My wife and I were delighted to receive an invitation to join Gordon Young and his wife Chrissie at his surprise birthday party at Barton on Sea last Saturday. Gordon was the ‘ships boy’ on PAN’s boat, the Laloun, back in 1947 when titles were printed in France. If you don’t know Gordon’s story catch up with his biography in part one HERE and part two HERE. It was a very good turnout with, we estimate, well over 50 people enjoying the very convivial atmosphere. Here is Gordon reading his congratulations card from King Charles and Queen Camilla. He tells me he has a lot more stories about his time at PAN so keep reading this blog.

After featuring a couple of printer’s proofs last week, here are a couple more. The first one is for ‘Queen of a Distant Country’ which I’ve added to a page of later John Braine covers with ISBNs. PAN only published one of his using their eclectic numbering, this being M181 ‘The Jealous God’ The second is by Conrad Von Bark titled ‘The Second Red Dragon’ and again I’ve added it to a page of his covers with ISBNs.

I picked up a ‘Piccolo Paperbacks 75’ catalogue from December 1975 which is made more interesting by featuring may illustrations from the books. It also includes a flyer for a competition for under 7s to draw a ghost and 7s to 12s to write a story about a ghost to win a bookshelf full of Piccolo titles. I will scan all of the catalogue for next week’s post.

Thanks to Maurice at Zardoz Books I now have four more printer’s proofs for PAN titles. One of them is for a book I mentioned recently, namely  ‘Lovely She Goes’ by William Mitford and another for ‘Masquerade at the Wells’ by Lorna Hill.

I picked up a copy of ‘The Kappillan of Malta’ from the secondhand bookshop at the NT property of Shughborough Hall. I thought I had already got it but this copy was in better condition. When I went to swap them over I realised they were not the same. They are both 1975 but one is a 1st and one a 2nd printing with a cover by Harry Hants. I’m wondering why PAN felt the need to change it so soon although I prefer the 2nd printing.

Just to prove that Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner didn’t have sole rights to ‘slave’ genre books, here is one by Nancy Cato. ‘Brown Sugar’ was published by PAN in 1977 and although the cover is in the same style as many others I don’t know the artist. The NEL edition, included on the page, has a less salacious cover but I was intrigued by how much of the blurb on the backs is the same.

Georgette Heyer was featured on the front cover of my ‘New Titles’ list for October and November 1979 and is from the later series PAN published around the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. So far I have 40 titles in the same style but very few have a named artist and if anyone knows of others I may have missed please leave a comment or email me.

‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ by Ken Kersey was first published by PAN as a Picador in 1973 with a cover by John Holmes. It was republished in 1975 as a film tie-in and again in 2002 as one of Picador’s Thirty Books. The film tie-in is dated 1973 but the film came out in 1975 so it look like PAN didn’t change the text block.

On the 16th of June 2023 PAN ran a competition to win goodies as listed below. This was to coincide with the publication of ‘The Ghost Ship’ by Kate Mosse. This would normally be well passed my cut off date but I happened to spot the ‘exclusive’ badge for sale for a couple of pounds and couldn’t resist. I am left wondering how few badges were made to make them exclusive?

I picked up a couple of titles by G H Frost featuring his ‘Recon Crew’. It was the cover artwork by Gino d’Achille that attracted me, even my wife said she liked the first one. Apparently Frost was also the author of at least five ‘Able Team’ titles.

You can find some weird stuff on line and I was tempted by two sharks, one made from a gold colour metal and one white, featuring a 3D shark. The back shows part of the PAN cover for ‘Jaws’ from a later edition going on the tag line ‘It’s never safe to go back in the water’ and the word ‘JAWS’ is in the shark teeth style PAN used devised by Ken Hatherley. Not bad for a penny each. The seller said they are coins minted in 2000 to commemorate the 25th Anniversary?

I have two copies of ‘The Nine Bad Shots of Golf’ with distinctly different coloured covers. I’m wondering if one has been in the sun too long but would the brown turn green or visa versa? They are identical in every other respect.

Good to see the pop up bookshop was back in Wolverhampton where it will be until the end of the month. Unfortunately there was nothing that grabbed my attention even though there were more tables and shelves than last time. There is too much contemporary fiction for my taste unfortunately but they seem to be doing a good trade otherwise.

