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!

This weeks trio with the same number is different from last weeks in that it’s the later two that have the same artwork. This time it’s PAN 103 ‘The Avenging Saint’ by Leslie Charteris with the 1949 edition printed in France and having artwork by Stein while the 1951 is printed in the UK with artwork by John Pollack as does the 1952 edition but goes back to being printed in France.

I’ve started to read ‘Say I’m Sorry to Mother’ by Carol Dix with a cover by Jennifer Eachus. Although Dix wrote sixteen novels PAN appears to have only published this one which I picked up in a charity shop,. Since looking for other copies online I’m surprised at the prices being asked. Although the story revolves around four girls some of the stories resonate with me. Going to St Ives was something we did in the late 60s when we could drive and had acquired a Standard Vanguard with overdrive. Before then it was hitching around Ireland. When I was fifteen, and the start of the summer holidays, me and my mate Tavish walked to the end of the road and started hitching. After six weeks we had managed to go all around Ireland living on a large bag of oats, Cadbury’s chocolate, Major cigarettes and Guinness. We smoked ‘grass’ which could have actually been grass for all the affect we felt. We ran a hostel for a week when the warden dropped down dead in the pub .We had one change of clothes each and it was a good job those that picked us up, often a couple of friendly priests(!), couldn’t smell us before we got in the car. We had a tent or slept under the stars, in bus shelters or on beaches or if we wanted a bit of luxury, a youth hostel. We must have smelt a bit off as the daughter of one of the hostel wardens made us spend the day on the beach in our trunks while she washed and dried our clothes. We repeated this for the next two years but it was never quite the same again.

As I have mentioned before my other daily distraction, apart from PAN books, is helping to keep our local disused railway as a community asset, a greenway for all. It is not surfaced and is fine in the summer but in the winter it is something else. Since 2000 there have been promises of upgrading the surface to a proper walking/cycling route and making it part of NCN5. Well at last it is happening as part of a multi million pound scheme with, hopefully, the first of the three stages completed by March. We are also working on the Lichfield three mile section so, in the not too distant future, there will be a safe off road route between Walsall and Lichfield. The reason I mention this is that there are currently a lot of meetings happening so books are taking a back seat but hopefully not for too long. In the photo are representatives of the construction company, National Highways, SUSTRANS, the local council and me. Note the brand new spades just for the occasion!

PAN 172 ‘You Can’t Keep the Change’ by Peter Cheyney had three editions with this number, two with a cover by John Pollack and one with a cover by Sax (Rudolph Michael Sachs) It’s a bit odd in that the 1951 and the second reprint from 1952 were printed by Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd. while the 1952 edition was printed in France by Le Livre Universal, Paris.

While wrapping up ‘Rhymes With Berti’ by Martin Baker as a Christmas present for our grandson I glanced at a few pages and saw an illustration that looked familiar. It was a cat that first appeared on Martin’s painting of the cover of ‘Cat Amongst The Pigeons’ by Agatha Christie and published by Fontana.

I was disappointed in that I wasn’t able to visit ‘The Paperback and Pulp Fair’ held on the 24th November but as usual Jules Burt has produced yet another of his excellent videos running at just over an hour with very comprehensive cover of this and the ephemera fair next door. I’ve scrutinised it very careful but have not spotted that one elusive title I’m after namely X705 ‘Junior Crosswords Book 3’ by Robin Burgess

I’ve been watching this on eBay for a while and I’m not surprised it hasn’t sold especially when you can see the price inside someone was asking for it! It was one of the first books published in 1945 by PAN and was an unnumbered hardback.

I was delighted to receive an email from artist Martin Baker, having recently made up a page of the ‘foxtail’ series of Agatha Christe titles published by Fontana, with the majority featuring his wonderful artwork on the covers. Of the sixty nine covers I know of in this series (not including the biography) Martin painted sixty six of them with the other three having artwork by Tom Adams from a previous series. It was good to have Martin confirm that the ones I had not attributed to him were his, covers were I couldn’t spot the tell tale MB. Martin also confirmed he was the author of ‘Artist of Radio Times’ which I had queried. Martin was also kind enough to say “I’m attach a couple of pages from an autobiography rehearsing my Christie covers. This isn’t an egregiously self-regarding work – I’ve had a colourful life, and was asked to record it!” Click HERE to read the pages. I think I might have been tempted to buy some of those socks as they also show PAN covers. Here are a couple more of Martin’s books and I’m really pleased to say “Thank you” as he has signed and gifted a copy of ‘Rhymes with Berti’ to our grandson, I’m sure he’ll love it.

When I made a page of John D MacDonald’s ‘Travis McGee’ covers I thought I must have them all but no, up pops another one which I’ve added to the page. It is namely ‘A Deadly Shade of Gold’ from 1974. Which, as usual, begs the question “How many more are out there that I haven’t got?”

This weeks three editions of the same title with the same artwork but with a different house style is for PAN 100 ‘The Lost World’ by Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. They span the years 1949 to 1952 and are all UK printings by Hazel, Watson and Viney Ltd. Frustratingly I have yet to find the cover artist as there is no signature or initials to be seen.

It is 60 years this month (21st November) that Wilbur Smith’s first book was published in hardback namely ‘When The Lion Feeds’  Two years later PAN published it in paperback and it went on to sell over a million copies earning Wilbur a ‘Golden PAN Award’ This was to be the first of his twenty two of these awards. To celebrate the 60th anniversary Zaffre are reissuing it with the cover from 2018 but this one has a 60th sticker. There is a possibility that in South Africa it could be reissued with the PAN Hans Helweg cover from 1970 which is one of my favourites, This could tie in with the opening of the Wilbur Smith Museum in Cape Town. We shall have to wait and see.

In a recent edition of the ‘Fortean Times’ there was a letter from a reader about a mysterious vanishing/moving book. My son has this magazine and thought I might be interested as the book in question, complete with photograph, was ‘More Tales of Unease’ edited by John Burke from 1969 with the weird creepy cover. There was also a mention of ‘The Fourth Ghost Book’ edited by James Turner from 1968.

PAN published at least four of the thirteen titles written by Alvin Toffler (04/09/1928 to 27/06/2016) Wikipedia states “He was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on their effects on cultures worldwide.Toffler was an associate editor of Fortune magazine. In his early works he focused on technology and its impact, which he termed “information overload”. In 1970, his first major book about the future, ‘Future Shock’, became a worldwide best-seller and has sold over 6 million copies. He and his wife Heidi Toffler (1929–2019), who collaborated with him for most of his writings, moved on to examining the reaction to changes in society with another best-selling book, ‘The Third Wave’, in 1980. In it, he foresaw such technological advances as cloning, personal computers, the Internet, cable television and mobile communication”

Having enjoyed the films ‘Paddington’ and ‘Paddington 2’ we were looking forward to ‘Paddington in Peru’ but I have to say I was a little disappointed apart from the ‘smelly’ poster which smells of oranges when you rubbed them. It was on one of the large screens and there were all six of us in the cinema which may say something. I felt it lacked the subtle humour and interesting story lines of the previous two but then again maybe I’m not the audience it’s aimed at. PAN published several ‘Paddington’ titles under the Piccolo inprint with artwork by Fred Banbery.