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

Fishing, Nevil Shute and a miscellany from Lyn Kirby

Having got football out of the way a few weeks ago I am now going to do the same with another subject I’m not really into, namely fishing. I quite like the idea of using it as an excuse to sit on a bank and read a book but as for actually catching a fish this doesn’t really appeal. I know it is one of the most popular past times world wide so it’s probably just me. I think the first time PAN got into angling was in 1967 with the publication of ‘Fishing’ by Richard Arnold and numbered M203. It was around 1973 that PAN started the ‘PAN Angler’s Library’ of which I have found 14 titles label as such but there may be more.


There was a post on the ‘Shutists’ Facebook page where someone had noticed a mistake in the list of books by Nevil Shute in the 1973 6th printing of ‘An Old Captivity’ It includes ‘Gold From Crete’ which is by C S Forester and not Shute. I have looked in both the 5th and 7th printings and it is not there but I will looking in other titles from around that time.


Having written about Lyn Kirby, who worked at PAN in the 80s, she sent me a few snippets which I’m happy to include here;
1) Lyn’s boss was David Bleasdale, Production Director, and who was used as the model for the cover of ‘The Autobiography of Henry VIII’ which was painted by Gino d’Achille
2) When Lyn left she was presented with a dummy book of Douglas Adam’s latest in the Hitchhiker series ‘So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish’
3) Lyn was tasked with sourcing the lenticular picture on the box and the hardback of ‘So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish’ and as with most things plastic back then it probably came from Hong Kong.

4) Lyn was asked  to do the colour correction on the cover of Wicked Willie. She wrote “The pink of his face had to match the pink of his ahem, Willie and that was something I was a bit embarrassed about telling my repro house at my tender age!”
5) It’s a small world as Lyn is a room guide at Nuffield Place and you never know we may have met each other when we were down there recently for a family gathering.