I recently heard from Tim Smith in Australia  to say did I know M120 ‘Two Gentlemen Sharing’ by David Stuart Leslie (1921-1999) had a cover by Hans Helweg? I did as the original artwork was in the plie I saw in Hans Helweg’s studio but I hadn’t got round to updating the page which I have done now.. Hans got paid £50 16s for the front cover and £26 10s for the back in February 1964. The original artwork was bought by a friend and I presume he still has it. PAN also published Leslie’s X194 ‘Two Left Feet’  and both titles were filmed in the 1960s. 

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PAN X192 ‘The Furnished Room’ by Laura Del-Rivo from 1963 was made into a film in the same year and renamed ‘West 11’ and starring Alfred Lynch, Eric Portman and Diana Dors. To read more about Laura Del-Rivo (13/02/1934 to 30/03/2019) and her life click HERE PAN also published her book ‘Animals’ in 1967

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Alan Samuel Lyle-Smythe MBE, M.C. (09/11/1914 – 01/10/2006) who wrote under the name Alan Caillou, was an English-born author, actor, screenwriter, soldier, policeman and professional hunter. PAN published his book X217 ‘Rampage’ in 1963 to tie-in with the film of the same name starring Robert Mitchum, Jack Hawkins and Elsa Martinelli. PAN also published his X205 ‘The Walls of Jolo’ in 1962

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I wonder if Tony Whitehorn wrote the cover blurbs?

Having mentioned obtaining a signed copy of Pat Reid’s ‘The Colditz Story’ it made me decide to put together a page with all the early PAN titles with a Colditz connection although I actually though I was going to find  more that just the four. As well as the one page I’ve also updated all their individual pages. The artists for two are easy to spot, namely F V M who was Francis Marshall who did so many Cartland covers and Sax (Rudolph Michael Sachs) I don’t have an artist for the Eggers cover. I have included pages from the relevant PAN Record magazines and some ‘Escape From Colditz’ merchandise including the board game devised by Pat Reid. These were banned in Germany as they showed the swastika hence the artwork being changed on later editions.

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I’d forgotten I had a couple of paintings by Paul Davis, who did 12 Leslie Thomas covers for PAN plus a couple of others, that he did as advertising for Terry’s Harlequin chocolates hence the spurious connection. I also found an advertisement for Terry’s on YouTube so if you have 32 seconds to spare click HERE.

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I have only just found these face masks which are not really PAN but included because of the same name from back in 2014 when we went to Croatia and I rounded up several PAN beer items. Since then Tomi has been sending me other PAN branded items such as playing cards, a T shirt and these face masks. Hopefully I won’t need them anytime soon.

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FOOTNOTE I’m always pleased to find I get around 1,500 visitors a week but last week it went up to nearly 6,000. Now left wondering why and can I get there again?  The best week was back in 2017 when I got to 74,000 after a mention in The Bookseller magazine. Happy to receive any requests for items to include in these blogs such as covers of specific authors or featuring a particular artist etc that you would like to see.

Simon Francis posted several photos of the James Bond material in his collection on Facebook and a couple caught my eye. Included was the advert above, which I have, but also the counter display below so if anyone has one to spare …….. or for that matter any other PAN advertising material they don’t want then please email me.

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David Reinhardt, who is lucky enough to have a Golden PAN Award, posted more pictures of it on Facebook this week and although two are from the usual angle it’s interesting to see one of the back — no I’m not going to say his backside! If anyone has a Golden PAN Award they don’t want ………!

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For a while my A3 Printer/Scanner has been playing up, well the printer part, and the only answer seemed to be a new print head which was more expensive than a new printer. I thought of keeping it just for the scanner but it was really too big to justify the space for something than only half worked. I bit the bullet and bought a new one but as luck would have it my old scanning software wouldn’t work with it so I’ve spent the last week trying to get a substitute and eventually resorted back to VueScan. To give it a good test I’ve taken the four PAN editions of ‘Wingless Victory’ by Anthony Thomas Stewart Currie Richardson (1899 to 1994) and included them with three of the original artworks. I advertised the old printer on Facebook and it went within an hour, did they know something I didn’t?

Sorry only a couple of things this week as we have been down in Kent stopping with our son and his family and in spite of getting out and about only managed  to pop into one bookshop and came out empty handed. We did get to visit some friends who were stopping in a cottage in the grounds of Hever Castle. It was only £4,550 for the week, click HERE if you want to see what you get for that sort of money!

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I came back to find a copy of ‘Chitty Chitty Band Bang’ I bought from Spain ages ago had finally arrived, Unfortunately I can’t find the contract I had before I went to Kent giving details of the agreement with PAN to publish it in Spanish. I have looked through it very carefully and nowhere does it mention PAN or that it is the book of the film by John Burke although all the illustrations are based on the film story and not that of Flemings.

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I’ve just been watching the YouTube video where Paul Duncan is reviewing his book on ‘Dr No’ published by Taschen and was pleasantly surprised to get a name check about eight minutes forty five seconds in. Looking forward to the trade edition coming out as the current limited edition is a little too much for me.