For those that are completists it can be quite difficult with subtle differences such as for GP27 ‘A Book of Wit and Humour’ where the covers appear almost identical but one has a different font and one is a slightly different colour. They also have different lists of other PAN titles in the back.

I’ve heard from Lesley and Sam, Tom Stimpson’s sister and son, to say they are arranging an exhibition of Tom’s work this summer. I know June 14th seems a long way off but it will be on us before we know it. Tom would have been 70 on the 14th June 2025 hence the choice of date. It is being held in Westbury, Wiltshire, a place that may sound familiar to many collectors as the home of Maurice Flanagan of Zardoz Books so if you are visiting make sure you leave enough time to include a visit to his £1.00 shop as well. I’ll post more details a I get them.

As a belated birthday treat I found a coach trip for a long weekend in March where you stayed in Northumberland. It was just what I wanted as they picked you up at your door, took you to a hotel in Alnwick via a stop in Ripon and then a couple of trips out to the coast plus free time in Alnwick which would have meant a visit to Barter Books for me. I’ve not been there before and was looking forward to it, having read mixed reviews, but I’ve just had an email to say due to insufficient numbers it has been cancelled. I should have suspected something when they asked where I would like a seat on the coach and was told I could chose almost anywhere. This had now prompted me to plan a trip of my own including visits to friends and relatives up north I’ve not seen for years and hopefully visits to other secondhand bookshops!

I was sorry to hear of the passing of artist Chris Moore on the 7th February, more next week.

Recently I’ve been posting titles with the same number but different artwork on the covers, this week it’s covers with the same number and very slight tweaking. For those that are completists this is very important  as some can be quite subtle. I have taken a random selection of GP titles off my shelves to show other variants including GP36 ‘The Bull of Monos’, GP54 ‘The Lost Pharoah’ and GP39 ‘Women in Antiquity Colliers used the same image on the 1962 edition.

PAN seems to have embraced all subjects when it came to publishing books and the 1979 ‘An Irish Camera’ is no exception. It has numerous photos from the mid to late 1800s including many showing evictions from small holding and bears being lead around for entertainment..

On a completely different topic PAN teamed up with Kellogg’s Special K to print ‘Body Skulpture’ for those into Pilates and Yoga. I’m going to take their word for it that these exercises will help to keep you fit! On the title page it listed the website www.panpilates.co.uk but on trying it I get ‘Error 404’ for page not found so looks like that wasn’t long lived!

After mentioning Liz Moyes last week I took note that three of her covers were for Irwin Shaw’s ‘The Master Storyteller’ series. I have sorted out my later Shaw’s from the 70s and early 80s which can be seen HERE PAN also published ‘Young Lions’ in many editions from 1957 onwards plus X131 ‘Two Weeks in Another Town’, G295 ‘Tip on a Dead Jockey’, G337 ‘Lucy Crown’ and M12 ‘Mixed Company’ Irwin Shaw was born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff (27/02/1913 – 16/05/1984) and was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author who has sold more than 14 million copies. ‘The Young Lions’ is about the fate of three soldiers during World War II and was made into a film starring Marlo Brando and Montgomery Clift.

Having mentioned last week the two ‘roughs’ by Gordon King I got for ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ I set about trying to find the edition they might have eventually ended up in. I bought the Everyman Library paperback edition as it said illustrated by Gordon King to find they had just used his artwork for the cover. I then thought I would investigate the hardback edition only to find no mention of Gordon at all but with a cover by Steve Lavis. Does anyone have an edition that has illustration in the book as neither of these do?

As well as publishing the Referees’ Handbook, PAN was also involved with the Football Association Year Book for a short while, The 71/72 edition was published by Pelham while the 72/73, 73/74 and 74/75 editions were published by Heinemann and distributed by PAN and had two ISBNs from both publishers. It wasn’t until the 75/76 and 76/77 editions that Heinemann disappeared and PAN took over as official publisher with their logo on the spine. In 77/78 Pelham took over again, then Clowes.

I recently picked up a couple of ‘roughs’ by Gordon King for the 1977 Everyman Library edition of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ by Anthony Hope. I thought I would contact Gordon to ask him about them but on looking on the internet I was sorry to see he passed away in January 2022. Gordon painted hundred of book covers including several for PAN. I’m sorry I didn’t communicate with him more often as it was 2017 we last had an online conversation. He was always happy to answer my queries and sent me photos of himself holding an mystery example of his artwork. We never did track it down.

