Dark corners of the Grange

When I lived in Celigny in Switzerland in the early '70's, Richard and Liz Burton had their house just the other side of the railway line - in fact, I knew a couple who dined with them regularly - how's that for being close to celebrity? You could often find him in the Cafe de la Gare (and see him perilously setting off to cross the main Geneva-Lausanne line to go home) But in those days I preferred the slightly more salubrious Hotel du Soleil.

When I went back there many years later, it was after Burton had died in 1984 and I set out to look for his grave. There is a nice modern cemetery, light and bright, but if you walk on deep down the woods towards the river you come across le Vieux-Cimetière. It is a dark and dank spot. I didn't know and was surprised to find that just across the pathway was the grave of Alistair Maclean who died three years later. How interesting, I thought, when you remember all the associations - the books that Maclean wrote, turned into films starring Burton. Richard Burton's Grave

Anyway, celebrity in dark corners of graveyards took me to the Grange Cemetery this morning. Thomas Nelson was never as famous as Burton - but in 1798 he founded a publishing house. Many of us will remember the imprint from our childhood. It began in religious books, and became a major mainline publisher. The company published the first Conan Doyle's.

In the States, it became and still is a very major publisher again of religious literature.