I was delighted to receive an email from artist Martin Baker, having recently made up a page of the ‘foxtail’ series of Agatha Christe titles published by Fontana, with the majority featuring his wonderful artwork on the covers. Of the sixty nine covers I know of in this series (not including the biography) Martin painted sixty six of them with the other three having artwork by Tom Adams from a previous series. It was good to have Martin confirm that the ones I had not attributed to him were his, covers were I couldn’t spot the tell tale MB. Martin also confirmed he was the author of ‘Artist of Radio Times’ which I had queried. Martin was also kind enough to say “I’m attach a couple of pages from an autobiography rehearsing my Christie covers. This isn’t an egregiously self-regarding work – I’ve had a colourful life, and was asked to record it!” Click HERE to read the pages. I think I might have been tempted to buy some of those socks as they also show PAN covers. Here are a couple more of Martin’s books and I’m really pleased to say “Thank you” as he has signed and gifted a copy of ‘Rhymes with Berti’ to our grandson, I’m sure he’ll love it.

---

When I made a page of John D MacDonald’s ‘Travis McGee’ covers I thought I must have them all but no, up pops another one which I’ve added to the page. It is namely ‘A Deadly Shade of Gold’ from 1974. Which, as usual, begs the question “How many more are out there that I haven’t got?”

---

This weeks three editions of the same title with the same artwork but with a different house style is for PAN 100 ‘The Lost World’ by Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle. They span the years 1949 to 1952 and are all UK printings by Hazel, Watson and Viney Ltd. Frustratingly I have yet to find the cover artist as there is no signature or initials to be seen.

It is 60 years this month (21st November) that Wilbur Smith’s first book was published in hardback namely ‘When The Lion Feeds’  Two years later PAN published it in paperback and it went on to sell over a million copies earning Wilbur a ‘Golden PAN Award’ This was to be the first of his twenty two of these awards. To celebrate the 60th anniversary Zaffre are reissuing it with the cover from 2018 but this one has a 60th sticker. There is a possibility that in South Africa it could be reissued with the PAN Hans Helweg cover from 1970 which is one of my favourites, This could tie in with the opening of the Wilbur Smith Museum in Cape Town. We shall have to wait and see.

---

In a recent edition of the ‘Fortean Times’ there was a letter from a reader about a mysterious vanishing/moving book. My son has this magazine and thought I might be interested as the book in question, complete with photograph, was ‘More Tales of Unease’ edited by John Burke from 1969 with the weird creepy cover. There was also a mention of ‘The Fourth Ghost Book’ edited by James Turner from 1968.

---

PAN published at least four of the thirteen titles written by Alvin Toffler (04/09/1928 to 27/06/2016) Wikipedia states “He was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on their effects on cultures worldwide.Toffler was an associate editor of Fortune magazine. In his early works he focused on technology and its impact, which he termed “information overload”. In 1970, his first major book about the future, ‘Future Shock’, became a worldwide best-seller and has sold over 6 million copies. He and his wife Heidi Toffler (1929–2019), who collaborated with him for most of his writings, moved on to examining the reaction to changes in society with another best-selling book, ‘The Third Wave’, in 1980. In it, he foresaw such technological advances as cloning, personal computers, the Internet, cable television and mobile communication”

---

Having enjoyed the films ‘Paddington’ and ‘Paddington 2’ we were looking forward to ‘Paddington in Peru’ but I have to say I was a little disappointed apart from the ‘smelly’ poster which smells of oranges when you rubbed them. It was on one of the large screens and there were all six of us in the cinema which may say something. I felt it lacked the subtle humour and interesting story lines of the previous two but then again maybe I’m not the audience it’s aimed at. PAN published several ‘Paddington’ titles under the Piccolo inprint with artwork by Fred Banbery.

This weeks featured cover is PAN 171 ‘The Saint On Guard’ by Leslie Charteris with artwork by John Pollack. It was used on at least three editions between 1951 and 1954. Pollack painted over twenty five covers for PAN including those for Leslie Charteris but also Agatha Christe, Peter Cheyney and Zane Grey.

---

‘The Yellow Jersey’ by Ralph Hulme is according to Bicycling Magazine “The greatest cycling novel ever written. . . . An underground classic. . . . A bicycling book that follows a different course—one with characters you can relate to, whose actions raise questions about life on and off the bicycle. . . . The heart of The Yellow Jersey is the Tour de France itself, which serves as a metaphor for life’ It was first published in 1973 with a PAN edition in 1975. I picked up a PAN copy which was well creased on the front cover and thought I’m sure I can get a better copy but having searched around I can find several from other publishers but not PAN so ended up buying it. I’ve started reading it but so far it has not ‘grabbed me’ although I am only a fair weather cyclist.

---

A while ago I found RUPA publishing in India had printed a copy of ‘Strong Medicine’ by Arthur Hailey but I couldn’t find any further details. I have now found a copy on a booksellers website but it has been sold although the image is still there so I have ‘borrowed it’ and added it to the appropriate page. This was based on the PAN Hailey series of titles which were branded ‘The World’s #1 Storyteller’ and inside it mentions PAN.

This weeks cover used over several editions is PAN 82 ‘Dumb Witness’ by Agatha Christie and is a Hercule Poirot novel from 1937. Between 1949 and 1954 there were at least five editions using the same artwork, albeit modified on some, by J. H. Bruce. Both the 1949 and 1950 editions were printed by Typographie Firmin-Didot, Mesnil, France while the 1954 was printed by Richard Clay and Company, Bungay, Suffolk and has a Flexiback Thermoplastic Binding and not a repair as often described by sellers.

---

Since I mentioned obtaining the ‘PAN Record’ number 34 last week I have scanned the pages in and added it to the ‘PAN Record’ page. In the past I have tried several different ways of offering the magazines to be read but either the software is too expensive to justify it, the ‘free’ version is to limited or full of ads or the software goes out of fashion like the reader I was using based on flash. At the moment I have only scanned in 30 and 34 but if it is a long cold winter I might be adding more.

---

One of my favourite artists was the sadly missed Derek A Stowe. I used to ring him up regularly and we would chat about this and that and put the world to rights. It was while putting a page together for him I started looking at ‘Understanding Science’, a magazine published in 144 weekly parts by Sampson Low of which Derek did a large proportion of the artwork. I have become fascinated of late as to how much mileage they got out of these magazines publishing them not only in English but in Spanish. The artwork was also used for several different compilations around a specific science area. My intention is to scan all the 144 covers and put them on a site along with all the spinoffs. To that end I bought a few in German from a bookseller in Czechia called ‘BookBot’ and I’ve been really pleased with the service and especially the price. The hardback copies are the size of an encyclopedia and cost just over £2 each while the carriage was just £4 and they came, very well wrapped, within 5 days. To see an example click HERE