Nicola Horlick

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the investment banker Nicola Horlick. She has, perhaps, done more than anyone else to shatter the glass ceiling - a mother of six children and now stepmum to another three, her proud boast is that she's never missed a sports day or a school speech day. She says her career is largely an extension of her maternal instinct and she nurtures the companies she's ploughing funds into. With her apparently limitless energy, talent and ambition she seemed to be the one woman who had managed to have it all. Then her eldest daughter, Georgie, was diagnosed with leukaemia. For the next 10 years, until Georgie's death in 1998, Nicola combined nursing her daughter with her highly successful career, while also looking after the rest of her growing family.

Now she is launching a new investment company and, with her very personal knowledge of the NHS, says she doesn't rule out a future within the health service.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: A Cenar Teco from the final Act of Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Luxury: A bath.