I recently picked up a couple of ‘roughs’ by Gordon King for the 1977 Everyman Library edition of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ by Anthony Hope. I thought I would contact Gordon to ask him about them but on looking on the internet I was sorry to see he passed away in January 2022. Gordon painted hundred of book covers including several for PAN. I’m sorry I didn’t communicate with him more often as it was 2017 we last had an online conversation. He was always happy to answer my queries and sent me photos of himself holding an mystery example of his artwork. We never did track it down.

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I’ve been talking to Brian Sanders as I came across some more covers by his wife, Liz Moyes, and I also acquired a painting by Brian which he tells me disappeared in mysterious circumstances. He is happy for me to have it so thank you Brian. It features ‘The battle of Agincourt’ and appeared in the magazine ‘Men Only’ in the 70s. Brian also sent me a scan of a card he received for his 40th birthday which Liz organised, with portraits of him from nine different artist, what a wonderful keepsake.

The artist are;
Liz Moyes, Clare Davis, Angela Landels,
Peter Brooks, Roger Coleman, Alan Lee
Carol Binch, Brian Froud, Norman Weaver

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Talking to Martin Baker again regarding his paintings for the Fontana Christie ‘foxtail’ series of covers he very kindly send me images of some of the original artwork which appeared in an exhibition at the Barbican in 1984. Unfortunately some of them were cropped when they were framed. I’ve added them to the covers page in the appropriate places. 

I like UK movie press books where they show the PAN title and in this case it was for the 1966 American comedy film ‘Penelope’ directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Peter Falk, Jonathan Winters, and Dick Shawn. The screenplay was by George Wells’ based on the 1965 novel of the same title and written by Howard Melvin Fast under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham. I’ve included a couple of versions of the film posters as I was intrigue to see how the hand of the man on the right moves. I was also surprised to notice the very small GS on the cover of the book as I thought it was just a film tie-in but Glenn Steward must have had a hand in the design.

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PAN published several books by the late Clive James under their Picador imprint. Most are softbacks but a few are hardbacks of which I have a couple of examples one of which says it’s a Picador Poetry volume which is a first to me. I was pleased to find it contained a letter from Clive James but I had to investigate one of the items mentioned at the end of it. For information to those not in the antipodes a Polly Waffle was an Australian chocolate bar that was manufactured in Sydney by Nestlé. It consisted of a waffle wafer tube filled with marshmallow and coated in chocolate. It ceased to be manufactured in 2009 apparently. Wagon Wheels are a biscuit base with marshmallow on top covered in chocolate. My favorite is the ‘jammie’ one which has raspberry flavoured apple jam and I list it as ‘one of my five a day’

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Having mentioned the ‘ripped off’ Christie covers last week I started to look for more PAN titles and found ‘Murder in Mesopotamia’ retiltled “Vụ Án Mạng Ở Vùng Mesopotamia” in Vietnamese using the original SAX artwork. I have also found ‘Poirot Investigates‘ and a few others but the only images I have so far are thumbnails so I’ll try and keep search for proper ones for a later blog.

I’ve mentioned Martin Baker’s covers for Fontana Agatha Christie titles before, well now they have appeared in an article by David Morris on his excellent  ‘Collecting Christie’ website. He includes a very interesting interview with Martin which gives a lot of background to the ‘foxtail’ series. When asked, I was more than happy for David to use the scans off my page as it includes a plug for the site. It also shows I do go off at a tangent away from PAN very occasionally if I like the artwork. I heard from Martin to say he is not happy that other publishers use his artwork without permission such as there two on the right, one of which is a Bosnian version of “Cat Among the Pigeons” while the other is more a possible homage on an Italian edition of ‘Macabro Quiz’ by Oliviero Berni.

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A couple of titles I have on my shelves are ‘Beyond the Void’ and ‘Dreaming of Utopia’ both by Steve Holland of Bear Alley Books and well worth a read. They both contain examples of PAN book covers with ‘Utopia’ featuring four by Reina Mary Sington and ‘Void’ also has four but by Henry Fox.

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In Penguin Collector 102 Peter Miller states in his article that there are  ‘Too Few Murders in Penguin’ pointing out how some prolific crime writers were well served by other publishers but not by Penguin. One example was Arthur Upfield where PAN published and reprinted many more of his titles than did Penguin. Peter has managed to include the cover of  PAN 441 ‘Cake in a Hat Box’ by Rex Archer but he said space precluded more.

After Mentioning Martin Baker and his Fontana ‘foxtail’ series of Christie covers recently I found I had actually scanned a couple more and somehow missed adding them to the page. I also found one I hadn’t got so ‘Murder in Mesopotamia’ is now there. I’m grateful to David Morris from the  ‘Collecting Christie’ website who also pointed out another boxed set I didn’t have. The slip case is the same for both but one measures 65mm wide and the other 80mm so they were not generic but made to fit the selection within. I have also been told that the cat on ‘Cat Among The Pigeons’ was Martin’s own cat called Fido.

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After a visit to Attingham Park, well not the park as it was closed due to over 30 mature tress being down after a storm, we went round the house decorated for Christmas. This is always followed by an obligatory visit to the second hand bookshop and we were pleased to see this sign and the amount, some of which is due to the purchasing and donating of books by my wife and myself.

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David Lodge (born 28/01/1935, London and died 01/01/2025, Birmingham) was an English novelist, literary critic, playwright, and editor known chiefly for his satiric novels about academic life, especially the Campus trilogy: Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984), and Nice Work (1988). Lodge was educated at University College, London (B.A., 1955; M.A., 1959), and at the University of Birmingham (Ph.D., 1967). His early novels, known mostly in England, included ‘The Picturegoers’ (1960), about a group of Roman Catholics living in London and ‘Ginger, You’re Barmy’ (1962), Lodge’s novelistic response to his army service in the mid-1950s were both published by PAN. The latter title was prominently displayed, cover out, on the shelf above my desk at work as my boss had very ginger hair. I think he was the only one who never twigged why it was there which sort of summed him up.