Carmen Callil

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a publisher. On the day she graduated from Melbourne University in 1959, she left her native Australia forever.

Presenter0:38

After a precarious existence 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 nineteen seventy two she founded Virago, a company devoted to the publication and celebration of their work.

Presenter0:55

Now the managing director of Chatto and Windus, she remains committed to supporting women's writing. In fact, forty eight per cent of the books Chatto publish are by women. She is Carmen Khalil.

Presenter1:07

Common, practically half the books you publish are by women. Now, that is a very large percentage for a major publishing house, isn't it? Uh

Carmen Callil1:14

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

Presenter1:20

So is that positive discrimination at work on your part?

Carmen Callil1:22

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.

Presenter1:31

But obviously, therefore, it must be to do with your taste, mustn't it? I mean, if a if a publishing house reflects anybody's taste, it must come from the top.

Carmen Callil1:40

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

Carmen Callil1:46

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 everything that's written.

Carmen Callil1:56

There's all sorts of other qualifications about the books one chooses to publish.

Carmen Callil2:00

I mean, a woman and a man can write a biography of Mozart that could well be the same. Do you see what I mean?

Presenter2:05

Thank you.

Carmen Callil2:06

Fiction might tend to be different.

Presenter2:08

Yeah.

Presenter2:08

It's interesting though, isn't it, that that we still in the enlightened nineteen nineties talk about women writers. We don't talk about men writers.

Carmen Callil2:18

But that's because men are the dominant force, the dominant.

Carmen Callil2:22

Sex in everything. I mean, they are the central thing that one is reacting against.

Carmen Callil2:29

And I think one of the things that somebody said to me about Virago and the work I'd done

Carmen Callil2:33

Which actually didn't occur to me when I was doing it, but it now I can see.

Carmen Callil2:37

is that I moved the centre stage a little bit so that

Carmen Callil2:41

I assume that the centre of the world was what women wanted to do, not what men wanted to do. I don't think it certainly didn't change the world. But the reason i is that you it is men that run things, they do.

Carmen Callil2:53

They always have.

Presenter2:54

Sum up your music for me. It's a bit like writing the the blurb for a dusk jacket. This I mean, is your music, would you say as a whole, is it romantic? Is it nostalgic? Is it depressing? Is it inspiring? What have you gone for?

Carmen Callil3:06

Well, I think my um choice

Carmen Callil3:09

Represents very much my childhood and the influences of my childhood.

Carmen Callil3:14

which were

Carmen Callil3:16

Those of the radio. We listened to the radio. We had lots and lots of radio stations in Australia, not just a few.

Carmen Callil3:23

And we always sang. Everybody sang. They sang on the radio. We sang at school.

Carmen Callil3:29

And I still do, much to the embarrassment of almost everybody who knows me. So I think it it very much reflects how much I love to sing or hear people singing.

Carmen Callil3:38

It wa it's not a very quiet term.

Carmen Callil3:40

Choice

Carmen Callil3:43

What's the first one then?

Carmen Callil3:45

and across the border line.

Carmen Callil3:48

Raikuda

Carmen Callil3:49

Um I love American music.

Carmen Callil3:51

I love um country and western.

Carmen Callil3:54

And I love um Soul.

Carmen Callil3:57

But this music of Raikuda is tex-mex.

Carmen Callil4:00

And the reason I chose it is that because you can only choose eight records, and I couldn't have.

Carmen Callil4:05

Any Latin American music?

Carmen Callil4:07

TexMex combines all that's wonderful about American music to me.

Carmen Callil4:11

And it's got that wonderful singing and sighing guitar. Love it.

Speaker 24:17

But hope remains when pride is gone.

Speaker 24:24

And it keeps you moving on.

Speaker 24:29

Calling you across the border line

Presenter4:38

Raikuda and Across the Border Line. I can imagine that with a name like Carmen Khalil, you've spent your life spelling it and explaining it. Would you like to do it once more?

Carmen Callil4:47

I've certainly I think I've spelt it more um in this country than I've done anything else.

Carmen Callil4:53

Um my father called me after the opera.

Carmen Callil4:56

And there's no other reason for myself being called common than that.

Carmen Callil4:59

My last name is Anglicized Lebanese because my grandfather

Carmen Callil5:04

was the first Lebanese to go to Australia in eighteen seventy.

