A Family History of the Illustrious, Notorious and Eccentric Lloyds of Birmingham, Brigstock and Pipewell Hall - Flipbook - Page 101
the Friday night, with dinner and the Eton Beagles Ball at the Savoy on the Saturday night, and I first met
my bride-to-be, Sally on one of these occasions.
When Pierre was first getting to know Billy on her visits to Oxford with Eardley Knowles, Billy was the
proud possessor of a motorbike and side-car in which he took Pierre for rides. She recounted how all
went well going along a straight road, but Billy did not know how to stop the sidecar flying up into the air
as they went round corners, a hair raising experience!
At Harrow Billy was Captain of Cricket and Football. His obsession with sporting prowess continued at
Oxford where most of his sporting friends could be described as "Hearties". Rather than having a
literary bent, it was Pierre who introduced him to the book world and remained a major influence
throughout his stellar publishing career. At the first Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lords after the First
World War in 1919, King George V was introduced to the two captains, Gibson for Eton and Billy for
Harrow.
In 1935 Billy started to take on the running of the new fiction and non-fiction publishing from the 48
Pall Mall office. When they finally moved from Scotland in the same year they bought Stoke Albany
House from Uncle Sir Godfrey Collins when he became Secretary of State for Scotland. They had been
married in Wilbarston Church in Northamptonshire in 1924. Stoke Albany is 3 miles as the crow flies
from Pipewell Hall, and a mile from Wilbarston. Although Wilbarston Church was much larger than
Pipewell Church, which was much too small for the wedding, the number of people who could be invited
to the church service was strictly limited. After measuring the capacity of each of the pews, seats were
allocated to those who had accepted the invitation. I distinctly remember Pierre pointing out one pew for
five which had been reserved on the wedding day for the two Manningham-Buller sisters, who had such
enormous bums that they took up the space for five!
Harold Newgass says in his memoirs: "Pierre was delightful, full of charm, sensible and reliable who was a second
mother to the younger children. She had married Billy Collins, equally nice and able who was taking an increasing share in
the management of his family publishing business, and had two children, Deborah and Jan=.
After honeymooning in the Italian Lakes, Billy and Pierre lived for six months in a cottage at Gleneagles,
with my father commuting to work at the Collins factory and offices in Cathedral Street in Glasgow.
Then they moved to a flat in Glasgow in Great Western Road. My sister Deborah, born in 1926, first
lived there. Their next move came a year or two later, renting Borland House, just outside Kilmarnock.
Billy and Pierre were close friends of Billy and Gwen Rowallan, who lived close by at Rowallan Castle. I
was exactly the same age as their fourth son, Joe, and allegedly went to his one-year-old birthday party at
Rowallan.
