Sir Sydney Woolf Kentridge KCMG KC SCOB (born 5 November 1922) is a South African-born lawyer, judge and member of the Bar of England and Wales.
He graduated in 1942, and served during the Second World War as an intelligence officer in the South African Army in East Africa and Italy.
[3] In 1949, after working briefly as a judge's clerk, Kentridge was admitted as an advocate of the High Court of South Africa.
A staunch opponent of apartheid, Kentridge represented three Nobel Peace Prize winners during his career – Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Albert Luthuli.
Lord Alexander of Weedon wrote of his performance: "Through remorseless and deadly cross-examination, sometimes with brilliant irony, Kentridge established that the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement had been killed by police brutality.
He was a member of Brick Court Chambers, a leading London commercial set, and was widely regarded as the "elder statesman" of the English Bar before his retirement in 2013.
[16] A biography of Kentridge focusing on his major apartheid-era cases, authored by Thomas Grant QC, was published in July 2022.
[4] Sydney Kentridge is a fan of cricket and opera,[4] and is an uncle of the South African American musician and composer Trevor Rabin.