Amongst the many sketches I have in Hans Helweg’s folders are several for Nevil Shute covers. I’m starting to compile a page featuring Hans’ Shute covers and the preliminary sketches and paintings that go with them which can be seen HERE. With them not being signed, well not obviously although he did put in the occasional HH, I’ve used the sketches, paintings I have or where in his workshop, the printers proofs he had on file and his list he made of the covers he could remember. I was pleased to find X117 was one of his as he had a printers proof for the 1962 edition and in his list he says the 1968 version is listed as a Redo.

A while ago, while featuring Ed McBain I mentioned that he was really Evan Hunter and PAN only published one title  under this name, ‘Nobody Knew They Were There’  Now I know you’ll find this hard to believe(!) but I was wrong and have found another one and I think there may be more plus he also wrote as Richard Marsten so ‘The Spiked Heel’ was another published by PAN. It says ‘Come Winter‘ is the sequel to ‘Last Summer’ although this latter title wasn’t published by PAN.

After including the obituary of David Larkin from the Macmillan magazine last week, this issue also included a write up on ‘Cover Me’ by Colin Larkin published by ‘TELOS’

After visiting Keith Scaife recently I put together a page showing the original artworks for his ‘Jack Higgins’ covers using photographs I took. It wasn’t until Keith sent me much better photographs that I realised I had forgotten one! Click HERE to see the page which now has ‘Dillinger’ and the other covers as photographed by Keith.

It’s odd how Google will suggest random things based on searches but from a while ago. Having mentioned Brian Sanders recently, due to the sad loss of Lizzie, it decided I was interested in the stamps Brian designed – and surprisingly I was! I think it was five sets for the UK plus others for countries around the world. The five subjects here were British Police, Fishing, Youth Organisations, RAF and The British Council. Looking on eBay I cannot understand how sellers can make money as I bought all five sets for between 99p and £1.50 each including postage. The face value of one mint set bought for 99p comes to £1.04 and they can still be used legally so definitely quids in. I’m added then to Brian’s Page as they arrive in the post.

Having mentioned Tony Whitehorn, the ‘blurb’ writer at PAN in the early 60’s I can now put a face to the name as thanks to Tony and his son Stephen his reminiscences now have a couple of photos. One is from his days at PAN while the other is from a couple of years ago. In emails Tony mentioned another couple of titles he particularly remembers. Of the first he says “The most important copy of course was that on the back cover, which with the artwork was the main means of selling the book. With crime fiction I often tried to create a sense of foreboding, sometimes by painting an innocuous, even idyllic, scene before subverting it with a disturbing note — as with ‘Evil Under the Sun’, one of the best Christies” Regarding the second title Tony says “I remember that the last ever blurb I wrote for Pan was on my last day. It was for another Alan Burgess book, ‘The Lovely Sergeant” Tony is not very well at the moment so we wish him all the best for a speedy recovery.
UPDATE Just heard from Steven Kennedy, the editor of ‘Macmillan Together’ who kindly sent a copy of Tony’s article as it appeared in the magazine. Click HERE to see it.

This week I have had to install a backup for this blog, then run the WordPress update and also update the version of PHP to 7.3 so I’ve been reluctant to do too much to it in case it all went wrong. Plus I have been working down our old railway track or our allotment in spite of Storm Gareth so I’ve only one item but it’s a quality one.

I was sorting through boxes of bits and pieces I had put on one side moving my collection to my ‘library’ last year when I came across some John Burke contracts including three related to the Hammer Horror titles, namely ‘The Hammer Horror Omnibus’ English ‘and Italian editions and “The Second Hammer Horror Omnibus” English edition. I contacted Johnny Mains who pointed me in the right direction to get the Italian edition but when I showed him the Dutch edition, which he didn’t know about he said “****”

I was surprised to find that the Dutch edition was published by K-Tel who I always thought of as producing those products that were suitable to give to some one who had everything such as the brush-o-matic and the disc-o-matic. The latter was a record selector and I actually still have a couple somewhere along with some of the compilation records tha K-Tel produced.

With this new version of WordPress there seems to be a lot more options such as having coloured backgrounds etc and tempted as I am to use them all I’ll stick with my tried and tested format although I’m not saying there won’t an occasional foray into different realms!

Having now played around with this version a bit more I think I prefer the earlier one but I have discovered I can switch parts of it back to ‘Classic’ ie the previous version. If I use that with the ability to add html I might be able to do what was so simple before.

