‘Teddy Edward’ features is a series of books by Patrick and Mollie Matthews. PAN Piccolo published four titles based on the 1973 BBC TV programmes of which there were thirteen episodes. These were narrated by TV newsreader Richard Baker who also told the stories on records. There were annuals, stuffed toys, jig-saw puzzles and numerous other examples of merchandising. Patrick Matthews (1914–1996) worked as a writer, photographer, and cinematographer. He also served as a director for Condé Nast and managing director of Vogue Studios. Mollie Matthews (1919–2001), born Winifred Mary Berry, initially worked as a personal assistant to the head of the British Military Mission to France before marrying Patrick in 1951.

This weeks David Tayler rough is for 1960 edition of ‘The Cardinal’ by Henry Morton Robinson. PAN published three editions of this title, the later two having artwork by another PAN stalwart, Glenn Steward. Robinson (07/09/1898 to 13/01/1961) was an American novelist born in Boston and graduated from Columbia College in 1923 after serving in the US Navy during the First World War. He was an instructor in English at Columbia University, and a senior editor at ‘Reader’s Digest’ He wrote thirteen novels of which PAN only published the one. On December 23, 1960, he fell asleep in a hot bath after taking a sedative. Three weeks later, on January 13, 1961, he died in New York of complications from the resulting second  and third degree burns.

Looking at old newspaper and magazine articles I noticed this one in ‘The Bookseller’ for the 18th April 1959. Now wondering why there was a problem, was it a specific title published that caused the demand?

Yippee, it’s taken a long time but here it is at last!

For the last few years I have been hunting for X705 ‘Junior Crosswords Book 3’ and now thanks to the generosity of Elly and PAN’s archive team giving me a copy, I hope I have finally complete the collection of pre SBN editions. I think there are 2,391 titles with one of PANs numbers that were used before SBNs and ISBNs. I now have at least one edition starting at just number, then GP, followed by G, X, M and various other letter prefixes to indicate price. I also have all the PAN Piper titles which start with a double letter prefix.

It great to have it on the shelf as its space has been kept by a 4th printing with a SBN as a place filler.

People say “What are you going to do now you have them all?” well don’t worry there is still plenty of material out there including cover and printing variants, artwork, catalogues, advertising and associated ephemera plus later titles of course.

Thanks to Rog Peyton who spotted a mistake, not one of mine I hasten to add, but in the Signal toothpaste flyer. It listed PAN books due to be published in June but got the numbers wrong. They are listed as ‘G’ but in fact were actually ‘X’ I have checked with Elly, the PAN archivist, and she confirms they have no listing for any title with a number past G717. I see that elusive X705 is in there as G718! In the catalogue for June 1967 they have the numbers right.

I caught a trailer for Alan Carr’s TV programme ‘Chatty Man’ I’ve not been watching it but something caught my eye. There was a clip of an adult Alan Carr next to someone playing him as a teenager and it was the book he was reading. It is the 13th printing of ‘Dumb Witness’ from 1978 with an ISBN. PAN also published ‘Dumb Witness’ as number 82.

Last year we bought annual passes to the gold award winning Black Country Living Museum and realised they were nearly up so we fitted in a visit. We were glad we did as last month the reconstructed library opened. The historic Woodside Library from Dudley has been rebuilt brick-by-brick at the Black Country Living Museum. It opened on March 18th, 2026 as a centerpiece of its new 1940s-1960s high street development. Originally built in 1894, the restored library features over 6,500 books chosen from the 60,000 donated and reflects post-war community life and I was wondering if they might have something …….. and I wasn’t disappointed.

This weeks random author‏ is Australian Kathleen ‘Kylie’ Tennant 12/03/1912 to 28/02/1988) She was born in Manley, NSW and became a novelist, playwright, short-story writer, critic, biographer, and historian. PAN published three of her titles namely X87 ‘The Battlers’, MP67 ‘Australia: Her Story’ and a later printing of ‘Australia: Her Story’ and finally a Piccolo ‘All The Proud Tribesman’

Amongst the many David Tayler roughs I recently acquired was a pencil one for ‘The Somme’ by A H Farrar-Hockley. The background is very similar but the larger characters at the front are not included on the finished cover. General Sir Anthony Heritage Farrar-Hockley (08/04/1924 to 11/03/2006) was born in Coventry. He was a British Army officer, nicknamed ‘Farrar the Para’ and a military historian who fought in a number of conflicts and ended his career as Commander-in-Chief of NATO’s Allied Forces Northern Europe.

