Having mentioned I was scanning in the Agatha Christie covers I call the White Top and photo series last week I thought I should I knuckled down and finished all the titles, editions and variants I have from this late 1960s, early 70s series. Since then I have spotted at least two more variants of titles I have but I don’t think I’ll be rushing to buy them as there are plenty of the others at the moment (five copies of Poirot Investigates might be enough) This sort of completes the Christie photo covers from PAN with the Double Dagger series and the All Photo series.
When doing a search for PAN I am often offered PANther but for once it was a title I was after, namely ‘Raiders of Darfur’ by Stanley Mann. The reason is that the cover was by Derek Stowe, who also painted several PAN covers and sadly passed last year, and was the only one of his covers I didn’t have the book for. The image on his page was from the Bodleian Library and was for the Panther 214 paperback edition. What I got was the hardback library edition actually bound by Panther and not by a library as I thought it would be. The Panther Library editions, published by Hamilton, are not to be confused with the Panther Library editions, published by Nelson, as I found out! Anyone want a copy of ‘At Close Grips’?
I mentioned the passing of artist Eric Tenney and that I’d had a communication from Sue, his daughter about selling his artworks. She also said “We do have many of his paintings but Charlie is special. Dad rescued him from a pet shop in Epsom, built a huge cage for him in his studio and worked striped to the waist in an over heated studio to try and nurse him back to health. We named him Charlie and used to love petting and feeding him moths and meal worms which he held like a banana” I had bought Eric’s painting of Charlie the Bushbaby off eBay but when Sue asked if there was any chance of getting him back I reluctantly agreed. In exchange Sue sent me the artwork for Colin Forbes ‘Shockwave’ but we’ll miss Charlie even though I scanned him in and his clone is now taking his place. The photo is of Charlie back with the family.