PS Still waiting to hear back from four artists but as it is now 2 months since writing to one of then I may put that down as a failure!

As promised last week I’ve scanned in my artwork by Gino D’Achille and although not PAN, Panther is close! Click HERE to see it.

I also bought a copy of ‘Anticipation’ about the French mainly sci-fi series of books published by Fleuve Noir. Some sellers are asking over £50 for a copy so when I saw it at 12 euros on Amazon I ordered a copy. I then got a message from the seller asking where the price came from as it should be 25 euros? I said that was the price shown and then expected the order to be cancelled but it wasn’t and honoured at the price quoted. The postage was also 12 euros but turns out it was sent from a publishers here in the UK so maybe a bit step. Could be the postage and book price got mixed up but I’m happy.

Many of the covers were recycled from the ‘Young Artists’ group in the UK some starting out as PAN covers.. When I mentioned this on Facebook Jean-Daniel Brèque commented  “ALL of them were recycled. I know at least two writers who worked for Fleuve Noir at the time and who regularly went to the office of the publisher to pick their covers in advance. My friend Michel Pagel, who was working on a tetralogy, specifically picked up four Les Edwards covers featuring a skull in order to make his books stand out”

To see a couple of Terry Oakes covers click HERE. Jean-Daniel also mentioned a website which shows many examples, click HERE to go to the page for Terry Oakes then maybe use the search and go to the Les Edwards page.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step” was supposedly said by Lao Tzu and I feel a bit like that with “The scanning of a thousand plus books starts with number one” I’m embarking on the task of rescanning all my numbered titles which would be 2,391 if they only had one edition but some have several different covers such as “Lost Horizon”. I’m also using it as a chance to rebuild my spreadsheet. So far I’ve done all of numbers 1 and 2!This is the spreadsheet so far, still deciding if this is all the columns I’ll need? I’ve got thumbnails images as comments so they appear when I hover over plus hyperlinked to the image so I can edit them easily if need be.

I came across this newspaper article which seemed to be particularly pertinent after talking about the above.

I had to get a copy of Justin Marriott’s new publication “Hot Lead” (available from Amazon) as the cover features ‘Hart’ draw by Gino d’Achille although he now appears to be left handed. I’ve show all the ‘Hart covers’ before but HERE is the link again.I have looked for some affordable original Gino artwork for a while and only this week realised I’ve had one for years. While sorting non PAN books I looked on the back of a Panther title of which I have the artwork and it is credited to Gino, something I’ve missed before. When I locate the artwork I’ll put it on a blog.

The title for this blog is one you don’t see everyday, a comedian and a painter although they would probably say they are both artists in their own way.

I don’t often listen to the radio programme ‘Desert Island Discs’ which has been going for 75 years but did catch the end of the episode while waiting for the news where comedian Flanagan chose PAN’s ‘A Dictionary of Philosophy’ as the book he would take. He mentioned he still has it at home so I’ve fired off one of my emails asking if it’s possible to have a photo of him holding it? I’ll let you know if I get a response.This reference has now swollen the ‘PAN as mentioned on radio’ section to all of two clips which can be found HERE.

Back in August I mentioned trying to contact Julek Heller to ask about the original unsigned artwork of a unicorn to check if it was one of his and so I was really pleased to get a message from his daughter Zosia this week and letting me have contact details. We have since communicated and he confirmed that the unicorn was his but unfortunately I had sent him the wrong artwork! There were two, one we knew was his, the other something like it and guess which one I attached? I’ve since sent the other and await a verdict. 

I also asked Julek about some of the titles from PAN with artwork listed as by him to which he replied “There are quite a few images out there attributed to me that I didn’t produce, some good some not ,what can you do? My website is in need of some work which I hope to deal with in the New Year . I Have a few sample covers somewhere in my files which I will try and dig out and scan. I’ll send them on to you if I can find them” I specifically mentioned the PAN ‘Gormenghast Triology’ listed as having artwork by him, which weirdly ties in with the “PAN as heard on radio” in that the only other clip refers to Mervyn Peake, author of the said novel. Julek attached his artwork for the Peake title but this was for Overlook Press in the States from 1988.I have some more scans to add to Julek’s page but I can’t get to the box at the moment, probably in the New Year. I’ll let you know when they go on.