‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler was first published on the 6th April 1999 so he will be 20 on Friday. Both Julia and Axel received a ‘Golden PAN Award’ for sales of a million copies plus scrolls for further sales of a million copies of other titles.

Having met Julia and Alex at the 70th Anniversary party for PAN where they were given the ‘Golden PAN Awards’ I’m really pleased for them as they were very friendly and Julia even held up my card albeit upside down. I’m looking forward to playing with the ‘Deep Dark Wood’ scene included in the 20th edition. 

Just got another cover by George Sharp to add to his page and this time I’ve checked with him and he says ‘Yes’ it is one of his. It is ‘Green City in the Sun’ by Barbara Woods and I have two copies(?) both dated 1989 but one has the PAN Man logo on the from cover, the other doesn’t while the first copy doesn’t have a logo on the spine the other does. I wondered if it was because the logo would have covered up the creature on the spine but didn’t stop them in the later one.     

Having collected copies of Whitakers ‘Paperback in Print’ over the years I was interested to see the 1982 edition was advertised by a bookseller. Having got the 1981 and 1983 editions I thought this would fill a gap on the shelf but on looking again I think I might give it a miss especially seeing the name of the seller!

If you are reading this on Monday the 1st April it’s not an April Fool and it means the scheduled launch has worked again as I am down in Somerset staying in the camper combined with the 60 Birthday Party of my work experience boy from more years ago than I care to remember. He has just retired from running a camping and caravan park so bang goes my ‘freebie’ nights.

Michael Hardcastle, who died last January, wrote over 140 books on various subjects including four published by PAN under its Piccolo imprint. These feature the ‘Scorton Rovers’ with three covers by Gary Keane. As I couldn’t find an email address for Gary I’ve written him a letter and if I get a response I’ll add  it to a blog.  The fourth cover is by Mike Lynn of whom I can find nothing so far.

I recently posted on a James Bond fans Facebook page a query about ‘The Looking-Glass War’ by John le Carre as I know they also show an interest in others titles in a similar genre. I asked a question about PAN Books editions of ‘The Looking-Glass War’ I have a 1st from 1966 numbered X528 which has 75c printed on the cover. I thought it was like OHMSS where UK early printings were sent to the colonies but this is actually printed in Canada. The ‘real’ UK 1st printing appears to be numbered M210 so I asked if anyone had a number X528 printed in the UK as I’ve not found one online?  I also asked after an enquiry from fellow PAN Fan Jem Birch “Why is there a variation in the logo on the spines of some 2nd printings from 1967, some have yellow and others red?” Any ideas?

I’ve finally managed to get a 1975 edition of Daphne du Mauriers ‘The Scapegoat’ to replace the image I got off the web. This was very faint so I thought the real thing would be better but turns out to be very faint as well. I’ve acquired a few titles this week and rather strangely five of them have the very discrete ‘GDA’ logo for Gino d’Achille.

This weeks featured author is Paul Mark Scott who died on the 1st March 1978. He was born on the 25th March 1928 in London and was a novelist, playwright, and poet. He is probably best known for his monumental tetralogy ‘The Raj Quartet’ His novel ‘Staying On’ won the Booker Prize for 1977. PAN published ‘The Raj Quartet’ in 1988 and all his other back titles in the next two years. Up to then PAN had only published two titles ‘The Mark of the Warrior’ and ‘The Chinese Love Pavillion’

Nine of the covers are by the Belfast artists Kenny McKendry and I emailed him to ask about them and he kindly replied “Hi Tim, Yes indeed you have the right Kenny McKendry, It was a long time ago but I have nice memories of travelling up to London to deal with Pan quite often. The name of my contact as art director escapes me right now but I am sure it will come back to me. He was a jolly fella and quite generous with fees etc. They were quite a closed shop in terms of commissioning and I was considered fortunate to be on their roster of artists. I’m afraid in those, days due to deadlines etc, I did tend to rush things out and not give the literature the proper consideration. I can’t say I did a lot of them justice. I do have the art work somewhere and will get back to you with photos when I track it down. That’s a great website, nice to be reminded of the old way of doing things. Will get back to you soon. Best regards, Kenny”  I think the art director might have been Gary Day-Ellison. I’ll report back any further news.

