CARMEN CALLIL, acclaimed by her many obituarists as one of the greatest publishers of her day, died in mid-October at the age of 84. In fact, her “day” was rather longer ago than it may appear.
Although she continued to make the iron filings jump to her magnet’s call at the Virago Press, her mainstream career ended as far back as 1993 when she was relieved of her post as managing director of Chatto & Windus and given the much vaguer and necessarily short-term job of
