A Family History of the Illustrious, Notorious and Eccentric Lloyds of Birmingham, Brigstock and Pipewell Hall - Flipbook - Page 105
not enough". When it came to Pierre attending Sally's and my wedding in a Protestant church in Ireland
in 1951, he gave his reluctant approval of her attending it provided she made a demonstration, such as
dropping the Protestant prayer book on the floor.
Whether or not her conversion to Roman Catholicism was responsible, Pierre's health improved
dramatically, so that she was able to accompany Billy on all his business trips and holidays abroad until
he died in 1976. She was a tower of strength to him as an enchanting hostess, and a publishing partner
with whom he discussed all his publishing projects. I don9t expect that anyone realised what an immense
contribution she made to his success as a publisher.
Not content with informally being Billy's confidant and advisor on many of his publishing projects, she
branched out into becoming the Collins Publisher of the Religious, Philosophy and Sex departments of
the overall Collins publishing list. A full description of what she achieved in these fields of publishing
would take many pages, and she was widely respected by American and European religious publishers.
Billy Graham, the Protestant evangelist became one of her authors, and at the other end of the
spectrum she established the English translations of the French Roman Catholic Professor Teilhard de
Chardin.
When she was chivvied by the Collins accountants in Glasgow for running her Religious Publishing at a
loss, with too many prestigious titles losing money, she felt obliged to search for a mega best-selling sex
title. Once she accompanied Sally and I on one of our publishing trips to New York. Sally was sent out
to buy a copy of the latest hot sex bestseller, entitled, Everything you wanted to know about sex, but were afraid
to ask. Pierre negotiated the purchase of the British Commonwealth Market rights, returning to the UK
confident that she had a bestseller that would put her departments in the black. Alas! Uncle Ian,
responsible for the Collins Bible Publishing division, took the strongest exception to its appearing on a
Bible Publishers List, and pressed Billy to insist that it should be turned down for the Collins List, and
passed over to our 50% owned paperback subsidiary Pan Books. Billy was in two minds, wanting to
support Pierre, but after reading it he was taken short near Piccadilly Circus Tube Station, where he
dived down to the men's lavatories, and was accosted by a man waving his foot at him as a homosexual
advance, described in the book. He was so alarmed that he bolted back upstairs, still bursting, to escape
the man's advance, and came down heavily against Collins publishing the book. Pierre had to hand it
over reluctantly to Pan Books for whom it became a huge bestseller, particularly in Australia where Pan's
ebullient sales director, Ralph Vernon Hunt got on especially well with the Aussie booksellers.
On one occasion he was invited to the wedding of the son of a bookseller from Katoomba, just short
of the Blue Mountains, an hour's drive on the tarmac road from Sydney (this bookseller combined the
unusual trades of being both a bookseller and an undertaker, and used to store the surplus stock of
bibles and other books in empty coffins!) The bride lived in a cattle ranch a few miles up a dirt track
road beyond the tarmac, and, just as the convoy of cars from Sydney had gone a mile or two up the dirt
track road, there was a cloud of dust as a jackaroo braked his jeep hard, jumped out and cried,
"Weddings Off!
