I was just looking on-line for things to do for an upcoming visit to Ludlow when I saw a familiar name, that of Stanley John Weyman, who was born at 54, Broad Street, Ludlow on 7th August 1855. There isn’t a ‘Blue Plaque’ but there is a blue sign as it is now, amongst other things, the Conservative Party Office and the Driving Test Centre.Weyman wrote twenty nine books between 1890 and 1928 (he died in 1928) of which six titles were published by PAN The first was ‘Under The Red Robe’ in 1951 and then they waited nearly twenty years before publishing another five. The covers can be seen by clicking HERE. ‘Under The Red Robe’ was probably the most popular being filmed three times including this version from 1937.I’ve not had any luck trying to find out who the artist/s were who painted the covers apart from ‘Under The Red Robe’ which is signed Chas(?) Cattermole.

I was sorry to hear of the death of Brian Cant, a name from the time of both mine and my children’s youth. He was on ‘Play School’ for 21 years (previously having trained as a printer) when PAN Piccolo published several titles linked to the series on behalf of the BBC. Unfortunately I can only find one of mine at the moment but I’ll keep searching as I know I have several more. There is another link to Piccolo and ‘Play School’ I’ve mentioned before through Hilary Hayton.

I’ve only just discovered that PAN published a series of books for those that believed in astrology. They were titled ‘Teri King’s PAN Astral Horoscopes’ The early ones featured quite nice drawings of the symbols for each sign of the zodiac but I’m not so sure about the later ones. I have made a page to show some examples plus other titles from the lucrative astrology market. Click HERE to see them.

I would love to put together a set from the early 80’s to show all the 12 symbols but some of the prices asked are just silly numbers such as this below.

Short blog this week due to the weather being so nice we are going away in the camper after being tied up with meetings about our ‘Back The Track’ project which is certainly gaining enthusiasm if not any actual on the ground progress, still early days yet.

I don’t think I posted this blog when I wrote it back in February so waste not want not as they say. I’ve updated the pop-up shop details with what should be it next appearance.

Nearly missed an event I’ve not seen around here before, a pop-up second hand book shop. It was in an empty shop unit in Wolverhampton and it doesn’t say much for the centre managements optimism as to re-letting it when they say the organisers can have it again at the end of August. Managed to find a few books but nothing PAN related unfortunately.I do like to keep our antipodean PAN Fans interested so here’s one for you. Alan Marshall’s Australia which was published by PAN (Australia) Ltd in 1882 and printed and bound in Australia by New Century Press. It cost me $5 with an unbelievable postage charge of $2. It arrived as quickly as some where I’ve spent several times the cost of the book in postage to not get any better a service.

And finally just when I though I was Daphne du Maurier’d out in PAN book covers along comes another one namely ‘Rule Britannia’ from 1974. I’ve added it to the page of others which can be found HERE.

UPDATE Sorry to hear of the death of Adam West who’ll probably be best remembered for playing Batman. I thought PAN had a pop-up book of Batman to go along with the ones they did for other DC heroes such as Superman, Spider-Man and The Hulk. Unfortunately as all the pop-up books are stored away ready for relocation later in the year I can’t check right now.