Wishing PAN Fans everywhere a very Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.
A while ago Tony Whithorn‘s son, Steve, wrote to me to tell me abut a book his father wrote. As it was hard to obtain he very kindly sent me a copy which I am about to commence reading. It is called ‘That Certain Feeling’ and is quite a weighty tomb so not a quick read. Steve also very kindly sent me some printers proof covers mostly from PAN but a few Panthers. I’m presuming they are titles for which Tony wrote the back cover blurb. Steve said there were also a few Flemings which he has kept and I don’t blame him.
Having had a triple stent procedure I am now back at home where I am supposed to be taking it easy which is a good excuse for sitting around reading books – as if I needed one! Although I can’t drive for a few week my son is coming to pick us up to go down to Kent for Christmas where I hope to visit a few bookshops if they are open.
As promised here are a few other PAN books with a link to crosswords which I’ll call PART 5. There are at least four Jumbo books but I’ve only found the one shown and as for the ‘Easy Puzzles’ I’m not paying the silly price being asked which seems to start at £35 pounds and goes upwards. I think I have a few more random crossword related titles, possibly Piccolos, and I’ll add them to the page as I find them. PAN also published dozens of crossword books for the Daily/Sunday Telegraph starting in the late 80’s but I’m not going down that route!
It was while I was looking at this photo of Arthur Hailey and family in Australia after receiving his ‘Golden PAN Award’ for selling a million copies of‘HOTEL’I thought I’d look as see how many I have. I didn’t realise it was eight with the latter three having minor variants to the cover. These three are all dated 1983 so I sequenced them by price. I’ve often had problems working out dates so price might be the way to go.
Once again Jules Burt has produced an excellent video which looks at my collection of negatives for reference photos used by Sam Peffer for his covers. This is PART 1 of three parts and I’m really looking forward to seeing what Jules will be doing in the others. (If you don’t subscribe to his channel you will get a couple of ads first)
How time flies. I’ve nearly missed TiKiT’s 24th birthday next Saturday on the 16th due to unforeseen circumstances which have resulted in me typing this from my hospital bed. On the 1st I got blue lighted to A&E with a heart attack. Now awaiting a triple stent procedure today and then, fingers crossed, as back to normal as can be expected. NB: Not had time to update the next post but the Eperon titles will be added ASAP.
For those thinking about planning their holidays they could always use Eperon’s French Regional Guides of which PAN published nine that I have found. They all feature cover artwork by Claire Davies but on trying to track her down there are too many artist with that name. I’ve also included several other titles of his on the page such as those from the ‘Travellers’ series. Arthur Eperon was born in 1919 and died in 2000. He began his career in the regional press joining the Steatham News as a trainee but his career was interrupted by the war, when he served in the RAF before being taken prisoner, He was one of the prisoners in Stalag Luft 3 who fooled the German guards in one of the great escapes by jumping over the famous wooden horse. He was able to join the Daily Herald when he came back from the war, because of his NUJ card, working alongside Michael Foot and John Betjeman. He became travel editor and left for The Sun in 1969, using his well-honed expertise to create a direct, journalistic approach to the travel column. After leaving newspapers he became a consultant to ITV’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, then published the bestseller Traveller’s France and a host of follow-ups, as well as contributing columns to magazines and newspapers.
In an email from the Agatha Christie Collectors Group they were suggesting suitable presents for Christie fans. One leapt out at me and made me wonder if the cards were from Duns Tew Publishing but on looking at the list these titles don’t appear. It was on Etsy but I don’t think I’ll go for it this season as I don’t know any Christie fans who might like the pack (which would probably have had the cards surreptitiously removed!)
As promised here is PART 4 of my collection of PAN crossword books from 1972 to 1983. There are not quite as many covers missing as there were thanks to Ian who has supplied a few scans but if anyone has any of the others to add to the page please get in touch. There are also a few with two editions having different designs so even more to watch for plus a couple of colour variants but that might just be fading. There will be a PART 5 next week with a random selection of crossword related titles.
It was really nice to meet up again last week with artist Keith Scaife at his mother’s house in Leek. Thank you to both for the warm welcome and the cups of coffee. On my first visit I acquired the artwork for ‘The Iron Tiger’ by Jack Higgins and this time it was to pick up a Christmas present to myself, the other six Higgin’s covers Keith painted. I was annoyed as I had forgotten to take the books for Keith to sign but when, on returning, I got them off the shelf I found he had from last time we met, must be old age! Now to try and sort out frames, as always a dilemma. Keith started out as a model maker and has gone back to that. He is currently working on a commission for a collector in Italy and this time it’s for exact replicas of the models from the TV series ‘UFO’, of which most of the originals have been lost over the years. After this he will move onto ‘Space 1999’ Below are ‘UFO’ Dinky models from around the mid 1970s of which I have the first two but not Ed Straker’s car.
Last week I mentioned Bruce Edward’s book on Alan Cracknell. Now I have had a more in depth look it does show how good an artist he was over a very wide range of media. Having said that I do have one disappointment in that it mentions Enid Blyton covers bit doesn’t feature any. If I had know I could have offered my two PAN Piccolo titles for inclusion.
A while ago Tony Whithorn‘s son, Steve, wrote to me to tell me abut a book his father wrote. As it was hard to obtain he very kindly sent me a copy which I am about to commence reading. It is called ‘That Certain Feeling’ and is quite a weighty tomb so not a quick read. Steve also very kindly sent me some printers proof covers mostly from PAN but a few Panthers. I’m presuming they are titles for which Tony wrote the back cover blurb. Steve said there were also a few Flemings which he has kept and I don’t blame him.