Carmen Callil5:08

after the Turkish massacres of the Maronite Christians in the Lebanon.

Carmen Callil5:12

and when he got there his first name was Halil.

Carmen Callil5:16

And that was all

Carmen Callil5:18

that he could say, you see, or that they could understand. So they wrote down his first name.

Carmen Callil5:24

and spelt it in an Irish way.

Carmen Callil5:26

Which is perfectly sensible of them. It was as Irish as they could manage. With a C instead of a K. That's right. And no H. No H.

Carmen Callil5:33

But your mother was of Irish descent. Oh yes, they came from Cork.

Carmen Callil5:37

They also came for religious reasons because

Carmen Callil5:40

the of the Cath the Enclosure Acts and they came in about eighteen

Carmen Callil5:45

eighty, I think, eighteen sixty, something like that. Uh

Presenter5:48

And you lived in Melbourne in in quite a um

Presenter5:51

A well to do suburb.

Carmen Callil5:52

Yes.

Presenter5:53

Apparently, in in in this house you lived in there were masses of books everywhere, books in the garden shed. How come? Why?

Carmen Callil6:01

Well, my father um collected books and he used to go to auctions for them.

Carmen Callil6:07

and to buy them. And there'd be one book he'd want to buy.

Carmen Callil6:10

And they came in bundles, you see, so you get them all at a knockdown price, and all the ones he didn't want, or he wanted, but weren't the one he wanted to buy, would be left in the

Carmen Callil6:19

garden shed, so there were oceans of books there, and there was oceans of books in the house. But I used to love the ones that weren't the ones you wanted, if you follow me obscure biographies of really eccentric English people.

Carmen Callil6:31

F. C. Bernand, who wrote The Cox of Box and Cocks, if you know what I mean.

Presenter6:36

And then when you were only eight years old, your your father died. That would have been just after the war.

Carmen Callil6:40

That is

Carmen Callil6:42

Yes.

Presenter6:43

What effect did that have on the family?

Carmen Callil6:44

Well, that had a terrible effect on the family because um there was nobody to earn any money.

Carmen Callil6:51

So really my mother um had four children because we're all much the same age as each other. I mean my brother's eleven months older and my sister two years.

Carmen Callil7:00

And um so she had to stay home. And my uncles looked after us. My uncles brought us up.

Carmen Callil7:06

Do you remember being particularly miserable or? Uh

Presenter7:08

Yeah.

Carmen Callil7:08

Life just went.

Presenter7:09

Dawn if you read it.

Carmen Callil7:10

I was very miserable really. I was miserable in the convent particularly, because I was sent to boarding school, you see, because of my father dying, because he took a long time to die. He had Hodgkin's disease, and you don't die quickly from that. And so I was sent to boarding school, and I hated it.

Carmen Callil7:27

and I was miserable and lonely. But when I came home I wasn't.

Carmen Callil7:31

We'll talk some more about you Boarding school in a minute. But let's have record number one. But two.

Presenter7:34

Uh

Presenter7:35

Yeah.

Carmen Callil7:35

which is

Presenter7:36

Yeah.

Carmen Callil7:36

The Wild Colonial Boy

Carmen Callil7:37

Had to have an Australian song on the Desert Island. This is my

Carmen Callil7:41

favourite Australian traditional song. And the other very important thing about it for me is it's an Irish Australian song, which is the milieu in which I was brought up. Ter a very, very important part of Australian culture is this Irish inheritance. And um this song

Speaker 17:56

Uh

Carmen Callil7:57

Uh the Irish sing as well, but they always leave out the revolutionary phr um

Carmen Callil8:02

bit at the end, which I like, where you um

Carmen Callil8:04

You you shake your fist at everybody.

Carmen Callil8:07

And it's the song that really led to Walsingham Matilda and all those other songs that people know Australia for because they're always the same. They have this great, this wonderful bloke who goes out there, he kills a lot of policemen and then he's shot, usually through the jaw, and he shakes his fist at the judge as he dies, before he dies, or in some cases after he dies. Ned Kelly, who said to the judge, touch his life. It's just it's Ned Kelly and Walsing Matilda, but it's the first of them all.

Carmen Callil8:33

And this is the Larikin singing it.

Speaker 28:35

In 61 this daring youth Commenced his wild career, With a heart that knew no danger, And no foamen did he fear. He bailed up the Beachworth Mail Coach, And he robbed Judge McAvoy, Who, trembling cold, gave up his goal To the wild colonial boy.