I’ve been talking to Brian Sanders as I came across some more covers by his wife, Liz Moyes, and I also acquired a painting by Brian which he tells me disappeared in mysterious circumstances. He is happy for me to have it so thank you Brian. It features ‘The battle of Agincourt’ and appeared in the magazine ‘Men Only’ in the 70s. Brian also sent me a scan of a card he received for his 40th birthday which Liz organised, with portraits of him from nine different artist, what a wonderful keepsake.

The artist are;
Liz Moyes, Clare Davis, Angela Landels,
Peter Brooks, Roger Coleman, Alan Lee
Carol Binch, Brian Froud, Norman Weaver

Talking to Martin Baker again regarding his paintings for the Fontana Christie ‘foxtail’ series of covers he very kindly send me images of some of the original artwork which appeared in an exhibition at the Barbican in 1984. Unfortunately some of them were cropped when they were framed. I’ve added them to the covers page in the appropriate places. 

I like UK movie press books where they show the PAN title and in this case it was for the 1966 American comedy film ‘Penelope’ directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Peter Falk, Jonathan Winters, and Dick Shawn. The screenplay was by George Wells’ based on the 1965 novel of the same title and written by Howard Melvin Fast under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham. I’ve included a couple of versions of the film posters as I was intrigue to see how the hand of the man on the right moves. I was also surprised to notice the very small GS on the cover of the book as I thought it was just a film tie-in but Glenn Steward must have had a hand in the design.

PAN published several books by the late Clive James under their Picador imprint. Most are softbacks but a few are hardbacks of which I have a couple of examples one of which says it’s a Picador Poetry volume which is a first to me. I was pleased to find it contained a letter from Clive James but I had to investigate one of the items mentioned at the end of it. For information to those not in the antipodes a Polly Waffle was an Australian chocolate bar that was manufactured in Sydney by Nestlé. It consisted of a waffle wafer tube filled with marshmallow and coated in chocolate. It ceased to be manufactured in 2009 apparently. Wagon Wheels are a biscuit base with marshmallow on top covered in chocolate. My favorite is the ‘jammie’ one which has raspberry flavoured apple jam and I list it as ‘one of my five a day’

Having mentioned the ‘ripped off’ Christie covers last week I started to look for more PAN titles and found ‘Murder in Mesopotamia’ retiltled “Vụ Án Mạng Ở Vùng Mesopotamia” in Vietnamese using the original SAX artwork. I have also found ‘Poirot Investigates‘ and a few others but the only images I have so far are thumbnails so I’ll try and keep search for proper ones for a later blog.

I’ve mentioned Martin Baker’s covers for Fontana Agatha Christie titles before, well now they have appeared in an article by David Morris on his excellent  ‘Collecting Christie’ website. He includes a very interesting interview with Martin which gives a lot of background to the ‘foxtail’ series. When asked, I was more than happy for David to use the scans off my page as it includes a plug for the site. It also shows I do go off at a tangent away from PAN very occasionally if I like the artwork. I heard from Martin to say he is not happy that other publishers use his artwork without permission such as there two on the right, one of which is a Bosnian version of “Cat Among the Pigeons” while the other is more a possible homage on an Italian edition of ‘Macabro Quiz’ by Oliviero Berni.

A couple of titles I have on my shelves are ‘Beyond the Void’ and ‘Dreaming of Utopia’ both by Steve Holland of Bear Alley Books and well worth a read. They both contain examples of PAN book covers with ‘Utopia’ featuring four by Reina Mary Sington and ‘Void’ also has four but by Henry Fox.

In Penguin Collector 102 Peter Miller states in his article that there are  ‘Too Few Murders in Penguin’ pointing out how some prolific crime writers were well served by other publishers but not by Penguin. One example was Arthur Upfield where PAN published and reprinted many more of his titles than did Penguin. Peter has managed to include the cover of  PAN 441 ‘Cake in a Hat Box’ by Rex Archer but he said space precluded more.

After Mentioning Martin Baker and his Fontana ‘foxtail’ series of Christie covers recently I found I had actually scanned a couple more and somehow missed adding them to the page. I also found one I hadn’t got so ‘Murder in Mesopotamia’ is now there. I’m grateful to David Morris from the  ‘Collecting Christie’ website who also pointed out another boxed set I didn’t have. The slip case is the same for both but one measures 65mm wide and the other 80mm so they were not generic but made to fit the selection within. I have also been told that the cat on ‘Cat Among The Pigeons’ was Martin’s own cat called Fido.

