients. How do you maintain an emotional distance from your cases? Is it ever possible to define boundaries?

I think it is necessary. Not just possible, necessary. I don't think that, as a mother, my feelings were deeper than those of someone who is not a mother. I don't believe that only the mother understands children's problems. I think that this is rubbish, to be honest. I believe that anybody, even with no children who has enough sensitivity and preparation can empathise and understand human problems. It's a nonsense, for instance, to say that if you have not been raped you cannot understand a rape victim. That doesn't make sense. I believe however, that as a mother obviously it is much easier for me to be a bad lawyer rather than a good lawyer because I end up thinking about my own children while dealing with my cases. For example, one of my children sucked his thumb, he still does actually; so when sometimes I went to court and heard a psychiatrist saying that when a child sucks his thumb, it is an indication of not being loved, of being isolated and unhappy, I obviously thought "God, what have I done to my kids".
 
I think as a good lawyer or as a good professional, you have to understand your client. You should not really sympathise and empathy must be very limited. I'm a professional, I'm doing a job, I'm paid to do it and I do it as good as I can.

I think it is very important that any professional knows that our job is not to dish out sympathy or empathy. We are doing a job, a professional job. So we've got to be understanding, we've got to be humane, but we must not go beyond the level of the client, because this is not our role. We have to be human and humane but we are not there to be their friends.

“The Marchesa” is the story of your aunt that was treated by your family as an outsider, which is a topic often present in your work as a lawyer - a lot of your clients feel as outsiders. Did you as Sicilian coming to London experience the same sort of emotion?

No I didn't. I was surprised. I didn't at all. I fitted into Britain in a way I never thought  I would. If you ask me, I felt much more an outsider in Sicily, in my home. I come from the upper class which meant that we were different. I didn't go to school until I was 11. I had a teacher who came at 7.30 in the morning, left at 8.30 and that was the whole of my instruction for five years. I was different from the other children and I didn't like it very much. I wasn't unhappy because my mother was lovely. We did things. I read a lot. I painted. I had a nanny and a little sister, but I would have liked to have been like other children. And every year I spent two weeks in a school so that I could be used to meeting other children and to take exams because I had to have exams every year. And it was awful to be wanting to be like the others and not to be the same.

Your books often have Sicilian words that enrich the narrative, but do you think that the translations do your books justice?

Well first of all, I don't put Sicilian words to enrich the narrative, it is because I don't know the words in Italian. It is a question of ignorance. Even when I write Italian stories I say "taliata" which means "to look at" because I don't know what's the Italian equivalent of such word. So that it is the way it is. With translations, I've learned very early actually in my life that the translation is the job of the translator and the translator has his own translation and the text is the text. So I don't think a translation will ever do justice in the eyes of the person who makes it and it is right that it should be so. When I studied Latin and Greek I did the Iliad in Greek but before then I'd read it and studied it in Italian when it was translated by Monti.  So I think that's the difference.  

Camera Oscura (The Dark Room), is your latest novel. What has inspired this book?

Actually it is quite interesting. It is a short novel rather than a novel. It is the first     book that has not been inspired. I never thought of writing it. I had a phone call from Eileen Romano who is an editor of Skira. She said that they had just started a small series of novels inspired by portraits, artists, sculptors and photographers. And she thought of me because she had some letters that Charles Dodgson – alias Lewis Carroll the author of "Alice in Wonderland" – had written to a family whose daughters he photographed dressed and naked. Eileen Romano thought I could be interested and I was incredibly fascinated by this story. So this is the first ever work I have done – if you like – on commission.

So far you have written five successful books. Which has been the most difficult to write?

The Marchesa was the hardest book for me to write because it was about my great, great aunt. I bared, I suppose, the bad things of my family, of me. I spoke of an injustice done to her by my family because she was different. She was red-headed, we don't know if she was gay or not, she was masculine they said, and they said she was coarse, she was like a peasant. She cooked and cleaned and went horse riding and I thought it was so wrong to treat her so badly when she had a bad husband who betrayed her. She left all her money to my family. So I couldn't live with that injustice and she came to me and said "write me, write me, write me", and I did.

Which of your books is the closest to your heart?

The Marchesa. What is more difficult is the thing you suffer more and therefore you've got to love them because otherwise you just stop writing.

Which of your books would you like to see on the big screen?

I shall give you a silly answer. It doesn't matter to me. When I write a book I see it as a film. I can't write if I don't see it. So all my books to my mind, are films. The "Almond Picker" was clearly a film and it became a book afterwards. But the others, when I build them up, they are films and then I write them. Which one would I like to see based as a film? I don't know to be honest. I always think the last one because I like to share my view of the book with the viewers. In reality, The Almond Picker's film rights have been sold to Darwin Productions so there are good reasons to hope it would become a film.  

What is your message to young people out there, looking for directions?

Work is fundamental in life. We are living in a world in which it is difficult to find a job and virtually impossible to have a job for life as it used to be in Italy but also in England. I think that you've got to approach work thinking that you have to make the best out of it and that you care about it – even if you are the last employee in the company – and that you can become the managing director of anything. It is just a question of hard work. I've been employed four times in my life and then I set up my own business but I always looked at the business as if it was mine. And I was quite cheeky because I used to go and tell my principal "I think that is wrong, I think you could do that better, you could save money there" and "do you realise that somebody has come very late from lunch?". Maybe I must have been hateful but I was actually doing it thinking it was the best thing for them and for me.