After hearing about the passing of Chris Moore, which I mentioned last week, I remembered the several email conversations we have had over the years. I was really chuffed to get his reply to my mention of the lettering for Larry McMurty covers where Tom Stimpson dd the main artwork and Chris did the titles. He said “It’s really nice to see that someone has taken an active interest in a field of work that has largely gone unnoticed over the years” 

Having been down in Kent for the week I now need to add more cover scans to Chris’ page but I was intrigued to see he went to Maidstone College of Art as that was where I was. I have taken the liberty of including my condensed version of the biography on www.chrismooreillustration.co.uk which says “Chris Moore was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire June 1st 1947. He was educated at Mexborough Grammar School, Doncaster Art School and Maidstone College of Art on a Graphic Design course. From there he was accepted by the Royal College of Art to study Illustration. After several years he discovered S/F working on titles by Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Frederick Pohl, Anne McCaffrey, Clifford D. Simak, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Arthur C. Clarke and Samuel R. Delany, Moore was also the artist of choice for more mainstream writers like Jeffery Archer, Frederick Forsyth, Jackie Collins, Claire Francis, Stephen Leather, Wilbur Smith, Terence Strong, and Colin Forbes. Amongst the UK publishers Chris worked for were not only PAN but Transworld, Orion, Penguin, Harper Collins, Sphere, Hodder, Associated Book Publishers (Magnum), Headline, Random House, Time Warner, Octopus, Hamlyn, and many others. In the early 80s Moore joined Artist Partners alongside many familiar names such as Brian Sanders and Cecil Vieweg, Chris became good friends with Jim Burns, Fred Gambino and Keith Scaife all well know S/F cover artists. Chris sadly passed away on the 7th February 2025” 

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I was most surprised to find I had ‘won’ a bundle of stock lists on eBay. The starting bid was £1.00 which someone had bid so I went to £1.20 where it remained for the several days to go before it finished. I was convinced some else would bid but no the 20 were mine for £1.20 which I think is a bargain. They are from PAN, Fontana, Hodder and Stoughton, Puffin, Sphere, NEL, Transworld and Granada.

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Having mentioned Derek Arthur Stowe before I was pleased to get hold of number 88 of the ‘Tecnirama’ partwork. This was first published in the UK as ‘Understanding Science’ while ‘Tecnirama’ was published in Italy and the cover is the one piece of original artwork by Derek I have. It was also used as the frontispiece for a couple of editions of hardbacks in the UK and Germany. Being a bit of a completest I know I am missing ‘Understanding Science’ second printing for number 88 so if anyone has a spare copy or possibly a scan or knows of any more sightings please comment or email me.

For those that are completists it can be quite difficult with subtle differences such as for GP27 ‘A Book of Wit and Humour’ where the covers appear almost identical but one has a different font and one is a slightly different colour. They also have different lists of other PAN titles in the back.

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I’ve heard from Lesley and Sam, Tom Stimpson’s sister and son, to say they are arranging an exhibition of Tom’s work this summer. I know June 14th seems a long way off but it will be on us before we know it. Tom would have been 70 on the 14th June 2025 hence the choice of date. It is being held in Westbury, Wiltshire, a place that may sound familiar to many collectors as the home of Maurice Flanagan of Zardoz Books so if you are visiting make sure you leave enough time to include a visit to his £1.00 shop as well. I’ll post more details a I get them.

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As a belated birthday treat I found a coach trip for a long weekend in March where you stayed in Northumberland. It was just what I wanted as they picked you up at your door, took you to a hotel in Alnwick via a stop in Ripon and then a couple of trips out to the coast plus free time in Alnwick which would have meant a visit to Barter Books for me. I’ve not been there before and was looking forward to it, having read mixed reviews, but I’ve just had an email to say due to insufficient numbers it has been cancelled. I should have suspected something when they asked where I would like a seat on the coach and was told I could chose almost anywhere. This had now prompted me to plan a trip of my own including visits to friends and relatives up north I’ve not seen for years and hopefully visits to other secondhand bookshops!

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I was sorry to hear of the passing of artist Chris Moore on the 7th February, more next week.

Recently I’ve been posting titles with the same number but different artwork on the covers, this week it’s covers with the same number and very slight tweaking. For those that are completists this is very important  as some can be quite subtle. I have taken a random selection of GP titles off my shelves to show other variants including GP36 ‘The Bull of Monos’, GP54 ‘The Lost Pharoah’ and GP39 ‘Women in Antiquity Colliers used the same image on the 1962 edition.

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PAN seems to have embraced all subjects when it came to publishing books and the 1979 ‘An Irish Camera’ is no exception. It has numerous photos from the mid to late 1800s including many showing evictions from small holding and bears being lead around for entertainment..

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On a completely different topic PAN teamed up with Kellogg’s Special K to print ‘Body Skulpture’ for those into Pilates and Yoga. I’m going to take their word for it that these exercises will help to keep you fit! On the title page it listed the website www.panpilates.co.uk but on trying it I get ‘Error 404’ for page not found so looks like that wasn’t long lived!

After mentioning Liz Moyes last week I took note that three of her covers were for Irwin Shaw’s ‘The Master Storyteller’ series. I have sorted out my later Shaw’s from the 70s and early 80s which can be seen HERE PAN also published ‘Young Lions’ in many editions from 1957 onwards plus X131 ‘Two Weeks in Another Town’, G295 ‘Tip on a Dead Jockey’, G337 ‘Lucy Crown’ and M12 ‘Mixed Company’ Irwin Shaw was born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff (27/02/1913 – 16/05/1984) and was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author who has sold more than 14 million copies. ‘The Young Lions’ is about the fate of three soldiers during World War II and was made into a film starring Marlo Brando and Montgomery Clift.

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Having mentioned last week the two ‘roughs’ by Gordon King I got for ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ I set about trying to find the edition they might have eventually ended up in. I bought the Everyman Library paperback edition as it said illustrated by Gordon King to find they had just used his artwork for the cover. I then thought I would investigate the hardback edition only to find no mention of Gordon at all but with a cover by Steve Lavis. Does anyone have an edition that has illustration in the book as neither of these do?

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As well as publishing the Referees’ Handbook, PAN was also involved with the Football Association Year Book for a short while, The 71/72 edition was published by Pelham while the 72/73, 73/74 and 74/75 editions were published by Heinemann and distributed by PAN and had two ISBNs from both publishers. It wasn’t until the 75/76 and 76/77 editions that Heinemann disappeared and PAN took over as official publisher with their logo on the spine. In 77/78 Pelham took over again, then Clowes.