This post is by Libby Joy, long-term Beatrix Potter Society Member and Journal and Newsletter Editor, and is the tribute she gave at Judy Taylor’s Memorial Gathering.
[Judy’s stepdaughter Sarah and grandson Jack invited me to talk about Judy, and about her publishing and Beatrix Potter years, at her Memorial Gathering on 2 November 2025. This was held in the Primrose Hill Library, just down the hill from where Judy lived in London and where she volunteered. Attendees included friends, family and neighbours, and colleagues from Judy’s days in publishing and in The Beatrix Potter Society.
I would like to thank Sarah and Jack for asking me to speak about Judy – we were friends and colleagues for nearly forty years, more than half my life! And special thanks are due to Betsy Bray, who was not able to be with us but – from America – had organised the champagne for our toast to Judy. This echoed her same generosity back in 2012, when we celebrated Judy’s eightieth birthday at a BPS Conference in Windermere – of which more later.]
I am Libby Joy and I originally met Judy through work. I am an Editor by profession and when I was working freelance I was commissioned to edit Beatrix Potter 1866-1943, the book which accompanied the 1987 Tate Gallery Beatrix Potter exhibition (later seen at the Morgan Library in New York) and which Judy co-authored with Anne Hobbs, Irene Whalley and Elizabeth Battrick. It was published by the National Trust and Warne – by then already part of Penguin – and I knew nothing about Beatrix Potter other than the little books. Little did I know that Judy and Beatrix Potter would play such a huge part in my life!
Sarah and Jack have asked me to say a little about Judy’s working life once she joined the Bodley Head, and then about her Beatrix Potter years. The two wonderful Obituaries – one from Sally Floyer in the Guardian and one from Brian Alderson in the Times – tell you much about her publishing career and, anyway, I did not know her in 1951, of course, so I feel a bit of a fraud talking about the Bodley Head! But this is what she says in her interview with Sue Bradley for The British Book Trade: An Oral History:
‘On 1 January 1951 I started at the Bodley Head… I was given a desk in the middle of a big room divided by bookshelves which held countless file copies of Bodley Head books. At another desk was a young man called Tony Brown. Tony was the office boy and I was the office girl. Our job was to stick the stamps on the post, work the copy machine, and deal with requests for catalogues. Before long I was being asked to read the manuscripts of children’s books which came in, because I was the youngest in the firm and therefore thought to be “closest to the child”.’
When Max Reinhardt bought the Bodley Head in 1956 he felt that Judy was still too young to look after the children’s books on her own, so he built up a wonderful team round her which included the late great Kathleen Lines – known as ‘K’. She was appointed children’s books adviser and Judy says: ‘she taught me everything that I knew about children’s books’. She goes on:
‘She taught me that we must publish books that may last for ever, where there is value to the text; and that you must never talk down to a child, therefore you must never let anyone write down to a child – you must respect the child’s understanding and give them a challenge. And you must make the books beautiful… Max’s attitude to everything was, “always get the best”. So he employed a designer and production director called John Ryder… and gave him the job of defining a Bodley Head style. You can tell a book designed by him; it is beautifully laid out, impeccably designed.’
These principles stayed with Judy, whether she was editing – or, later, writing – for adults or children, for the international world of children’s literature or the little world of The Beatrix Potter Society. And it was those values and principles – and the support of Max – that enabled Judy and the rest of the team to build up the list that became so respected ‒ Rosemary Sutcliffe, Lucy Boston and Henry Treece, and later Mitsumaso Anno, Shirley Hughes, Edward Ardizzone, Ezra Jack Keats and many others, and – most famously – Maurice Sendak (whose friendship with Judy lasted until he died in 2012).
During those Bodley Head years, Judy started the Children’s Book Circle, was the first woman to serve on the council of the Publishers Association, became a director of the Bodley Head in 1963, deputy managing director in 1971 and a director of Chatto, Bodley Head and Cape in 1973. In 1971 she was awarded an MBE for services to children’s publishing, and she was also involved in the Children’s Books History Society.