Presenter9:01

The Wild Colonial Boy, sung by the Australian group The Larrikins. So you were sent to the best Catholic school that your widowed mother could afford, and you've said on several occasions since, you'll never forgive the nuns. What did they do to you?

Presenter9:15

Uh

Carmen Callil9:18

Um

Carmen Callil9:20

I think

Carmen Callil9:22

that what I really despise them for

Carmen Callil9:25

It was is the narrowness of their view of life and the fear.

Carmen Callil9:31

that they instilled into the children under their control. Basically fear of hell, fear of sin, and lack of joy in being alive.

Carmen Callil9:42

And to this day, it doesn't matter that I ignore what they taught me, and I don't mean all of them, there were some good nuns.

Carmen Callil9:48

I always think that God is after me. I certainly do. I think God is after me with a scythe and a.

Carmen Callil9:53

Anything he can lay his hands on to smite me down, because I've said fi.

Carmen Callil9:58

I do not agree with you.

Presenter9:59

So you're constantly riddled with guilt that you're going to have.

Carmen Callil10:02

Oh, absolutely.

Carmen Callil10:04

There's nothing I can do about it. That's the way they brought me up.

Presenter10:07

They tried also to teach you to be a l

Carmen Callil10:09

Oh, that was a terrible business, yes.

Carmen Callil10:11

They really were not interested in intellectual achievement or.

Carmen Callil10:16

women achieving anything at all. Not that I think women have to achieve anything, but

Carmen Callil10:20

I think

Carmen Callil10:21

To be a lady seems to me the worst thing in the world to be.

Carmen Callil10:25

I can't think of a worse way of passing your your life than

Carmen Callil10:29

you know, using the right

Carmen Callil10:31

finger to pick up a cup.

Carmen Callil10:33

And, um, marrying the right man, all that sort of thing. Terrible. Frightful waste.

Presenter10:38

It it must have meant then that you had a very miserable adolescence because I mean adolescence is difficult enough to come to terms with without being saddled with all of that guilt and worry about your sexuality, about sex itself.

Carmen Callil10:41

I mean,

Carmen Callil10:44

San Francisco.

Carmen Callil10:48

About six it's

Carmen Callil10:49

Now I certainly had a miserable adolescence. There's no question about that.

Presenter10:54

So were you a a late developer then?

Carmen Callil10:56

Sexually speaking. Oh, certainly. I had to leave home before I could ever think about anything like that. But then, you see, I never met a Protestant until I left home,'cause I only mixed with Catholic people. That's what I was meant to do.

Presenter11:06

I do. When did you finally I mean, obviously you don't feel free of the nuns today, but when did you finally throw them off? When did you finally let rib?

Presenter11:15

Oh, when I lost my virginity, exactly.

Carmen Callil11:17

Exactly, I sort of said, Well, that's that then. How old are you then? Twenty one and a half, I think. I don't think I can give you the month and the day.

Carmen Callil11:25

Or the name. Certainly not. But this was in Italy, was it?

Presenter11:28

Was it when you No, no, and I'm not going to tell you where it was either.

Presenter11:33

But but when you went to Italy, I mean, you certainly, um I was gonna say, fell in love a lot. I mean, had a lot of affairs.

Carmen Callil11:39

Well, I suppose that's the word you'd use. Does one use that word?

Presenter11:42

Affairs

Carmen Callil11:43

I was just alive and young and had a wonderful time. Let's have record number three.

Carmen Callil11:49

Record number three is opera.

Carmen Callil11:51

In fact, I love all lots of opera, but I've only chosen one for my desert island because I like so many different sorts of music.

Carmen Callil11:58

And this one is Verdi, who's by far my favourite um composer.

Carmen Callil12:04

I like Italian opera best of all. I know that um I should have chosen Mozart, but I prefer Italian opera because I love those voices.

Carmen Callil12:12

This is my favorite Verdi tun Ballo in Maskera.

Carmen Callil12:15

with Placido Domingo and Josephine Barstow.

Presenter13:17

Placido Domingo and Josephine Bastow singing part of the love duet from Act Two of Verdes Un Ballo in Maskera, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karrion.

Presenter13:27

We skipped over Melbourne University there a bit, which is where Carmen you read English.