Another addition to the ‘PAN As Seen on Television’ section and yet again from ‘Bargain Hunt’. This time it was in a Stamford bookshop and prominently in the spinner display was a very decrepit looking copy of ‘Please Don’t Eat the Daisies’

The pop up bookshop has reappeared in Wolverhampton and is there for another two weeks so if you are around the Wulfrun Centre be sure to pop in. They seem to have more paperbacks this time although I only bought one PAN which turned out to be the same as the one I already have, the old memory is not what it was! On the plus side I did buy a few titles to actually read.

I was going to report back on all my purchases from Amsterdam but only picked up one title from the flea market on Waterlooplein for 1 euro  (see below) I did better calling in at Durham on the way back where I picked up three early Pearl Buck titles that looked like they had never been read. Buy three, pay for two in the Oxfam shop was not a bad deal.

Finally don’t forget ‘World Book Day’

Sorting through newer titles I find I have several that are by Australian authors and printed by PAN in Australian.

One of them ‘Gilt Edge’ by journalist Ian Moffitt (1926-2000) is odd in that the word PAN is redacted on the cover while it says Hinkler Books on the spine. I’ve emailed Hinkler to ask if they bought up surplus stock and put their name on it, no response so far. I did find this copy which still shows the word PAN but it’s the only one so far.
The second author is radio broadcaster Terry Lane (1939) and I’ve scanned in the three titles published by PAN although two fail my ‘PAN Man’ logo test but for completeness they are included.

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The Australian connection to Ben Ostrick (above with wife Marie and baby Lisa Dawn) or J. Oval as he is probably better know from all of the covers he did using that name for PAN is that I eventually tracked down where and when he died.It was on the 13th December 1966 and his memorial can be found near Sidney at Position 27, Wall K, North Walls, Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park, Matraville, Randwick City, New South Wales, Australia.Thanks to member’s of Ben’s family for clues of where to look. If any fellow PAN Fans are around there I’d love a photo of the memorial.

If you are reading this then it means it has successfully published itself as schedule as we are making our way back over the North Sea from Amsterdam to Newcastle Upon Tyne. I’ll report next week if I have managed to acquire anything of PAN related interest.

Last week I picked up assorted bits and pieces including some very nicely rebound editions of Jean Plaidy titles and unusually for this type of mutilated paperback they have left on the front and back covers.

The featured author of the week, which I’ve just decided will be a new  occasional offering, this time is Ross Thomas who has had six titles published by PAN. He was born on February 19, 1926 in Oklahoma City and died two months before his 70th birthday in 1995. Another edition of ‘If You Can’t be Good’ (as above) should be in the post and I will add a good scan as soon as it arrives.Thomas also wrote as Oliver Bleeck but I don’t think PAN published any of those.

Quite a while ago I made a page showing three of the four “Out and About” series titles but didn’t include the last one as sellers were asking silly prices.I have now completed the set and got the last one at a lot more acceptable price namely 99p.

I’ve added a few more covers to the Colin Dexter page and although they don’t have the ‘PAN Man’ on them they do have the PAN Crime dagger that was used for a couple of years along with several others designs for the different genres. One is odd in that there are two variants of the style that was previously used on just one title, the red dagger and the yellow rectangle. I’ve left some areas with just a message in then hope that these editions do exist but I don’t know for sure at the moment.

After putting on a PAN title with a Plastic Cover last week I have since found four more. As a site that does judge a book by its cover I’ll leave you to form your own opinions!

We lost another actor from my formative years last Thursday, namely Albert Finney. I can remember sneaking in to see ‘Tom Jones’, cert 18, when I was 13 but I was tall for my age! Alan Sillitoe received a Golden PAN award for ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’

I’ve also heard back from George Sharp regarding the cover for ‘Count Vronsky’s Daughter’ which, even with his name on the back, he says is not his! This is the second cover George says is not his even with his name on the back, the other being the 1980 edition of  ‘The White Rajah’