With the Hay on Wye Literary Festival almost on us I got an email from Roo Waterhouse to say she has been chosen to be the artist decorating this years tote bags. Her three designs include Winnie the Pooh, Peter Rabbit and Agatha Christie as it is 50 years since she died.

Our random author of the week is E E Vielle. Eugene Emile “Tubby” Vielle OBE (29/4/1913 to 02/04/2015). He was born in Lambeth and his early education was at Dulwich College while later he was admitted to the Royal Air Force College Cranwell. From there Viellee joined the Royal Air Force where he flew as many as 150 different types of aircraft before retiring from the RAF in 1957 as a group captain. He wrote eight books of which PAN published two, namely ‘The Shadow of Kuril’ and ‘No Subway’  Has anyone any idea as to who the cover artist might be?

This weeks David Tayler rough is for ‘Gale Force’ by Elleston Trevor. He was born Trevor Dudley-Smith on the 17th February 1920 and died 21st July 1995.  Trevor was a novelist and playwright who wrote under several pseudonyms including a series of Cold War thrillers featuring the British secret agent Quiller, written under the pseudonym Adam Hall. Trevor wrote over 100 books under names such as  Simon Rattray, Howard North, Roger Fitzalan, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith and Lesley Stone. PAN published at least ten of his novels I can think of off the top of my head. I may have to make a page to include them all.

Back in 1967 Signal Toothpaste gave away 12 PAN Book titles which they claimed were by world famous authors and they are probably right. To get one you needed to sent the ends of three toothpaste packets but they also listed other PAN titles that could be bought. I’m wondering if the give away copies were special promotional ones or just standard pritings?

I recently heard, via Rog Peyton, from Marion Ellis who was a friend of David Tayler. Her husband took photographs of David posing as references for his book covers for which David got paid £40. She sent me five which I have put on the page HERE which is my guess as to which cover they went with. Do you agree?

Sir Thomas Hicks (17/12/936), known professionally as Tommy Steele, is an English entertainer, regarded as Britain’s first teen idol rock and roll star, actor, sculptor and writer. He wrote a children’s novel, ‘Quincy’ about a reject toy trying to save himself and his fellow rejects in a bin in the basement of a toy store. published in 1981. When I read this I was reminded of something similar, ‘The Raggy Dolls’, a British cartoon series which aired on TV in 1986. The series is set in Mr Grimes’ Toy Factory, where imperfect dolls are thrown into a reject bin. Any similarity I’m sure is purely coincidental! ‘The Raggy Dolls’ books were published by Boxtree, another PAN imprint.

It’s been a while since I communicated with Johnny Mains when he was talking about producing the ‘The PAN Book of Horror Stories Scrapbook’ which, unfortunately, didn’t materialise. I have the Les Edwards artwork that was going to be the cover and I know I have shown it before but it is worth a second look.. The reason Johnny got in touch was it was his 50th birthday and he got a personalised card from artist Richard Wells which makes me a little jealous. Click HERE to see it.

This week the David Tayler rough is for ‘Oh Promised Land’ by James Street. Street (15/10/1903 to 298/08/1954) was an American journalist, minister, and writer. He wrote at least 16 novels of which PAN published just the one. Apparently he was giving out awards, laid his head on the table and was dead from a heart attack at the age of 50!

As the above had a film linked to its title this advert seems appropriate to include here.

It was quite a while ago that I made a page to show the ‘Morph‘ titles from Piccolo. I thought I had all the three but it turns out there was a fourth. This is ‘The Big Match’ and now added to the page.

We spent the Easter weekend over indulging in food and chocolate in Newcastle Upon Tyne. I was hoping to visit some bookshops if they were open but didn’t manage it although my cousin very kindly came along and took us to Seaton Delaval Hall. We also visited the Beamish Museum which would have been really good if we didn’t have the Black Country Living Museum and Blist Hill Museum on our doorsteps, places we visit often. It got marked down because the sweet shop didn’t have coltsfoot rock while both of our two local museums do.