Presenter13:33

Why didn't that experience offer you the liberation you were looking for after the nuns?

Carmen Callil13:38

I think in some way it did, but I still lived in that

Carmen Callil13:43

that ghetto sort of world and I was living at home and being a good girl.

Carmen Callil13:48

So it didn't really do anything much for me. The one thing it did do for me, though, was I read um

Carmen Callil13:54

Australian history is a sort of sub thing.

Carmen Callil13:57

And it that changed my politics'cause my family were extremely conservative.

Carmen Callil14:02

And I read

Carmen Callil14:03

Well if you study Australian history, you have to do all these original documents because it's not a very long history. And it wasn't aboriginal history, it was the history of transportation.

Carmen Callil14:13

and how the people came then. I used to sit in the library with tears pouring down my cheeks. I had no idea. You know, the suffering recorded in those original documents terrible.

Speaker 114:21

Nero

Carmen Callil14:23

And um

Carmen Callil14:24

I think it it made me a a political animal. That it that changed my life. But the English

Carmen Callil14:29

The course didn't do anything to me at all, because

Carmen Callil14:32

It was all rather narrow and boring.

Presenter14:34

Why was it narrow?

Carmen Callil14:35

Well it was a very levisite university.

Carmen Callil14:38

Um

Carmen Callil14:39

I'm told that the reason that um

Carmen Callil14:42

All these universities in Australia and Canada are very lever-sighted, that none of them could get jobs teaching in England. But anyway, the good thing about

Carmen Callil14:51

That is that it

Carmen Callil14:52

taught you that

Carmen Callil14:54

writing and fiction particularly, and literature.

Carmen Callil14:58

It had a moral value.

Carmen Callil14:59

And I've never lost that. I think that's absolutely right. But on the other hand, you're only allowed to read about four books.

Carmen Callil15:04

And that bored me, Steph.

Presenter15:05

But you're not saying that you you shouldn't read those four books and there's a few more than four. I mean, from from Austin to Conrad or whatever. I mean, set down.

Presenter15:14

Exactly. You're not saying that you you shouldn't read those books that form part of the great tradition, are you?

Carmen Callil15:19

No, certainly not. I I think one one has to. The more the better. But

Carmen Callil15:24

I think because it was so narrow, it left out all sorts of other things that are very important to read as well.

Carmen Callil15:30

If you're going to be

Carmen Callil15:32

A person who absorbs what is available to you in English literature, which is a great, great literature.

Presenter15:37

But all of that really uh was very much the the thinking behind the founding of Virago, wasn't it? To demonstrate that that there are classics, not necessarily great classics, by women, which had been neglected because of narrow academic definitions, the sort of thing that you were complaining about back in Melbourne.

Carmen Callil15:55

Yes, and uh but it was also because most of the people who ran publishing houses were men.

Carmen Callil16:01

And their taste was different. I do think that whilst a vast number of men

Carmen Callil16:07

read novels by women, um, a vast number don't or didn't value them sufficiently.

Presenter16:13

Record number four.

Carmen Callil16:14

Ah, this is the Beatles.

Presenter16:15

Yeah.

Carmen Callil16:16

This was agony to choose because um

Carmen Callil16:19

Both all Beatles were my heroes, but particularly John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Carmen Callil16:24

But I couldn't really choose one where where they both sang that I loved as much as this particular one, which is Paul McCartney singing Hey Jew.

Speaker 216:33

Hey Jun.

Carmen Callil16:36

Uh

Speaker 216:36

Yeah. Let me down.

Speaker 216:40

You have found her, now go and get her.

Speaker 216:47

Remember, hey to let her into your heart

Speaker 216:52

Then you can start

Speaker 216:55

To make it better

Speaker 217:00

Uh

Presenter17:01

The Beatles, well mainly Paul McCartney and Hey Jude.

Presenter17:05

Let's just touch on your experience before you set up Virago, um which you did in nineteen seventy two. You'd been doing the publicity for Inc., the alternative magazine that that came out of Oz, and there you met the two women who started Spare Rib, the first feminist magazine. Now was it through them or because of Spare Rib that you realized there were people out there who wanted to read things that women rather than men had written?

Carmen Callil17:27

Um

Carmen Callil17:28

Yes, it was. Um I knew the two editor the two founders of Spare Rib.

