The Sunday Times sits down with Gail Rebuck, considered to be "the most powerful woman in British publishing" in a great many circles. "Gail has the best zoom lens in the business," said veteran literary agent Ed Victor. "She goes from macro to micro in a second." She's so powerful, in fact, that she almost managed to do what few even thought of: shut down the Da Vinci Code trial:

"It was bonkers," agrees Rebuck, settling into an armchair in her book-crammed office.

"Non-fiction authors suing a fiction author was bizarre, nor did I think the case had any worth. I tried to reason with the two authors many times, I met them and their agent, offered facilitation. I tried and tried, but it was like sand running through my fingers. I even tried to stop it while the case was going on . . ."

How did she try to stop the High Court case while it was still going on? "I'm not going to go into details, but as one does," she retorts, waving away the question.

But her manner is exactly what propelled her to the top - where she's stayed so long that rumors keep flying she'll fly the coop. But what might keep her at Random UK is how very successful it is. "We’re very profitable," said Rebuck, "we have been consistently, and it means that we are able to invest in huge numbers of new writers and poets and areas of specialist non-fiction that many competitors can't cover."