I’ve mentioned Martin Baker’s covers for Fontana Agatha Christie titles before, well now they have appeared in an article by David Morris on his excellent  ‘Collecting Christie’ website. He includes a very interesting interview with Martin which gives a lot of background to the ‘foxtail’ series. When asked, I was more than happy for David to use the scans off my page as it includes a plug for the site. It also shows I do go off at a tangent away from PAN very occasionally if I like the artwork. I heard from Martin to say he is not happy that other publishers use his artwork without permission such as there two on the right, one of which is a Bosnian version of “Cat Among the Pigeons” while the other is more a possible homage on an Italian edition of ‘Macabro Quiz’ by Oliviero Berni.

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A couple of titles I have on my shelves are ‘Beyond the Void’ and ‘Dreaming of Utopia’ both by Steve Holland of Bear Alley Books and well worth a read. They both contain examples of PAN book covers with ‘Utopia’ featuring four by Reina Mary Sington and ‘Void’ also has four but by Henry Fox.

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In Penguin Collector 102 Peter Miller states in his article that there are  ‘Too Few Murders in Penguin’ pointing out how some prolific crime writers were well served by other publishers but not by Penguin. One example was Arthur Upfield where PAN published and reprinted many more of his titles than did Penguin. Peter has managed to include the cover of  PAN 441 ‘Cake in a Hat Box’ by Rex Archer but he said space precluded more.

After Mentioning Martin Baker and his Fontana ‘foxtail’ series of Christie covers recently I found I had actually scanned a couple more and somehow missed adding them to the page. I also found one I hadn’t got so ‘Murder in Mesopotamia’ is now there. I’m grateful to David Morris from the  ‘Collecting Christie’ website who also pointed out another boxed set I didn’t have. The slip case is the same for both but one measures 65mm wide and the other 80mm so they were not generic but made to fit the selection within. I have also been told that the cat on ‘Cat Among The Pigeons’ was Martin’s own cat called Fido.

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After a visit to Attingham Park, well not the park as it was closed due to over 30 mature tress being down after a storm, we went round the house decorated for Christmas. This is always followed by an obligatory visit to the second hand bookshop and we were pleased to see this sign and the amount, some of which is due to the purchasing and donating of books by my wife and myself.

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David Lodge (born 28/01/1935, London and died 01/01/2025, Birmingham) was an English novelist, literary critic, playwright, and editor known chiefly for his satiric novels about academic life, especially the Campus trilogy: Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984), and Nice Work (1988). Lodge was educated at University College, London (B.A., 1955; M.A., 1959), and at the University of Birmingham (Ph.D., 1967). His early novels, known mostly in England, included ‘The Picturegoers’ (1960), about a group of Roman Catholics living in London and ‘Ginger, You’re Barmy’ (1962), Lodge’s novelistic response to his army service in the mid-1950s were both published by PAN. The latter title was prominently displayed, cover out, on the shelf above my desk at work as my boss had very ginger hair. I think he was the only one who never twigged why it was there which sort of summed him up.