PAN Fans Club

Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

PAN Fans Club - Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

Monthly Archives: January 2019

Adam Kay, James Herriot and a Couple of Artists Updates.

I was really pleased to hear from James Seabright who leads Seabright Productions of another ‘Golden PAN Award’ and this time given to Adam Kay for selling a million copies of ‘This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries Of A Junior Doctor’ Adam is touring the UK over the next few months with his show of the same name produced by James and, fingers crossed, my wife and I will get to see Adam (and maybe the award?) in Dudley in June.

It was my birthday last Wednesday and having spent the first part of it in A&E after my Iritis returned after five years I was really pleased to find what should have been a Christmas present to myself, but is now a Birthday present, had arrived a last. It is a boxed set of the first six James Herriot titles STILL in their shrink wrapped box. Now the dilemma is, as I bought them from Canada, do I open them to find out if they are they UK or Canadian editions, no clues on the outside? 

The couple of artist updates are for ‘Count Vronsky’s Daughter’ with a cover by George Sharp and ‘Storm Warning’ of which I now have a copy  and can confirm it is from 1993 with a cover by Adrian Chesterman.

Janet Sandison aka Jane Duncan, Dexter additions and raw fingers!

After falling off a ladder last week in our side passage and managing to run the fingers of my hands down both brick walls trying to brace myself I have nicely skinned all my finger tips. This is making typing and using a mouse a little painfully but on the plus side it has got me out of a lot of other things!

I eventually got the last title in the ‘An Apology for the Life of Jean Robinson’ series by Elizabeth Jane Cameron who wrote as Jane Duncan writing as Janet Sandison! Janet Sandison was the name of the main heroine in her ‘My Friends” series in which there were nineteen titles with fourteen of them published by PAN. I’ve not found artists for the first three titles but I did find a reference to the fourth being by Jooce Garrett and I’ve sent him an email to see if this is correct.

I also picked up another three editions in the Colin Dexter ‘Morse’ series that have the PAN Man logo on them from 1983 and 1984 (LBTW, TSWONQ, TROTTM) They might be seen as the ‘International’ editions as they are not TV tie-ins for countries where the series was probably not broadcast and on the plus side I don’t think they’ve ever been read.

If the fingers are up to it I’ll try and re scan all the Jane Duncan ‘My Friends’ titles and put them on one page as they are still under their PAN numbers at the moment.

UPDATE Have just heard back from Jooce Garrett to say that the Sandison cover is his and was the first one he did. Have also heard from Paul Wright who asked me to remind him which PAN covers were his which I’ve done and awaiting further communication.

Three Artists – Burningham, Wright and Coleman

It’s sad to report another artist has gone, this time it’s John Burningham who died on the 4th January but it wasn’t announced until last week. He illustrated many books but as far as PAN Fans go it is probably for his work for ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ that he is most well know. PAN published two editions in 1968, the first under the Piccolo imprint and the second as a film tie-in. Interestingly, although John illustrated the text in both, his work only features on the cover of the 2nd printing. Paul Wright is credited for the 1st.

It is a strange coincidence in that only this week I got a later copy of ‘Fiasco’ and was trying to work out the signature on the cover when I realised that this was also Paul Wright. I’ve tried to contact him to ask if he did the covers specifically for PAN or if they were recycled as he was a prolific marine artist, no reply so far. He also did the text illustrations for the Piccolo editions of the five Alexander Barrie novels (the above is an example)

I picked up a copy of ‘Learn to Paint Portraits’ by Roger Coleman which included the photo above. Roger painted covers for 1974 PAN Nevil Shute series which were also used for the US Ballantine editions. In the book he shows how he works on a portrait and I though one example looked familiar.It is of another PAN cover artist Michael Leonard whose self portrait hangs in the Ferens Art Gallery in Kingston-Upon-Hull except when we go to see it and all the portraits were replaced by contenders for the 2017 Turner Prize nominees. The book gave me a location for Roger and I’ve managed to track down an address for someone with the same name there and a letter has gone off. As usual fingers crossed but no response up to now.

Brian Garfield, Carola Salisbury and a couple of updates.

A little late but I’ve only just noticed we lost Brian Garfield on the 29th December, He wrote over 60 books under various names but PAN only published seven under his real name. He is probably most well know for the novel ‘Death Wish’ which was not published by PAN but a few others that were were made into films including ‘Hopscotch’ in 1980 and ‘Death Sentence’ from 2007. I’m still awaiting two of the titles but I’ve included scans from the internet until they arrive. See them HERE.

Another author who wrote under his own name of John Michael ‘Mike’ Butterworth (born on the 10th January 1924 in Nottingham) also used the pseudonym of Carola Salisbury and this time PAN only published those using the Salisbury name. As well as writing romance he also scripted ‘The Trigan Empire’ comic strip and was also credited with starting the ‘Playhour’ comic which gives me the excuse to resurrect my personalised artwork of Harry  Hamster who featured in it. Again two scans from the net but hoping to replace them soon with real scans, see them all HERE.

I’m still trying to get hold of copies of all the books featured in the ‘PAN Classsics’ series and I managed to get copies of ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Joseph Andrews’ but they were in a pile of other titles I didn’t really want but at a I price couldn’t resist. Looks like a National Trust bookshop will be getting another donation soon. 

One other book I’ve been trying to get for a while is the 1990 copy of ‘Storm Warning’ by Jack Higgins so when I saw one listed by a company that up to now has been 100% right in their descriptions as 1990 New Ed I though I’d got it but as usual turns out to be the same old 1977 edition as used in all the stock photos. Not sure why I want this one as I have a good image off the net but then I did have the rule that I would only include covers I actually had and I am still trying to make that true.