When Judy was eighty in 2012, The Beatrix Potter Society celebrated by publishing one of her many talks – this one about ‘Hedgehogs’. Brian Alderson wrote a moving Appreciation:
‘It must have been about 1960 when I first met Judy… Those were heady days for people involved in children’s book publishing, with many occasions for social mingling, but I must confess to being in awe of – if not actually frightened by – Judy. She knew so much, moved so easily among the emergent stars and, seen with her fellow editors, was clearly prima inter pares.’
Then in 1980, Judy married Richard Hough and retired to lead a different life. In his memoirs Max Reinhardt writes rather sadly, ‘she remained on the Board, but I missed her support. I had always assumed that she would eventually take over from me.’ He himself resigned from the Bodley Head in 1987 when it was taken over by Random House, and he set up Reinhardt Books, persuading Judy out of retirement to help him.
But, as Brian relates, her life had also gone in a different direction.
‘It was at a book trade dinner that Judy sprang a surprise on me. It seems that she had been trying to persuade the “old” Frederick Warne to improve their production of Beatrix Potter’s little books, but – on further investigation – she had realised that there was more to be said about their author. Jumping over the fence (or, perhaps, dry-stone wall) that separates editorial arbiter from vulnerable executant, she had determined to say it. As we know well enough, in all her dealings with that “artist, storyteller and countrywoman”, Judy has brought not just the tenacity of a scholar but an infectious joy and enthusiasm.’
Which brings us to the Beatrix Potter years. The books that Judy wrote or edited for Warne, from That Naughty Rabbit [1983] and Artist Storyteller and Countrywoman [1986] to the collections of letters and So I shall tell you a story [1993] were very successful and are still essential on any Potter bookshelf – readable, well researched, well written and carefully thought out. Brian calls them ‘magisterial’, and Judy travelled the world to promote and talk about them. She was also in demand for catalogue contributions and commentaries on Potter special events, and she wrote Potter-related guide books for the National Trust and – with Patrick Garland – the wonderful one-woman play, ‘Beatrix’, performed by Patricia Routledge. She had also joined The Beatrix Potter Society, where she was soon a Trustee and managing publicity and media matters before being elected for the first of three terms as Chair in 1990. Her publishing output for the Society included collections of unpublished letters, Conference papers, Beatrix Potter’s holiday diary for the year that Norman Warne died, and Willow Taylor’s memoirs, as well as contributions to the Newsletter (later Journal and Newsletter). And she gave many wonderful talks at Society events and Conferences here and in America. (I have a fat folder which contains a great many, though when I looked at it in preparation for today, I was surprised to find that it includes some Ardizzone talks as well, and one about ‘collecting’. This is not something I associated with Judy, but it turns out that she was talking about books, so that made sense!) These talks are not only interesting and accessible, but Judy had a beautiful voice and a knack for speaking in a natural and entertaining way. She also had an affinity with Beatrix Potter – an understanding of her – and I think they shared a number of interests and characteristics.
She was much loved in the Society – she did not tolerate fools, and she was straight-talking, but she could start a conversation with anyone about anything in a most open and down-to-earth way, listening to what they were saying and asking pertinent questions; she encouraged ideas and projects, fostered confidence, mentored volunteers, welcomed new faces and was loyal to old ones; she also had a great sense of humour and was wise and knowledgeable – and completely unselfish about passing on the fruits of her research and hard work. Everyone responded to her approach and so her friends and admirers populate the world.
My life changed, too, with Judy’s Beatrix Potter years. After the Tate book Judy persuaded me to join The Beatrix Potter Society and then asked me to work on her next books with her and then on the Society publications. In a pattern that was repeated for nearly thirty years, I went to Primrose Hill several times a week and Judy and I would sit together at her desk upstairs and work all day on whatever project was on the go. My arrival was the trigger for Dick to make coffee for us and then, when he had gone to the Garrick for lunch, Judy and I would have sandwiches and carry on working, sometimes going out on the roof to check the greenhouse.
