Lord Joffe, 83, is best known as a human rights lawyer who helped to defend future South African president Nelson Mandela on terrorism charges. The retired Labour peer was recently awarded the Freedom of the City of London, alongside ANC veterans and another member of the defence team. Lord Joffe lives in Liddington and is married to Vanetta, an artist. The couple have three daughters.

LIKE many people who have achieved much, Joel Joffe prefers not to dwell on those achievements.

There are many, however.

Born in South Africa, he began working as a lawyer in the late 1950s.

“I grew up in a white society where we were a privileged class because of the colour of our skin. When you grow up in that society you don’t even know that there are poor people because everybody you know is well off.

“You don’t think it’s odd that only white people can travel in the buses or go to the same restaurants because you have no contact with the other people. They’re all banished to 20 miles from the centre of Johannesburg.

“It’s only, perhaps, when you leave school, or perhaps your parents influence you, that you realise there’s another world, a very unjust world, and that’s what happened to me, I suppose.

“After I’d left school, gone to university and entered the real world I discovered that there were more important things to do than earning money, and that while you needed to earn money in order to survive, you could also do useful things for other people.”

His work on the Mandela trial helped to shape history by saving the future South African president and fellow ANC leaders from the gallows.

Lord Joffe then came to England, where he and a partner set up Hambro Life, which eventually became Allied Dunbar and then part of Zurich Financial Services.

He had considered Australia, only to discover that he wouldn’t be admitted, as the government of the day regarded his ANC clients as terrorists.

“The greatest good luck I had was that I came to England, and the reason I came to England, where we’ve been so happy ever since we came here, was because it is a tolerant country, and a country where freedom really matters.

“Whatever others might say, this is a fine country.”

Hambro Life helped to pioneer the modern concept of corporate giving and staff involvement with good causes.

Lord Joffe also worked for Oxfam, including six years chairing the charity. Ennobled in 2000, he has campaigned for legislation allowing doctors to assist terminally ill people wishing to die with dignity.

Now 83, Lord Joffe remains active and as recently as last month spoke at a meeting called by the Friends of Lydiard Park to discuss alternatives to leasing the attraction to the private sector.

He is also a vociferous supporter of Swindon 175 (swindon175.com), the commemoration of Swindon’s emergence as a railway town.

Lord Joffe has plenty of good things to say about his adoptive community, including some comforting words for its leaders.

“The image of Swindon doesn’t do it justice.

“It is looked upon as a cultural desert and a backward, isolated area “It is anything but that. It is a vibrant community with a great deal of very interesting work being done on all fronts, and with a very good council which has a vision for the future of Swindon.

“I think that to change the image of Swindon against the background of a town which is prosperous, which is multi-racial and which has all the basic elements of a successful and vibrant community, one needs to have the people of Swindon first recognise how well-off they are.

“They have beautiful parks, they have culture, they have services. The elderly by and large – there are exceptions – are very well taken care of with the funds available. There is excellent provision for handicapped people – children and adults.

“There are museums, there are theatres and, as I say, the parks of Swindon are beautiful and outstanding.

“What we don’t have is beautiful buildings like Bath, Oxford and London, but there is no way we can ever get those buildings.

“What makes Swindon such a special place are the people in it, who are generally friendly, caring, working together in whatever they do.

“It’s just a case of taking advantage of the amenities and generally accepting that it’s a good place to live in, a good place to bring up children and generally, I think, happier than most cities or towns or villages of the UK.

“It is not recognised by the citizens that they should be proud of Swindon, and that they should be expressing their pride.

“Unfortunately, until recently I think the council has not been able to explain to the people of Swindon what the problems are that they face from a funding point of view.

“It’s all a question of what you can do with the funds which are available to you. You have to make difficult choices but you also have to make good choices.

“It’s easier to say what should happen than be clear about how things can be made to happen. It’s very easy to criticise, but solutions are normally very much more difficult.”

Lord Joffe has spent much of his adult life trying to find solutions and is optimistic about the future of humanity.

“I think it’s a mixed story, but what I can say is that it’s better than it ever was in the past. If you take a look at the developing world, you will find that although there is hunger and deprivation over there, the number of people dying young has been halved in the last 30 years.

“Wherever you look, there has been progress, but there are new and disturbing trends which need to be recognised and dealt with. That is, the gap between the poor and the rich is widening instead of closing.

“You’ll find from the recent, for example, Oxfam research that about 40 per cent of the world’s wealth is owned by, I think, less than one per cent of the population. What we all hoped when I was young was that the gap would be narrowing.

“In fact, it is widening, and that cannot be allowed to continue if there is to be a stable and just society.

“Overall, the world is a better place now, and hopefully it will carry on being that way, but it won’t happen overnight and there’ll be downsides as well as upsides.”