After a visit to Attingham Park, well not the park as it was closed due to over 30 mature tress being down after a storm, we went round the house decorated for Christmas. This is always followed by an obligatory visit to the second hand bookshop and we were pleased to see this sign and the amount, some of which is due to the purchasing and donating of books by my wife and myself.

David Lodge (born 28/01/1935, London and died 01/01/2025, Birmingham) was an English novelist, literary critic, playwright, and editor known chiefly for his satiric novels about academic life, especially the Campus trilogy: Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984), and Nice Work (1988). Lodge was educated at University College, London (B.A., 1955; M.A., 1959), and at the University of Birmingham (Ph.D., 1967). His early novels, known mostly in England, included ‘The Picturegoers’ (1960), about a group of Roman Catholics living in London and ‘Ginger, You’re Barmy’ (1962), Lodge’s novelistic response to his army service in the mid-1950s were both published by PAN. The latter title was prominently displayed, cover out, on the shelf above my desk at work as my boss had very ginger hair. I think he was the only one who never twigged why it was there which sort of summed him up.

Wishing you all the best for 2025 and to many more blogs.

I’ve mentioned the BOAC Library before but HERE are a some more images. BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) was the British state-owned airline created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. In 1949 it absorbed British European Airways (BEA) and British South American Airways (BSAA) although BEA continued to operate British domestic and European routes. In 1971 BOAC and BEA merged forming today’s British Airways. Both BOAC and BEA had on board libraries with a variety of books from different publishers to loan and readers were invited to keep them if they hadn’t finished it by the end of the flight. I also like the one from Singapore Airlines Library, just what you want to read at 36,000 feet!

There were a couple of PANs on eBay recently that I was definitely interested in but went above my maximum. They were ‘The Dam Busters’ which went for £78.99 and ‘Enemy Coast Ahead’ which went for £52. What made them interesting was the number of POW signatures they claimed to have, one with 19 and the other 17. It would have been fascinating to research the ones that could be read,

Wishing all fellow PAN Fans a very Happy Christmas
and successful book hunting in 2025.

A little while ago I was lucky enough to get the original artwork for ten Corgi covers by John Albert Richards (09/01/1915 to 01/07/1964). I justified buying them by saying they were a Christmas present to myself. I thought that a couple had also been used on Bantam titles but thanks to Rog Peyton who pointed out that the Corgi covers by Richards were nearly exact copies of the Bantams. To see the covers click HERE

I couldn’t find any Christmas examples of same number, different cover so it will be PAN number 66 ‘The Saint in New York’ this week. Two of the covers are variants by John Pollack and two are variants by artist unknown. The changes over the four years seems to be mainly due to match house styles.

It’s hard to believe it was 25 years ago today I started the website www.tikit.net just as a bit of fun scanning in PAN book covers when the normal resolution was 640 x 480 and I went for 800 x 600, cutting edge stuff. It was the time when you seem to pay for every byte on a web server so images and text were kept to a minimum but since then things have certainly changed. I’m not saying it’s cheap but you get a lot more for your money. I can’t remember when the blog started or even what the first was called but it was followed by Blogger and then, as now, WordPress. I looked on the Internet Archive and the earliest capture was from 18th August 2002 and doesn’t look too dissimilar from now. One day it may get a makeover but I’ve been saying that for a  long time, if it sort of works then don’t try to fix it.

This week we have five editions with the same number but with three different covers, namely Pan 42 ‘The Ringer’ by Edgar Wallace. It has been filmed several times including a version with Herbert Lom from 1952. It had a sequel, ‘Again the Ringer’ also published bp PAN as G567 and X441.

PAN Macmillan and Read for Good are giving away one thousand copies of ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ plus other bits and pieces to thirty one children’s ward’s around the country for those in hospital over Christmas. The staff at PAN Macmillan gift wrapped by hand copies of the 20th anniversary edition of the book and also included are festive activity packs and free access to The Gruffalo’s Child audio book and animated film, plus welcoming Gruffalo window stickers to help brighten up the hospital wards. Staff in each hospital will also receive a Christmas card thanking them for everything they do, written by illustrator Axel Scheffler and complete with a hand drawn festive Mouse or Gruffalo!