Dame Carmen Callil’s recent funeral was, appropriately for the founder of feminist publisher Virago, a thoroughly feminist service.
It was conducted by the Rev MarieElsa Bragg, with Carmen’s goddaughters among the coffin-bearers.
Afterwards, my son - her godson - sent me an email. He’d listened to the eulogies, watched Carmen on video, and now he kicked himself that he hadn’t got to know her better.
When Oliver was born in 1983, one godfather (publisher Duff Hart-Davis, who later taught him to shoot a rabbit) sent him a case of port. and journalist Oliver Pritchett, sent shares in Kodak - a good joke, anticipating a spike in family snap-taking.