Carmen Callil17:34

and um I knew what they were doing and I helped them a little tiny bit doing the publicity for

Carmen Callil17:40

The f the launch of the magazine. And I said to them, Well, if you can do this for

Carmen Callil17:46

um women writers who are writing articles and essays and such like.

Carmen Callil17:50

I want to do it in book form. So you set it up on an overdraft? Yes. Working at your.

Presenter17:55

Dining room table.

Carmen Callil17:55

Dining room table. Yes, that's right. I did. Yep.

Presenter17:58

Yeah.

Carmen Callil17:58

It took me a long time, by the way, because I had to earn my living during the day doing publicity, so it took some years before the first book was published.

Presenter18:05

But as a result of of Virago's success, you were much admired by by the publishing world. They admired your your originality and your tenacity. Um i it's an odd thing, really, but it was the feminists, wasn't it, who who attacked you? They perhaps felt that you were exploiting them, that you'd used feminism to make money, you'd brought masculine values.

Carmen Callil18:26

I think that would have been only a part of the uh feminist movement, which is rather like it uh in in that way, like all political parties, it has

Carmen Callil18:35

bits and pieces and lefts and rights and centres, and there would have been a sort of purist section.

Carmen Callil18:40

Of the movement, such as it was, because thank God the feminist movement wasn't like a political party that might have said that, and it did. I think that you're right. They thought one was ripping off.

Carmen Callil18:49

their purity of vision, but not all of them. Most feminists are.

Presenter18:52

But were they right in a sense that it was more, if you like, a a business idea than it was that you were a a committed sister?

Presenter19:00

No, I don't think

Carmen Callil19:01

They were right about that. I think

Carmen Callil19:03

Um I loved running a business. I I thought that was wonderful. And I loved starting things and creating things.

Carmen Callil19:09

But I was very concerned, and still am.

Carmen Callil19:12

that Virago should be there for women to express and to publish and to celebrate their lives and their history and to continue to do so.

Carmen Callil19:24

Now for Virago to continue to do so,

Carmen Callil19:26

It had to be run, as far as I'm concerned, in a business like way, and if a businesslike way is masculine, then so be it.

Carmen Callil19:33

But where would you p

Presenter19:33

Put yourself, and I promise this is the last question about feminism, where would you put yourself?

Presenter19:39

In the feminist spectrum, if you've got on the one hand the suffragettes and on the at the other extreme

Presenter19:45

Women who reject men totally in every way. Where do you sit? I mean, there are lots of comfortable stations in between the two.

Carmen Callil19:53

I would find it very difficult, as I certainly don't reject men.

Carmen Callil19:57

On the other hand, every time I think

Carmen Callil20:01

Oh, I cannot tolerate another mention of the word feminism. Something extraordinarily irritating happens, or you read something in the newspaper, some tremendous piece of misogyny, and I'm back on the barricades again. I think basically, because of my experience as a businesswoman, I am on the barricades for the rest of my life because

Carmen Callil20:19

I really do feel that um

Carmen Callil20:22

Women haven't got the opportunity.

Carmen Callil20:25

all the treatment that they should have even today. And every time I'm lulled into security, as I say, I'm reminded that this is the case. So I think perhaps I'm a suffragette barricade feminist.

Presenter20:37

Record number five.

Carmen Callil20:38

Yeah.

Carmen Callil20:39

Ah this is Ethel Merman.

Carmen Callil20:41

And you're the tops.

Carmen Callil20:43

All my life I've loved Cole Porter, Lawrence and Hart, all those wonderful American songwriters, Gershwin.

Carmen Callil20:52

It was terribly difficult to choose one of them I loved the best, but

Carmen Callil20:55

I think Coleport is the master, and the thing I love about Ethel Merman is the way she belts it out.

Speaker 221:00

You're the National Gallery, your gobble salary, your telepath.

Speaker 221:07

You're sublime.

Speaker 221:10

You're a turkey dinner. You're the time of the Derby winner. I'm a toy balloon that's fated soon to pop.

Speaker 221:23

But a baby!

Speaker 221:26

You're the town.

Presenter21:28

Ethel Merman, and you're the tops from Coport as Anything Goes. In nineteen eighty two you moved f from the fringes of publishing, as it were, in Virago, right into the middle of the main stream when you became managing director of Chatto and Windus. That must have been an enormous change in your professional life.

