The question of the week is does anyone recognise this art work for a PAN book cover being held by the well known artist who painted it? I’ve bought a few more PAN books with covers by the same artist and if they’ve arrived by next week I’ll name names otherwise it will be the week after. The prize is just the pride/smugness you’ll feel for getting it right!

A while ago I included the original artwork I had for a Mills and Boon title by Joyce Dingwell. I was intrigued when looking at the dates in the book as to how many times it had been published by different publishers under different names. I know it’s not PAN but it’s fun to research these things which I’ve added HERE

I’ve also found ‘The Pan Book of Crosswords Book 7’ form the 60/70’s and now only number one of this series to be found. If only all sellers actually showed a picture of the book they were listing, I’ve given up sending back the ones I don’t want but the local charity shop does well out of it.

I’ve also added ‘The Sunday Times Calendar Cookbook’ which I could only find at silly prices but may have been using the wrong ISBN as it now appears to be available at a price I was happy to pay. I’ve also found yet another cover variant for a Jack Higgins namely ‘Storm Warning’ from 1977. It’s odd with prices as I was contacted by a fellow collector after a title he could only find on AbeBooks at over £100 pounds, I looked on Amazon and there were two copies for a couple of pounds. Like my ‘Times’ book I think we can all missearch every now and again.

… and lastly I spent Saturday at the GEEKS Comic-Con 2017 followed by the G Rail Show on Sunday all on our doorstep, why aren’t there any paperback book fairs?

Just back from a few days away in the camper in the middle of Warwick Racecourse. Unfortunately no racing while we were there as we’d have had a great view. While there I got an interesting email from artist Conor Masterson who had been given my details by PAN Books. It was in relation to the Virtú Exhibition at the Hunt Museum, Limmerick, Eire which includes one of his art installations.

Virtú, Friday 7th April – Sunday 21st May. Virtú is a curated exhibition that explores the ongoing relationship between The Hunt Museum and LSAD. The exhibition includes contemporary artists working in various disciplines and a collection of drawings from several collections including IMMA and The Hunt Museum. Join us on Friday 7th April, 3pm for an interactive discussion with the artists of Virtú, as they discuss their works and artistic processes.

I’ve emailed Conor for more details as to why 180 copies of “JAWS” Here is his reply;

I studied art and then photography in Dublin graduating in 1992. The Jaws project was something I started in 1996 and it is called 180 Books
I was originally drawn to the typeface and the iconic cover when I saw a few copies on a shelf of a charity shop in and was tickled to find a few together with the same pattern repeated. I bought three copies in that shop in 1996 and two more the same day in other charity shops. A few weeks later I was looking at the copies on my shelf and noticed how each one was subtly different, each reader had marked the covers with signs of their own individual touch, their tell tale impressions of how they read a book. Some were gentle, some rough, the spine was broken in a variety of ways or not at all. I realised that, to me, they represented us all. This pop culture phenomenon that had sold millions of copies in the 1970’s had been read by millions of purchasers and millions more who had borrowed or bought these used copies. When we see them in person and we stand back they appear identical but as we move closer the fine subtle details reveal themselves. As we get very close those differences are extraordinary. Each copy, in this collection, is the same edition but is so obviously unique when laid side by side. I feel it is an interesting metaphor for the human condition, we are all the same and yet completely unique. Conor Masterson Margate 2017

While in Warwick I picked up a couple books which were not PAN but slightly related. “Murder Racquet” by Hitchcock with a cover by Les Edwards who did the cover for “The Scrapbook of PAN Horror Stories” by Johnny Mains currently on hold. The other was “The Secret Servant” by Gavin Lyall, a PAN Books stalwart, with a cover I’ve not seen before from Raymond Hawkey, a name familiar to all PAN/Bond fans.

I liked the photo of Gavin in this book as it shows him with a cat. Currently having 5 cats with us I’m trying to remember when we only had one!

I recently bought an original artwork by L Houghton for a Mills and Book cover in their ‘Doctors’ series. Interestingly it’s not quite the same as the book cover in that the nurse is the same one but the original doctor is removed and replaced by another on the other side but they don’t seem to have taken into account the green curtains!

L Houghton is a bit of a mystery. Steve Holland on his Bear Alley site thinks he could be Laurence John C Houghton so I’ve emailed a family member who now lives in Australia but was born just down the road from where I am now. I’ll let you know if I have a reply.

The only PAN cover I can find that he painted is the “The Drowning Pool’ by John Ross Macdonald from 1955.

If anyone has any more information on this artist we’d love to hear about it.

I also got an email from Anna who runs the website that ‘m sure all Angelique fans have visited. She used the photo of my Angelique film poster on her site but drew my attention to the same poster but looking slightly different. Spot the change HERE I thought it must be for a country where censorship was heavier than the UK back in the 60’s and on checking I found it was being sold by Ashgrove Auctioneers in Portarlington, County Laois which does explain the cover up. It was only years later I found that the film ‘La Ronde’ was not really 45 minutes long, that was just how much was left by the censors when I saw it in Dublin in 1966!

