My wife and I were delighted to receive an invitation to join Gordon Young and his wife Chrissie at his surprise birthday party at Barton on Sea last Saturday. Gordon was the ‘ships boy’ on PAN’s boat, the Laloun, back in 1947 when titles were printed in France. If you don’t know Gordon’s story catch up with his biography in part one HERE and part two HERE. It was a very good turnout with, we estimate, well over 50 people enjoying the very convivial atmosphere. Here is Gordon reading his congratulations card from King Charles and Queen Camilla. He tells me he has a lot more stories about his time at PAN so keep reading this blog.
After featuring a couple of printer’s proofs last week, here are a couple more. The first one is for ‘Queen of a Distant Country’ which I’ve added to a page of later John Braine covers with ISBNs. PAN only published one of his using their eclectic numbering, this being M181 ‘The Jealous God’ The second is by Conrad Von Bark titled ‘The Second Red Dragon’ and again I’ve added it to a page of his covers with ISBNs.
I picked up a ‘Piccolo Paperbacks 75’ catalogue from December 1975 which is made more interesting by featuring may illustrations from the books. It also includes a flyer for a competition for under 7s to draw a ghost and 7s to 12s to write a story about a ghost to win a bookshelf full of Piccolo titles. I will scan all of the catalogue for next week’s post.
