This photograph was apparently taken in 1905 for a guide to Essex and shows a donkey cart on the Saffron Waldon to Dunmow Road lead by nanny Lizzie Drain of Thaxted. Now you may be wondering what this has to do with PAN? Well the child on the right is Estelle Blumenfeld (aged 4) and the one of the left is Josephine (aged 2) Josephine went on to marry Alan Bott, founder of PAN Books while Estelle had a son named Ralph Holmes Vernon-Hunt who became MD of PAN Books and is probably most well know for posing as James Bond on the covers in the 60’s. At the time they were living at Hill Farm, Great Easton, Dunmow.

Coincidently I only noticed this week that ‘Stand Up Virgin Soldiers’ by Leslie Thomas is dedicated to Ralph Vernon-Hunt.

After getting a couple of Morse books from Bulgaria I now find I have ten with the pink/red PAN logo on the covers and they can be seen HERE. I’m still trying to sort out dates as some seem to be the same, just wondering if there was a TV tie-in and a non tie-in version?

I’m always amazed at the range of subjects covered by PAN and HERE is a classic example. I’ve been using it for at least three days but it hasn’t lived up to the cover saying “A quick and effective method of learning to play the piano … now” What it doesn’t say having even a modicum of musical talent might help hence I failed!

… and lastly I have now changed the front page which used to say ‘”25ish Years’ so it now reads ’45ish Years’ or really up to the time we lost the figure of PAN in the logo.

PS Glad to see my hyperlinks are now red as WordPress, after many years of letting me change their colour, decided no matter what I did I was going to get blue. Thank goodness for Google and it appears I was not the only one puzzled but luckily someone put on the HTML code that solved it.