STOP PRESS Had a reply from Australia regarding L Houghton but unfortunately Kay doesn’t know what her very distant relative did for a living.

For a long time I’ve been trying to find a set of four James Herriot titles in a sleeve but the only place I’d seen it was on a Canadian site. I’ve tried to order it several times with the following scenario. The seller says they’ve mislaid it, it then gets taken off their site only to reappear a few months later so I’d try and order again with the seller saying they’d mislaid …. you get the idea. So I was really pleased when another one appeared on a different Canadian site and I was so carried away I even paid the extortionate postage costs. The books inside are interesting in that they are printed in Canada and have something I’ve never seen before on the back namely the words ‘Litho’d in Canada’ Click HERE to see them.

Sorry for the short blog again but other things have taken priority over PAN books. I know that’s hard to believe but we’ve had great news this week. We have been campaigning for several years to get a disused railway opened up as a leisure greenway and after a meeting yesterday we’ve been given the go ahead subject to forming a ‘Friends of’ type of group with a proper plan for the future. If anyone is interested you can find us at ‘Back The Track’ All ‘likes’ on Facebook gratefully received.

…. and finally I’ve managed to appear on TV reading the weather forecast at last. OK it’s not for real just a bit of fun at the BBC Studios but it’s certainly not as easy as it appears. The chart was definitely not from that day as a coat was still needed inside and out.

Having been away for a few days this week it will be a short blog but with a fair bit of content. We returned to the ‘Back to Back’ houses in Birmingham where last year we stayed in a ‘Victorian cottage’ and this year we jumped forward 30 years to a 1930’s one. If you’ve not been they are well worth a visit even if not staying but if you do it is ideal for getting to almost everywhere in the centre of Birmingham with the Hippodrome Theatre literally across the road. We went to see the musical ‘Billy Elliot’ which was very entertaining.Mind you it wasn’t all peace and quiet, this is the view from our window after being woken up at 3:11 am by the ‘blues and twos’ No idea what was going on, got bored looking so went back to bed.

I was looking at ‘Learning to Cook’ by Marguerite Patten when a bookmark fell out. One side had conversion tables, the other a list of PAN cookery titles. I’ve found them all but the next challenge is to find the editions contemporary with the card as mine are all over the timescale. Looking in some of the books there are at lot longer lists of titles available on line from a few pence to a couple of pounds but why are sellers asking so much for ‘The Times Cookery Book’ some wanting three figure amounts!

As promised here are 17 PAN book covers by James (or Jas. as he signed) E. McConnell plus scans of the original artwork for 10 of them. If you know of anymore PAN titles please let me know as I’m sure there must be others I’ve missed. One day I’ll get around to updating my database with all the covers to which I can identify an artist. I know James also painted for many other publishers and also ‘Philmar’ the jigsaw puzzle makers. I am very grateful to his daughter, Ann, for the photograph of her father sketching a dog, a sketch she still has.

Ann says in her email “Lovely to find another fan of my Dad’s work! He did a huge amount of covers for Corgi, which when they sold out, put on an exhibition of his Western Art in London, I have the cutting from The Times somewhere! I have written a ‘foreword’ for a hopefully future book on his artwork. He had an article about his work in Illustrators Magazine 18 months ago. Most of his work was commercial so was lost to us. He did over 1,000 covers for Look and Learn. I remember him doing many of those when I was a child and he stopped working in his London studio and worked from home. I am still discovering stuff he did which I had no idea about! He spoke little of his work and I was too young to appreciate it! I have a million and ten questions now, too late of course”

If you haven’t seen the article in ‘Illustrators Number 11’ it’s well worth hunting down a copy and the Book Palace are also selling some of his artwork originals including Corgi western covers.

I love the original artwork for ‘The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters’ which is really spoilt by having title stuck on cutting off the top of the hills. If I find anymore I’ll add them and include them in next weeks blog.

Update – while just checking my spelling etc. this morning I found several auction sites selling or had sold works by McConnell. I’ve made a page to show at few of them HERE

This blog is a little different in that it is not just about PAN editions this week but several versions of a particular short series. This is because I picked up a couple of John Gardner titles published by PAN with covers by George Sharp both featuring the notorious Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis and then found I’d got the same titles from other publishers. Gardner is probably most well know for continuing the James Bond legacy but none of those titles were published by PAN. Quercus republished ‘Moriaty’ in the UK in 2008 while Houghton Mifflin Harcourt did likewise in the US. In 2013 PAN/MacMillan reissued some of his early books as ‘print on demand’ The two Gardner titles were ‘The Return of Moriarty’ which for some reason or other PAN decided just to call ‘Moriarty’ unlike all the other publishers and this was then followed by ‘The Revenge of Moriarty’ In the States it was published by Putnam in hardback while in the UK it was Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The paperback versions were then published by PAN, Berkley and later Star. To see them click HERE

A couple of Berkley editions from 1981 I’d like to have.

One point of interest, maybe, my Putnam copy of ‘The Return of Moriarty’ has a red spot which I thought was part of the design as it is definitely in the printing but looking at other images on-line none of them have it. Back to a more normal blog next week with the Jas McConnell covers as promised last week