Carmen Callil21:44

Yes, it won't be. Because

Presenter21:45

You were headhunted, weren't you? Yes, I was. How did you feel when you were offered the job?

Carmen Callil21:46

Yes.

Carmen Callil21:50

I was pleased. In fact, I was delighted. Um

Carmen Callil21:54

I'm not quite sure whether I should have been. I I had no idea, because I'd been I'd been, if you like, um uh not exactly it's I suppose I was a hippie of of one sort or another, and I had no idea how formal businesses were can were managed, and I had no idea.

Carmen Callil22:08

About how establishment pub British publishing really was. Why do you think they wanted you then?

Carmen Callil22:16

Because I think I'd made money, you see. I'd run a I'd started a successful business.

Presenter22:21

Yeah.

Carmen Callil22:21

Did that

Presenter22:21

Yeah.

Carmen Callil22:21

Uh

Presenter22:21

mean then that you had a lot of problems because you didn't know how to run a

Presenter22:26

Um an establishment organization.

Carmen Callil22:29

I don't think it was because of that particularly and in fact, from a business point of view, I think running things has always been

Carmen Callil22:37

Uh quite easy for me.

Carmen Callil22:39

But I think the um actual business itself was far more difficult, far more competitive.

Carmen Callil22:46

And far more complicated because chat is such a

Presenter22:48

You say you've always found running things very easy. On the other hand, the reports are that that uh you don't do it without an awful lot of blood on the floor, a lot of pain and a lot of argument and a lot of falling out and a lot of confrontation.

Speaker 222:59

Uh

Speaker 122:59

Uh

Carmen Callil22:59

Cheers.

Carmen Callil23:03

Yes, I think that

Carmen Callil23:05

Right, I think I must enjoy it.

Carmen Callil23:08

But I must, otherwise you wouldn't do it, would you? I have difficulty in not being um direct about things. I think it's been a problem for me that I I wish I had was more evasive, you know, or perhaps I wish it.

Carmen Callil23:20

But it isn't quite that. It's that, um

Carmen Callil23:24

You can't

Carmen Callil23:25

Do what I've done or want to do what I've done and not take what goes with it. You can't whinge and moan for the rest of your life because.

Carmen Callil23:32

You know, newspapers write rubbish about you or write the truth about you. You just have to accept it as part of it.

Presenter23:36

And are you saying that there wasn't a way of doing what you've done delicately and diplomatically?

Carmen Callil23:42

Oh, of course there was, absolutely.

Carmen Callil23:45

But, um, not for me.

Carmen Callil23:47

Every time I think, Come and you must do this differently, pull yourself together, within five minutes I'm not, you see, so

Carmen Callil23:54

What I've done is try to accept it instead of saying I'm going to be otherwise.

Carmen Callil23:59

Next piece of music.

Carmen Callil24:01

Ah, this is Josephine Baker.

Carmen Callil24:03

Um I had to choose something from the war because the Second World War was the most important thing in all.

Carmen Callil24:09

My generation's life, really.

Carmen Callil24:12

Um but I chose this particular one because my mother used to um

Carmen Callil24:18

raise money for the Free French, because my father was a lecturer in French at Melbourne University, and I've got wonderful photographs of her with the Cross of Lorraine on her lapels and raising money. Also because I love Josephine Baker.

Carmen Callil24:30

And this song she sang

Carmen Callil24:32

Towards the end of the Second World War she sang it very early on in her career.

Carmen Callil24:36

But towards the end of the Second World War she used to entertain the Free French in North Africa, and this song came to represent Free France for for all the people who were fighting in Europe.

Carmen Callil24:47

So that's why I chose this song.

Speaker 224:54

Mountain party party to you.

Speaker 125:03

I'm not sure.

Speaker 225:07

La salon, et bell, maisa moier, sur qui bon sour.

Presenter25:19

Josephine Baker Jeuzamour.

Presenter25:21

Do you do you work too hard? Yes.

Presenter25:25

But I rather love it. I love my work.

Carmen Callil25:26

Yeah.

Presenter25:28

And and has your home life then suffered as a result? I mean, do you worry about working too hard?

Carmen Callil25:33

No, I think one of the things you've got to take into account is the work I do, because

Carmen Callil25:38

Of all the professions, the one that hasn't got any quicker is is publishing, because you it still takes just as long to read a manuscript as it did in Caxton's days. You know what I mean? Nothing's changed.

