For Pity's Sake - Paperback

Born in Langport, Somerset. He had an Irish mother and a French grandfather. He moved to London at six and a half years old. First Bermondsey and then Burnt Oak. From the age of secen he spent time in hospitals and sanatoriums, suffering from tuberculosis. He left hospital at 14 having spent most of his time drawing, painting and making plastersin figures sitting up in bed (when he left hospital, he was so weak he had to learn to walk again).

With the help of nuns (his mother was a devoted Catholic) who worked him very hard, by the time he was 20 he had graduated from the Polytechnic Regent Street and St. Martin's School of Art with a BA in fine art and a degree in photography. Later he gained another degree in photography. Later he gained another degree in art and literature (mainly French).

He then spent one year in Paris where he continued to paint, and it was there that he met Jean Loup Sieff, the internationally famous advertising and fashion photographer, who talked Billy into giving up painting and becoming a photographer. He was Jean Loup Sieff's assistant for nine months, just after Jean Loup Sieff came back from New York in 1966, after working with Sieff he went to Rome where he worked for the magazine Oggi. Then onto Switzerland where he lived in Geneva and Neuchâtel, he then went on to work for Rolf Winquest in Sweden for three months.