On the 8th March 1978 the ‘Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’ first aired on BBC Radio 4. I still have it recorded on a 7½” tape on my reel to reel recorder along with all the other episodes. To celebrate it being 42 years PAN are reissuing all the titles in a new format in spite of the PAN edition of the book not actually being published until the following year. Later ‘So Long and Thanks for All the Fish’ included this advertising material. If anyone has a plug spare I would be really interested. This was the book that gave DA his first of three Golden PAN Awards
On looking through some books that we are going to donate to a National Trust bookshop I found the above flier. I well remember going just after it opened and was really pleased to see a couple of shops, several stalls in the library and on the market, a bookcase in the pub and a few charity shops all with a good stock of secondhand books for sale. There were promises of many more traders to come so we were really disappointed when we went back to find most of them had gone. within a year. Now there seems to be just the one charity shop with high prices. As Atherstone was only 20 miles away we thought it would be a regular outing but maybe we are partly to blame in that in the end we actually only went twice in twelves months!
I’m sure a fellow member of the Facebook group ‘James Bond Collectable Books Worldwide’ Nick Bennett won’t mind me sharing his post from last week. Apparently the London Hilton ‘007 Nightspot’ used PAN Bond book covers for their menus. He also included a few printers proofs of Bond covers he has in his collection. Thanks Nick, looks like another item to look out for.