Carmen Callil25:49

So I can't

Carmen Callil25:50

give up less time to it because if my authors write a book and I have to read it, I can't do it more quickly than I did.

Carmen Callil25:57

in the twelfth century.

Presenter26:00

But have you neglected corners of your life that you would have liked not to have neglected because you had that

Carmen Callil26:05

Oh yeah.

Presenter26:07

Yeah.

Carmen Callil26:07

Oh, yes, certainly.

Presenter26:07

Yeah.

Carmen Callil26:09

I mean, I'd like to have done all sorts of other things with with my life. Um it's been very difficult from that point of view, but then it's been a great joy to have such a wonderful job.

Presenter26:18

Would would you like to have been married?

Presenter26:21

Or would you like to be married?

Carmen Callil26:22

Mm.

Carmen Callil26:24

difficult. I don't think I would have been any good at it. Um but I would perhaps have liked to have been married. But it's a very, very tentative um

Carmen Callil26:34

Yes, but only in the most romantic sense, you know, mister Rochester no no

Carmen Callil26:39

I don't think I'd like the practical side of it. Like, why are you interrupting me when I've got three manuscripts to read? I wouldn't have liked. Children?

Carmen Callil26:46

No, I've never worried about children. Don't mind one way or the other. I would have would have liked it, but I don't mind not. So it's not a great source of regret, is it? No, not at all.

Carmen Callil26:56

Perfectly happy.

Presenter26:58

Record number seven.

Carmen Callil27:00

Ah, this is Sophie Tucker.

Carmen Callil27:02

Um

Carmen Callil27:03

I've always been very, very fond of Sophie Tucker and Mae West.

Carmen Callil27:07

Because they take

Carmen Callil27:09

All those wonderful women's songs, uh or men's songs, but songs of the twenties and thirties and send them up.

Carmen Callil27:15

And there's a particular sort of song that was very popular in the twenties and thirties which is usually called My Man, a sort of lament for some man who's betrayed you or something. And in this song, Sophie Tucker sends it up. It's called He's a Good Man to Have Around.

Speaker 227:29

I know they say that I'm a

Speaker 227:34

But there's one thing that I'm simply

Speaker 227:37

Crazy about

Speaker 227:40

And that's my man.

Speaker 227:44

He's not good-looking, not handsome or tall.

Speaker 227:49

I couldn't tell you how he made me fall.

Speaker 227:54

There's nothing to him, but still and all, he's a good

Presenter27:59

He's a good man to have around.

Speaker 228:00

Uh

Presenter28:00

Uh

Speaker 228:00

Yeah.

Presenter28:01

Thank you, Taka.

Presenter28:02

You're fifty-four now. Um are you

Carmen Callil28:05

I can't remember. I'm either fifty-three or fifty-four. Thereabouts.

Presenter28:10

Born in 1938. It's got to be an evil night.

Carmen Callil28:10

It's got ninety-two. It's got to be an even time.

Carmen Callil28:14

I'm a year older than I thought I was.

Presenter28:16

You've been managing director of Chatto for nearly ten years, involved with Virago for twenty, and you remained chairman there.

Presenter28:23

What more do you want to do, or do you feel you've already done more than you might have expected of yourself?

Carmen Callil28:28

Oh no, there's lots of things I want to do, but I don't think that they relate particularly to work.

Carmen Callil28:35

The things I want to do is I want to listen to a lot more music, particularly classical music.

Carmen Callil28:41

I want to paint.

Carmen Callil28:43

I want to garden more, I want to cook more.

Carmen Callil28:46

And I want to see many more movies.

Carmen Callil28:51

all the things that my reading have made difficult.

Presenter28:55

This sounds like retirement.

Carmen Callil28:56

Yeah.

Presenter28:56

Yeah.

Carmen Callil28:56

This is

Presenter28:56

The sword.

Carmen Callil28:57

Yeah.

Presenter28:57

Yeah.

Carmen Callil28:59

All the time in the world.

Presenter29:01

What about writing yourself? I mean, you've you've

Presenter29:04

Obviously developed a style from writing dust jacket blurs, but you've written diary pieces in odd columns and so on. But have you have you a novel in you, or could you write an autobiographical piece? Do you know?

Carmen Callil29:12

No, I'm never going to do any of those things. I think there's far too many books anyway.

