At Girton College, Cambridge, Elizabeth Gloster was `incredibly glamorous', a contemporary recalls. `She had long blonde hair and wore contact lenses, which were unusual at the time. She was always ...having love problems - I remember her in the cloakroom being in floods of tears because she was stringing two men along at the same time. You didn't think of her as being particularly academic.' Gloster's subsequent career has undoubtedly been first class. Now aged 49, she is one of a handful of women commanding more than pounds 1 million a year, not as a best-selling novelist, film star or entrepreneur, but by day-in, day-out hard slog in an ordinary profession. Like Nicola Horlick, the mother of five who commands a seven-figure salary in the City, it is the sheer amount of cash she pulls in that makes her news. This month she was named as the only woman in a list of 15 QCs who grossed more than a million pounds in fees - it is her second year on the list. Unlike Horlick, she doesn't relish the attention. Her clerk, Paul Shrubsall, describes her as a private person who `heads for the hills' if a journalist asks for an interview. `She genuinely finds it quite embarrassing,' he says. After all, she hardly needs the publicity. Solicitors are queuing up to brief her at pounds 600 an hour. Not only has she made the million-a-year club, but she has also been named as one of an even more elite group: the top 10 stars at the bar.
Jeff Emerson and Frank Gloster have different jobs and blame different factors for their struggles. They also differ on politics, with Emerson supporting President George W. Bush's re-election ...effort, while Gloster falls into the "anyone but Bush," category. "I've always voted Republican, and I'll vote for Bush this time, I guess," said Emerson, an avid hunter whose office is filled with photos and mounted animals from hunting and fishing trips. "I'm not hearing anything from Bush that sounds any good, but I don't think John Kerry has a plan either." Various studies show even the biggest corporations are cutting back on raises. A study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide of 300 of the largest U.S. corporations shows most are offering far smaller raises than in the late 1990s, a time when raises got up to 4-5 percent a year. Now they are around 3 percent.
Elizabeth Gloster, the highest-earning female barrister who was set to rake in L2m in 2004, has been appointed the first female judge of the Commercial Court, which deals with the UK's biggest cases. ...Gloster's move will result in an income drop to around 13 times less than her current salary.