Anita Burgh was born on the 9th June 1937 in Gillingham, Kent and now lives in France. I’m not sure how many books she has written, I’ve seen 62 mentioned although PAN only published her first five titles. These included her ‘Daughters of a Granite Land’ trilogy. They have covers by an assortment of artists but one I was surprised to see was Simon Bartram. Why you may ask? Well read below.

When I asked my Grandson William what he would like for Christmas he named four books by Simon Bartram. Simon was a name I thought was new to me but then I remembered seeing him in a list of artists represented by Alison Eldred. I email Alison to ask if Simon would be willing to sign the books he wrote and illustrated. By return I go a message saying he would love to do it and so William is now not only the proud owner of four of Simon’s books signed and embellished by him but also of sheets of stickers, books marks and, not that I’m jealous, his own personal alien! My sister in law is a teacher and Simon’s books featured in class lessons last term so now the signed copies and William’s alien have been view by several classes at the school in Maidstone.

I picked up a book while in Kent, namely ‘Lovely She Goes!’ by William Mitford. It was the Sphere edition from 1981 which reminded me of the PAN edition from 1971. Not having the PAN to hand I bought the Sphere anyway to comparing them both. Neither copy appears to have been read and I’m wondering which has the most accurate representation of the trawler involved in the story as there are certainly differences?

One of my other interest I have mentioned occasionally is the maintenance of a disused railway track as a walking/cycling greenway called the ‘McClean Way’ We have wanted it to be properly surfaced since this option was first mentioned in 2000. Now, at last, the first phase of the multi million pound upgrade is taking, place converting six inches of water and mud in to something suitable for all year round use. When this section is finished in a couple of weeks there will be a delay before phase two as we are entering the nesting season from March to August. It looks a bit stark at the moment but nature will soon reclaim the verges.

After hearing about the passing of Chris Moore, which I mentioned last week, I remembered the several email conversations we have had over the years. I was really chuffed to get his reply to my mention of the lettering for Larry McMurty covers where Tom Stimpson dd the main artwork and Chris did the titles. He said “It’s really nice to see that someone has taken an active interest in a field of work that has largely gone unnoticed over the years” 

Having been down in Kent for the week I now need to add more cover scans to Chris’ page but I was intrigued to see he went to Maidstone College of Art as that was where I was. I have taken the liberty of including my condensed version of the biography on www.chrismooreillustration.co.uk which says “Chris Moore was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire June 1st 1947. He was educated at Mexborough Grammar School, Doncaster Art School and Maidstone College of Art on a Graphic Design course. From there he was accepted by the Royal College of Art to study Illustration. After several years he discovered S/F working on titles by Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Frederick Pohl, Anne McCaffrey, Clifford D. Simak, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Arthur C. Clarke and Samuel R. Delany, Moore was also the artist of choice for more mainstream writers like Jeffery Archer, Frederick Forsyth, Jackie Collins, Claire Francis, Stephen Leather, Wilbur Smith, Terence Strong, and Colin Forbes. Amongst the UK publishers Chris worked for were not only PAN but Transworld, Orion, Penguin, Harper Collins, Sphere, Hodder, Associated Book Publishers (Magnum), Headline, Random House, Time Warner, Octopus, Hamlyn, and many others. In the early 80s Moore joined Artist Partners alongside many familiar names such as Brian Sanders and Cecil Vieweg, Chris became good friends with Jim Burns, Fred Gambino and Keith Scaife all well know S/F cover artists. Chris sadly passed away on the 7th February 2025” 

I was most surprised to find I had ‘won’ a bundle of stock lists on eBay. The starting bid was £1.00 which someone had bid so I went to £1.20 where it remained for the several days to go before it finished. I was convinced some else would bid but no the 20 were mine for £1.20 which I think is a bargain. They are from PAN, Fontana, Hodder and Stoughton, Puffin, Sphere, NEL, Transworld and Granada.

Having mentioned Derek Arthur Stowe before I was pleased to get hold of number 88 of the ‘Tecnirama’ partwork. This was first published in the UK as ‘Understanding Science’ while ‘Tecnirama’ was published in Italy and the cover is the one piece of original artwork by Derek I have. It was also used as the frontispiece for a couple of editions of hardbacks in the UK and Germany. Being a bit of a completest I know I am missing ‘Understanding Science’ second printing for number 88 so if anyone has a spare copy or possibly a scan or knows of any more sightings please comment or email me.

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.