Artist George Underwood was born in 1947 and joined Beckenham Art School in 1963. At art school George became more and more interested in music. As a result he pursued a career in the music world. Along with life long friend David Bowie he made one record (The King Bees ) and also a solo record under the name Calvin James. After deciding that the music business was not for him, George returned to art studies and then worked in design studios as an illustrator. Initially he specialised in fantasy, horror and science fiction book covers. Several of these covers were for PAN. He also painted a cover for Piccolo called ‘The Greatest Magicians on Earth’ and I emailed him about this to which he replied ”Dear Tim, Thanks for your message. It was indeed me who illustrated the cover you mentioned amongst quite a few others. Now, finding that original could be quite difficult, if I still have it. I will try and find it and let you know. Kind regards, George’  As I’ve not heard anything I’m presuming he wasn’t successful but fingers crossed. Click HERE to see a selection.

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I recently spotted a C S Lewis cover for one of the  ‘The Space Trilogy‘ titles I hadn’t got and then decided to take all the covers for this series and rescan them. I don’t think I realised how many editions and variants there were from PAN. A few things I did notice was there doesn’t appear to be reprint of ‘That Hideous Strength’ from 1971 while ‘Out of the Silent Planet’ from 1971 is overprinted with the new PAN logo. Also on the back of the 1963 edition of ‘That Hideous Strength’ they still show the covers with the logo from the 1962 editions. The 1953 edition of ‘Voyage to Venus’ has ‘Perelandra’ in brackets under the title while the 1983 edition  is the only one where it is the other way around.
Clive Staples Lewis (29/11/1899 to 22/11/1963) was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He went to school in Malvern and then to Oxford University before enlisting in the army in WWI. After he was discharged he was appointed English Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he tutored English Language and Literature. He published around 40 books including the ‘The Space Trilogy’ (1938 to 1945) and the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ (1950 to1956) Lewis was a close friend of J R R Tolkien, author of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as both men served on the English faculty at Oxford at the same time.

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A “Thank you” to James Bond aficionado Thomas Nixdorf who posted a couple of PAN counter advertising displays for ‘Thunderball’ on a Facebook group page. He very happy happy for me to show them here.

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Having received an email from eBay to thank me for being a member for 22 years I now realise where all my money has gone. When I look at bank statements it feels as though I have personally be responsible for keeping them going for all that time!

Another new titles list for September 2nd 1969 with a large double sided stockiest and double sided ‘Battle of Britain’ page. It mentions October’s major promotion which features George Lazenby and ‘OHMMSS’ with photos of all the available display material, I’d love to know where any of that is but more than likely it ended up in a bin. Click on the scan below to see it.

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Jules Burt has now finished his look at the just numbers PANs in part 3 so click on the image to see the fantastic artwork.

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Not quite PAN but after a trip to Birkenhead Tram Museum recently on my friend Kevin’s vintage double decker bus I spotted this on one of the trade stands. I was surprised as it isn’t really anything to do with buses but was amongst the thousands of bus photo, timetables and scale models. It’s an child’s adding machine and works really well. It wasn’t expensive and has PETER PAN on it so how could I resist and it made up for the fact that both the trams and the Mersey ferries were not running.

I’m trying to find out anything about Roger Harris who was the artist responsible for five covers from PAN. There may be more but these HERE are the few I have found so far. It appears he was born in 1942 in ? and since 1994 he has been a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers &  exhibits regularly at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, The Mall Galleries and The Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. His work is included in permanent collections at the Cleveland Gallery, Kent County Council and the Ashmolean Museum Oxford. In 1993 he won 2nd prize at the Cleveland International Drawing Biennale and in 1997 he was awarded the Polock-Krasner Art Foundation Award, New York. If anyone has contact details please comment or email.

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I don’t usually post books by theme but when I saw these three I thought there was sure to be more showing cross hairs but drew a blank. Seems the memory is not what is was but if anyone does know of others please email or comment.

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A while ago Jeremy Birch pointed out what I hadn’t noticed on that one of the PAN logos on a spine was reversed on  G242 “A Secret Understanding”. Since then I have scanned in the dust jackets and noticed two of them have the logo reversed on the front.

