Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, who has died aged 97, was the founder of the Open University’s publishing division, to which she recruited (among many others) me and my colleague John Pettit. She was also, with Michael Turner, co-translator of Hergé’s Tintin books, and in this capacity her name is known to Tintin fans throughout the English-speaking world.
Born in Northwood, Middlesex, Leslie was the daughter of Nora (nee Briggs) and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, a retired lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy. Her first name (with its unusual spelling for a female) commemorates her father’s distinguished military career and his untimely death shortly before Leslie was born.
After going to the Royal Naval school in south London, she attended Miss Kerr-Sanders’ Secretarial College. Towards the end of the second world war she found herself working for the US justice department in London, Paris and Frankfurt, and in this role she helped with preparations for the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
Back in civilian life, Leslie’s secretarial skills took her into publishing – initially at Collins, where she then trained as an editor. Following a move to Methuen, where she became a rights specialist, she met Turner and with him began translating the Tintin stories, a project that continued for three decades. “Translation” in this context meant rendering Hergé’s Brussels slang into English utterances that could be fitted into the speech bubbles of Hergé’s original drawings. Leslie was especially proud of their invented Tintinian oaths, such as “blistering barnacles!”
In 1970 Leslie joined the newly created Open University in Milton Keynes as a rights specialist – a move that inaugurated the happiest period of her life. She saw that, in order to produce high-quality educational materials, the university needed to recruit editors, graphic designers and other specialists to work alongside the academic authors. Soon she was managing a growing number of professional editors and rights specialists, which became the university’s publishing division.
After retirement in 1987, Leslie remained in the Milton Keynes area at her beloved cottage in Wicken in Northamptonshire, where she was active in church and village life. She is survived by seven nephews and nieces.
