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 1992,

and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is a publisher on the day she graduated from Melbourne University in 1950. Mr. teaching English in Italy, she eventually got a job in a London publishing house.

Increasingly, she found herself promoting the work of female writers,

and in 1972 she founded Virago, a company devoted to the publication and celebration of their work.

Now the managing director of Chatto and Windus, she remains committed to supporting women's

writing. In fact, 48% of the books Chateau publish are by women.

She is Carmen Kalil.

Carmen, practically half the books you publish are by women. Now that is a very large percentage

for a major publishing house isn't it?

Yes it is. The percentage is usually something like 70-30 or even 90-10.

So is that positive discrimination at work on your part?

No, just the way it fell out.

I was rather pleased it did fall out that way,

but it wasn't meant to be so.

I don't look for any sex in a writer.

But obviously, therefore, it must be to do with your taste

mustn't it? I mean if a publishing house reflects anybody's taste it must come

from the top. Yes but I think that you're assuming perhaps that there's a difference between the writing of men and women in all areas,

and I don't always think there is.

So I think the sexual division doesn't necessarily mean that it's an important division in

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