Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1993 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a barrister in a profession that's still cautious to say the least about women, she's enjoyed an outstanding career.

In 1982, she prosecuted Michael Fagin for breaking into the Queen's bedroom at Buckingham Palace,

and five years later defended Winston

Silcott who was convicted then cleared of murdering a policeman in the

Broadwater Farm Riot. In 1990 she was appointed head of the Serious Fraud

Office and then 18 months later moved to her present position.

She took it over at a time of increasing public unease about the management of the legal system.

The first woman to hold the job and the first person to be

appointed to it after open competition, she's the director of public prosecutions

Barbara Mills, QC, all of which is a great achievement for someone who was actively

discouraged from becoming a barrister when she first mooted the idea, isn't?

Well I suppose so, but I really always wanted to do it ever since I became conscious of what sort of job I wanted to do.

But what sort of things did people say to you to put you off?

Well, the classic one was, women can't be barrister's, and that was repeated in one form or another by a number of people.

But by whom?

By all sorts of different people, rather surprisingly, by Don's who were interviewing me with a view to reading law,

by a number of lawyers themselves but I thought this couldn't

be right and so I persevered and I'm very glad I did. But what reasons to think?

I think they were really rather lacking in reason. They were just the sort of

knee-jerk reaction you sometimes get to someone who's breaking into a world which

...