She always had something new and interesting to share – perhaps an email or letter, maybe a newspaper cutting, or a video to watch, or an activity in the garden to report on. And so much laughter, with her wicked sense of humour and an eye for the ridiculous and the unusual. There were numerous outings – often Beatrix-Potter-related with a photographer in tow (I remember an early visit was to Camfield when Barbara Cartland was still alive), and to the recording studios with Lyn Redgrave, and lots of Japanese TV interviews, and visits from BPS Members to Judy’s house and thence to Lemonia… Meadowbank felt like the centre of the Beatrix Potter universe in those days, and Judy was welcoming and sharing to all.
Sometimes we were side-tracked on a project she had in mind for a child she was helping through Volunteer Reading Help (as it then was – now Coram Beanstalk) – I remember dinosaurs and footballers, in particular. Her relationship with those children – and with those to whom she read as part of the Society’s Reading Beatrix Potter scheme – evolved in the same way as her books; no talking down to, or writing down to. (Judy herself also wrote some children’s books of her own – in particular, the Dudley books illustrated by Peter Cross.)
We also shared visits to the ballet and Wimbledon (the latter mainly thanks to Marian Werner). And, of course, we went to the Lake District, which Judy loved, and where many of the Society Conferences and meetings were held. Latterly, when Judy could no longer drive the distance herself, I took her in my car. She told me that she and Dick had always stopped as soon as they had left the Motorway behind so that they could get out and breathe the air and look at the view. So, she and I did that, too – at the first green field with a view and a place to stop.
One of the extraordinary things about Judy was that I never felt the age difference between us; and – also extraordinarily – we have birthdays on consecutive days! She has been MUCH MISSED these last few years, and is still missed now. I hear her voice and laugh regularly, and have a photograph of her on my desk, taken when Betsy Bray and David Pepper and I visited her in her care home, quite soon after she moved there and when she still knew who we were, so she is keeping an eye on me and Beatrix Potter’s legacy as I sit at my computer editing the Society’s Journal and Newsletter!
At Judy’s small funeral in September, Jack read movingly from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are – testament to Judy’s determination to stand her ground about it and her instinct for a good book and in memory of a deep friendship. Now her ashes will be scattered where she scattered Dick’s, in the Lake District near the home of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle – whose Tale was Judy’s favourite of the little books and which concerned an animal she championed.
‘Then away down the hill trotted Lucie and Mrs. Tiggy-winkle with the bundles of clothes!
All the way down the path little animals came out of the fern to meet them; the very first that they met were Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny!
And she gave them their nice clean clothes; and all the little animals and birds were so very much obliged to dear Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.
So that at the bottom of the hill when they came to the stile, there was nothing left to carry except Lucie’s one little bundle.
Lucie scrambled up the stile with the bundle in her hand; and then she turned to say “Good-night,” and to thank the washer-woman. – But what a very odd thing! Mrs. Tiggy-winkle had not waited either for thanks or for the washing bill!
She was running running running up the hill – and where was her white frilled cap? and her shawl? and her gown – and her petticoat?
And how small she had grown – and how brown – and covered with PRICKLES!
Why! Mrs. Tiggy-winkle was nothing but a HEDGEHOG.
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(Now some people say that little Lucie had been asleep upon the stile – but then how could she have found three clean pocket-handkins and a pinny, pinned with a silver safety-pin?
And besides – I have seen that door into the back of the hill called Cat Bells – and besides I am very well acquainted with dear Mrs. Tiggy-winkle!)’
Look closely at your copies of The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (and refer to the Derwentwater Sketchbook if you are lucky enough to have access to one). Unless you look carefully, it is difficult to pick up from the book pictures how beautifully Beatrix Potter has painted the fells in the background, conjuring up the landscape that Judy loved as much as the hedgehog, and where she and Dick will now spend their days.
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The Beatrix Potter Society thanks Libby Joy for her wonderful tribute to Judy Taylor Hough.
