I’ve just bought four Julian May titles off eBay and they look as though they have never been read. Although I do already have them all I was interested in these as they are all signed to either ‘Peter Pann’ or ‘Celeste’ who worked at PAN in the 70’s. I knew who ‘Peter Pann’ was but I had to look up ‘Celeste’. They are the two on the left in this photograph namely Celeste Parsons and Peter Tietjen. I’ve mentioned Peter before as I have other titles inscribed to ‘Peter Pann’
UPDATE Just heard back as to who the third person is on the right and also some very interesting information concerning her link to Douglas Adams. More next after I’ve done a bit of research.
As usual I missed a date this time for Peter Gascoyne Townend, writer and photographer who was born in London on the 6th March 1935. He married Kate Moffat in 1973 and died in the London on the 6th June 1999. PAN published three of his four Philip Quest novels about a one-eyed photographer in 1973/74/75 but not ‘Triple Exposure’ which was published in the States by Pinnacle in 1979.
I’m inpressed with ‘Out of Focus’ as the photographer looks as though he went to extra mile and project a strip of film on her which includes the edge saying it’s Kodak Plus X PAN film. Just wondering who is in the photo?
I do have a soft spot for Picador titles and their covers which are often of a quirky nature and when I spotted one with a cover by John Holmes. I thought it was great and then I found I had another three which you can see HERE. John, artist and art director was in London on the 13th February 1935 and died on the 17th August 2011. In his obituary it says;
- “A photographer friend introduced him to Dave Larkin, the art director at Granada Books, for whom he did covers for the 1969 edition of Vladimir Nabokov’s Despair and for The Female Eunuch (which Greer loved). A commission from Larkin for Pan’s UK paperback of Peter Benchley’s Jaws (1974) was followed by jackets for Ballantine’s editions of HP Lovecraft’s horror and fantasy novels and artworks for Fontana’s Horror Stories series. The dark complexities of horror stimulated a rich seam of imaginative and disturbing images, especially of the mutability of the human face”
I needed to do a quick check with Ken Hatherley and he confirmed that John was the artist for the iconic ‘Jaws’ cover version with the swimmer.
I love those creepy Ballantine covers of his and note there was a link between PAN and Ballantine and also David Larkin in the above who moved from Granada to PAN.