As I mentioned last week I had not noticed the passing of artist Paul Sample (19/02/1947 to 27/01/2026) back in January. We often emailed, with me usually asking for more information on a specific cover. He is probably most well known to PAN Fans for painting the Tom Sharpe covers but he also did others for PAN. We also lost Len Deighton (18/02/1929 to 15/03/2026) more recently and PAN published a couple of his books such as ‘Bomber’ plus including endorsements on several other titles.

Not PAN but looking through assorted bits and pieces I came across these A4 adverts for ‘The Ninja’. It’s a pity there aren’t seven then we would have had all the colours of the rainbow. They come in a folder made of what seems like bright red flock wallpaper which may have a significance that eludes me.

This weeks David Tayler rough is for what seems to be a rather elusive PAN title, namely ‘Blackwater’ by Frank O’Rourke. PAN published another book with the same title but by H L Tredree which seems to be much more common. More on this title in a couple of weeks.

FOOTNOTE As was pointed out on a James Bond Facebook page there are some very optimistic sellers out there. Now how many copies of this book have I got?

This weeks rough from David Tayler is for 424 ‘Glory Hole’ by William MacLeod Raine. The last time I featured this cover my site was number 1 in Germany for those of a certain persuasion. I’m sure they were very disappointed to find it wasn’t quite what they were after but I hope I educated them to the fact there were more interesting things that knot holes in toilet walls.

Watching one of Jules Burt’s very informative videos recently I was interested to see a copy of ‘SF News’ I’d not come across before. It mentions two titles by Richard Cowper on the front page and I’m pleased to say I have the original artwork for ‘Twilight of Briareus‘ by Geoff Tayler. ‘Galactic Warlord‘ is featured on the back page with artwork for this, and other titles in this series, by Terry Oakes.

If you have a spare £5,000+ and are looking for something to buy then how about a PAN 1976 copy of ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ signed by  eight members of the cast of the 1976 film namely Donald Sutherland (Liam Devlin), Michael Caine (Kurst Steiner), Jenny Agutter (Molly), Larry Hagman (Colonel Pitts), Sven-Bertil Taube (Captain von Neustadt), Judy Geeson (Pamela), Jean Marsh (Joanna Grey) and Siegfried Rauch (Sergeant Brandt). 

Although it was back at the start of the year I’ve only just heard of the passing of artist Paul Sample on the 27th January. As I’m currently in Newcastle Upon Tyne I’ll have more on Paul next week.

This week there are two David Tayler roughs for G201 ‘Sabotage is Suspected’ by John Baker White. One is a pencil rough closer to the finished cover than the painted one which is completely different but does have the title written along the bottom edge. Baker White (12/08/1902 to 10/12/1988) was born in West Malling, Kent. He became a very early member of the British Fascists when he undertook undercover operations for Sir George Makgill’s Industrial Intelligence Bureau.  In 1945 he was elected a Conservative politician and was a journalist and author. PAN also published his book G212 ‘The Big Lie’

This weeks random author is Desmond Lowden. Lowden (29/09/1937 to 19/05/2024) who was born in Winchester and went to St. Pilgrim’s School there. He started work at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios, first working as a runner and then moving on to assistant editor. Desmond travelled to work in the South of France as a deckhand and then to Crete as a TEFL teacher. He married his wife Gillian while in Athens, and the couple returned to Winchester, where they had two children. Lowden was award the ‘Silver Dagger’ in 1989. PAN published five on his novels one of which, ‘Bellman and True’ was made into a film in 1988.

A couple of blogs ago I mentioned ‘War Story’ by Derek Robinson but the link went to the stamps in one copy of the book I have and not the cover as intended. Hopefully the link above is now the correct one. I’m wondering if anyone has a copy that doesn’t have a sticker over what I presume was the original price in Australia and were there other countries included? I was hoping it was an Australian printing but alas not the case.

UPDATES Having mentioned ‘Skeletons’ by Glendon Swarthout and how BookFinder mentioned there was a copy available but didn’t list where, my email to them must have done something as it appeared shortly after and I bought it to add to the page. I have also added three more ‘Donkey’ books by Elisabeth Svendsen.