I was very pleased to be able to meet up with world famous book illustrator Val Biro last Sunday, it was a pleasure to spend the afternoon with him in his studio in West Sussex. I think he was pleasantly surprised to see the 20 or so PAN covers I took, all from the early 50’s that he had forgotten he had produced. He also signed all my Piccolo ‘Gumdrop’ books and I am putting a page together about him this week.
If you want to find out more about Val, Cameron Cunningham runs the excellent official Val Biro website.
   

You wait for months and months for a PAN book to appear on TV and then you get three in as many days – well almost. Last Friday ‘Dr No’ was shown on the ‘One Show’ and yesterday ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Goldfinger’ on the ‘Top Gear Bond Cars Special’
The books as featured, plus others, can be found under the ‘PAN as seen on TV’ link on the Miscellany page.
  

Not much to report but hopefully more interesting items coming up soon including wanted books update, a visit to more artists and the ‘Invisible Ink’ fiasco!
At the moment I am still adding later PAN and Piccolo titles, doing a few of each alternately as it can get a little repetitive. I’m trying to track down a copy of ‘Ghosts, Ghouls and Bones’ by Rowan Barnes-Murphy to complete my Cryptic Library set so if out anyone out there has a spare copy ………. Update 12/12/12 Now have a copy of G,G&Bs and added to display below.

PS I manged to find a copy of ‘James Bond Strikes Camp’ in English but it wasn’t the riveting read I’d hoped for!

You may remember I visited West Molesey in the summer to see PAN’s old book despatch centre. While there I met the MD David Harrison who now runs D2 Printing Limited from the building and he was intrigued and pleased by the printing connection. He wanted to advertise this in their office and has had some poster made up to show some of the PAN covers from the late 50’s early 60’s He has very kindly sent me a couple and when my A1 frames arrive they will look magnificent on the wall.

While putting together a page on John’s artwork I found these three photos I took which have not name on them. I suspect the first two are from the Angelique series but the third one I’ve no idea. Can you help?

Last Sunday I met up with fellow collector Jules Burt and we went down to Falmouth where we were made very welcome by John Raynes. John did many covers for PAN in the late 60’s early 70’s and I’m putting together a page and I’ll put a note here when it is ready.

I have finished putting together a page of PAN related artwork by Brian although I’m still short of several Steinbeck’s but as dealers seem to be asking silly prices I’ll wait till they turn up for 99p. I know the calendar isn’t PAN but the paintings are very good and I may scan the months in at a later date. Click on the Artists link above to find the page.

Last Tuesday I was lucky enough to be able to spend a few hours with Brian Sanders and his wife Lizzie in their studio. ‘Sandy’ has produced a phenomenal amount of artwork over the years which has been seen all round the world. These range from book covers to stamps to medals to magazine illustrations to wine labels to Readers Digest etc. He has painted covers for Arrow, Fontana, Collins and Penguin to name a few but to me, more importantly, PAN Books. It was a privilege to see the originals for the 1970’s Steinbeck and Hornblower series plus many more. I am currently trying to track down copies of several of his covers, some of which are ascribed on the back, but most are not. I’ll put a message on the blog when I have completed it.

I have just acquired a 30″ X 20″ poster for PAN X461 ‘Hammerhead’ by James Leasor and if it hadn’t have been PAN I’m not sure I’d have bought it as it must be the dullest, most unattractive poster ever – unless you can prove me wrong?

I’m always on the look out for PAN Books counter displays, the sort of thing thrown out as soon as the promotion was over. I know someone who has a couple and I’ve salesmens catalogues showing them but no luck up to now when I managed to get a display for ‘The Conscripts’ by Walter Winward measuring 17″ by 14″ so if anyone else is throwing any out ……….