He is best known for his 20-volume Small Boat series, recounting trips along Europe's inland waterways in an Admiral's Barge, which he had converted into a sea going cabin cruiser, named "Commodore".

She led the first team of volunteers to work with displaced people in post-war Europe by the Guide International Service.

[9][10][11] Pilkington produced 19 volumes in the Small Boat series, the first of his sailing books being Thames Waters, published in 1956, "an account of traveling the Thames in his cabin cruiser, a former admiral's barge called the Commodore"; his other works in this field included How Boats Are Navigated (1962), One Foot in France (1992), History and Legends of the European Waterways (1998).

He also wrote about genetics and the relationship between sex and religion, these books including Males and Females (1948), Biology, Man and God (1951); How Your Life Began (1953); Revelation Through Science (1956); and World Without End (1960).

He was also "author of a 1966 report by the British Council of Churches, Sex and Morality, criticized by some as overly tolerant of extramarital and premarital relations.