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Here is the link to another excellent video from Jules Burt. It is part 2 as he works his way through his just numbers collection. It is so good to see all those covers which are hidden when they are on shelves. Click on the image below to view it.                                                           

I recently made contact again with Simon Marsh-Devine which gave me the opportunity to ask him about his Catalogue of Artwork he produced after the infamous Bonham’s PAN Artwork Auction of 1991. He replied to say “Well I don’t know if I can tell you anything of any great interest. Before the catalogue I met with all three of the artists in the catalogue using some of their memories in my work in my degree titled “Post War British Paperback Cover Art” which secured me honours. I have always bought and sold art and antiques on a hobby basis and this catalogue was a tiny part of what I did as my main work was and still is as an arborist”

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Here is the stock list for new titles for June 1969. It also included a large double sided stock list and a double side insert for three titles. I’ve abandoned attempts at an electronic book and just scanned in the pages which is simpler and works most of the time unlike an on screen book where the software can become redundant. I still have a few I made using Flash but where is that now? It features some great counter and window displays so click on the scan above to see it.

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When I first started collecting PAN Books a little more seriously that just picking them up whenever I saw one I got hold of a second edition copy of Richard William’s checklist which has become very dogeared and full on my markings. Since then I have got another second printing which Richard signed to go with a first but now I am pleased to say I have got an earlier listing from 1987 covering just the numbered titles. It is a second printing and says it is part 2′ but I’ve no idea what was in part 1? It confirms there were no titles numbered 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 69, 88, 187 and 442 which agrees with my list but it also states there were 18 with dust jackets and I have 19 with 2 variants. There are a lot more details which I’ll check out and probably use in future blogs.

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QUICK QUERY: While looking for S/F titles I noticed a couple of PANs by Arthur Clarke which set me wondering who decided he would become Arthur C(harles) Clarke? A couple of examples are ‘Earthlight’ and ‘Childhood’s End’

After our visit to Gordon Young fell through we still carried on with our plan to call in to see artist David Scutt.as it’s always nice to have a chat. David said he had found the tenth Rex Stout cover to go with the other nine Rex Stout covers I bought off him a while ago. Although they are not PAN they are beautiful with all of them featuring a different type of orchid. Unfortunately when he got it out it was his fantastic cover for ‘The Death Bringers’ by Dell Shannon published by Gollanzc, he’s gone back to have a better look for the missing one. David has painted covers for such writers as Terry Pratchett, Bernard Cornwell, Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum, Phillip Pullman, Danielle Steele, Gavin Lyall, Tom Clancy, Colin Forbes, Arthur C Clarke, Ben Elton, Elton John, Raymond Benson, John Gardner, Eric Lustbader, Leslie Thomas, James Patterson, Craig Thomas and Ian Fleming plus many more. You must have seen at least one of his covers without knowing it! David also painted album covers and film posters. PAN published two Rex Stout titles namely ‘Too Many Cooks’ and ‘Some Buried Caesar‘

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The PAN New Books list changed format between July 1967 and May 1969 and had reduced pages from 16 to 6 and now included a double sided stock list page of available titles. Not too sure I like the ‘new look’ of the one colour covers pictures used as in this 9th May 1969 New Titles. Click on the image below to see it.

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Sorry to say if you want to go to the pop up bookshop in Wolverhampton then you are too late as it shut yesterday but is hoping to be back in February next year. My wife and I managed to get there in time but we both came away without purchasing anything. There was a definite lack of vintage paperbacks but plenty of hardbacks and ephemera. My wife said “There were a lot of familiar titles” and the majority of the paperbacks were the sort you could find in a charity shop but on the plus side the prices were reasonable.

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My friend Jules Burt has started to refilm all his just numbered PANs in three parts. Click on the picture to see part one. I love watching them as they remind me of how beautiful so many of the covers are.

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I had an email from Kathy, Sam Peffer’s great niece recently to say she was surprised to see a Bond cover from Sam she didn’t know about. Having watched The One Show on BBC I Player I see it was just sloppy research again. They had used a retitled copy of PAN Dark Wanton as TMWTGG. They did use a genuine PAN LALD but interestingly with a 50c sticker. I won’t name names but someone in the States wrote an article about PAN Bond covers and three of the ones they used weren’t the genuine article!