Carmen Callil29:17

Uh and there should be less of them.

Carmen Callil29:19

And um

Carmen Callil29:20

What I'm like myself, I don't want to write about. I just don't want to. Last record.

Carmen Callil29:26

Ah, the last record is Schubert's Adager in E flat.

Carmen Callil29:30

Now I chose this because I came late to classical music, but it's called it's given me enormous pleasure. And a particular friend of mine gave me a Schubert tape about a year ago.

Carmen Callil29:41

And ever since I've become obsessed with Schubert, and every Saturday and Sunday I play it, and a tremendous peace descends upon me, which a lot of the other music doesn't give you. This beautiful Schubert music.

Presenter30:54

Part of Schubert's Adagio in E-flat played by the Bose R trio.

Presenter30:59

If you could only have one of those records, Carmen, which one would it be?

Carmen Callil31:03

uh the Schubert, because um all the others I can sing myself.

Carmen Callil31:07

But I can't sing Schubert.

Carmen Callil31:10

And your book?

Carmen Callil31:12

My book is a novel called Morris Guest.

Carmen Callil31:16

By Henry Handel Richardson.

Carmen Callil31:18

And the reason I've chosen this is because of all the books I've ever read in my life, this is the one that gave me.

Carmen Callil31:24

the most inten that intense joy, because it came as such a surprise.

Carmen Callil31:29

She's a completely neglected writer. In fact, I've rarely come across anybody who's read her.

Carmen Callil31:35

Until recently I I read an article on The Spectator by Doris Lissing, agreeing with me, which I thought was wonderful, about this writer. She wrote three great works, each one completely different, and this novel, Morris Guest,

Carmen Callil31:47

is a novel of

Carmen Callil31:49

Erotic Obsession

Carmen Callil31:51

absolutely suffused with music. It's set in Leipzig in the eighteen nineties and it's about a young British music student who goes there and falls hopelessly in love with a beautiful

Carmen Callil32:01

A moral girl.

Carmen Callil32:03

But it's it's a great late Victorian novel, if you like.

Carmen Callil32:07

Jane Eyre, you'd love Morris Guest. The reason it is abandoned and neglected and not known is completely beyond me. I just don't understand it.

Carmen Callil32:16

Um I actually published it in Virago years New Year's Years Go it's out of print.

Carmen Callil32:20

Because nobody bought it. I still have never been able to convince people that this is a truly great novel.

Carmen Callil32:26

But it is I know it is.

Carmen Callil32:28

And your luxury.

Carmen Callil32:30

This is a difficult one.

Carmen Callil32:31

Because um I'm not sure I'm allowed to take human beings, am I?

Presenter32:35

No.

Carmen Callil32:36

Well, I wanted to take El Pacino or Gerard Dipper, yeah, but you don't think I care.

Presenter32:40

No, I didn't think you can at all.

Carmen Callil32:42

In fact, I know you can't. You're absolutely positive. I am completely and absolutely positive. Not even inanimate if they were stuffed or something.

Presenter32:42

In fact, I know you can't. You're absolutely positive.

Presenter32:45

So not even in

Carmen Callil32:48

You would like to stuff Gerard Depard?

Presenter32:50

No.

Carmen Callil32:51

But if I'm not allowed to have him moving, I mean

Presenter32:53

Could I have him enact?

Carmen Callil32:54

Yeah.

Presenter32:54

Mm. You certainly can't have him moving. Well, yes, but in what form, inanimate? I mean, are we going to kill the poor chap?

Carmen Callil32:59

No, this is not fair. He's got his life before him.

Carmen Callil33:02

Well in that case, um can I take

Carmen Callil33:05

Uh

Carmen Callil33:06

A movie screen and a thousand movies.

Carmen Callil33:09

Or is that too many?

Presenter33:11

Too many, I think. I think this is another game altogether. I think you can take one movie.

Carmen Callil33:14

One movie

Presenter33:15

Um

Carmen Callil33:17

Goodness me.

Carmen Callil33:18

Well, in that case, I think I'd take the commitments.

Carmen Callil33:21

Because it's

Carmen Callil33:22

Got a lot of music in it.

Carmen Callil33:24

It's Irish and terribly funny and wonderful, wonderful movie, so I think I'll take the commitments.

Presenter33:30

Carmen Khalil, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Presenter33:33

Thank you.

Speaker 133:42

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.