When Nicolas Sarkozy made his much-hyped visit to London in March, Dame Juliet Wheldon was one of the dignitaries invited to a banquet to honour the French President, in keeping with her status as a consummate government insider. Dame Juliet is the legal adviser to Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England. Her career has been entirely in Whitehall where she rose to the highest post in the Government Legal Service - Treasury Solicitor - the first woman to do so. She held the post from 2000 to 2006. Dame Juliet, 58, went to Sherbourne School for Girls and Oxford, where she read history, before being called to the Bar in 1975. She joined the Treasury Solicitor’s department in 1976. In a long and distinguished career as a civil servant - her colleagues describe her as "terrifyingly bright" - she also worked for the Attorney-General's Office, from 1989 to 1997, and then for three years until 2000 was the legal adviser to the Home Office, advising over the years on matters such as the first Gulf War, the Human Rights Act and the Pinochet case. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, singles out Dame Juliet as "the person I learnt and gained the most from by way of example and inspiration" when both were at the Home Office and a "phenomenal woman".

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