PAN Fans Club

Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

PAN Fans Club - Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at  www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

Rog Peyton, Adrian Harrington Bookseller and Goldsboro Books

It was back in 2016 that I first made contact with Rog Peyton and in spite of numerous emails since, usually letting me know I had made a ‘typing’ error, we’ve only recently got together. Rog had got a couple of advertising boards for book signings by Peter F. Hamilton and was I interested? Although they were for titles a little later than my usual cut off date I said “Yes” and so we met up at Rog’s house. We both agreed it was good to be able to talk about books as so many others tend to switch of when they become the subject of a conversation.
Wikipedia states, rightly or wrongly;
Roger “Rog” Peyton (born 1942) is an English science fiction fan, bookseller, editor and publisher from Birmingham. Peyton has been an active member of science fiction fandom since 1961, when he co-founded the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. From 1964 to 1966, he served as editor for the British Science Fiction Association’s critical magazine Vector. He also started the British Science Fiction Association’s fiction magazine Tangent. He began a long tradition of working on science fiction convention organizing committees with work for Brumcon 2, the 1965 Eastercon. Since then he has attended over 150 science fiction conventions including being one of only six (The Magnificent Six) who have attended all 45 Novacons and in 1979 won the Doc Weir Award for his services to fandom.

In 1971 Peyton and business partner Rod Milner launched a part-time bookselling business, Andromeda Book Company, in Old Hill, a few miles outside of Birmingham. Moving into the city centre to Suffolk Street in 1973, Peyton gave up his job in the building industry to sell books full-time, which was to last until 2002 when the businesLs went into voluntary liquidation. Following the demise of Andromeda, Peyton went solo selling on the internet as Replay Books. During the Andromeda years, their ventures included co-editing the Venture SF series of reprints of classic adventure science fiction from Arrow Books (1985–1989). Peyton and Milner also ran the small press Drunken Dragon Press, which published four titles amongst which was the 1988 collection of parodies ‘The Dragonhiker’s Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune’s Edge: Odyssey Two’ by David Langford.
Rog also very kindly gave me a copy of ‘The Time-Lapsed Man’ which is a 1990 hardback reprint by his Drunken Dragon Press of a title by Eric Brown and originally published by PAN in 1989. These days Rog spends part of his time compiling list of book cover artists for different publishers including PAN and also  walking his dog, Nellie.
PS Did you recognise Terry Pratchett and Neil Gamain in the photo?


Adrian Harrington, booksellers of Tunbridge Wells, is well know for selling James Bond related material, often with a John Gilbert connection. I myself have bought items from them not only from Tunbridge Wells but also when the shop was in Kensington. I was just looking what they currently have in stock and was interested to see an item, namely four DIY volumes of Bond stories and related titles including one with ‘The Book of Bond’ and ‘The Bond Dossier’ and yours for only £650.


Going off at a tangent I recently picked up a couple of later Picadors which are signed limited editions and published in association with Goldsboro Books but I’m not quite sure why. The one is a hard back edition in a slipcase of The Kills’ by Richard House and the other is ‘Selection Day’ by Aravind Adiga.

Mazo de la Roche, Gavin Scott and the last ‘New Titles’

In the mid 1960s PAN published and republished all sixteen ‘Jalna’ titles by Mazo de la Roche and for once they were all in the same style although with paintings by different artists. I know four were by Gordon King as he told me and one by John Raynes as I can read the signature but I’m still puzzling over one which seems to have a signature possibly beginning with ‘W’ but that’s about it.

I would love to know the artist for ‘Variable Winds at Jalna’ as the original artwork has hung on my wall for years. I’ve included a few later editions, some with SBNs and some with  ISBNs including a few that say PAN Toronto London as opposed to just PAN London but all printed in the UK. I have listed them in time sequence of the saga and included the publication dates as well.


Prime recommended I watch ‘Absolutely Anything’ which we did and enjoyed in spite of the reviews. I was pleased to see a name I recognised in the credits, that of a fellow PAN Fan, Gavin Scott, who not only wrote the script with Terry Jones but also appeared in it. Gavin and I have been emailing on and off since 2016 when he contacted me to say “I’m a great fan of your site, which I think is superbly organised and very rich”  He, like me, is a admirer of the cover artwork and has a collection of his own. Above is a screen capture of Gavin as a newsreader in the film.


My last ‘New Titles’ list with a picture on the cover features ‘The Master Mariner’ by Nicholas Monsarrat and makes me scratch my head. It clearly states that it will be published on 11th January 1980 so why does my copy, and several from online sellers, say it is 1979?


‘Extracts From A Diary’, Twice The Fear and Another ‘New Titles’

Quite a while ago I posted about Hugh Walpole’s ‘Extracts From A Diary’ which he had printed in lieu of his 50th birthday party as he wasn’t well. They were limited to 100 copies and I have number 3 which came with a letter to Alan Bott, founder of PAN Books. I was speculating on where the others may have ended up and after writing a article for ‘The Hugh Walpole Review’ my list of 23 has expanded to 29 thanks to Rod Boroughs of the Hugh Walpole Society and Peter Henderson of the King’s School Canterbury.

03 Tim Kitchen (Alan Bott)
08 Maugham Library, The King’s School, Canterbury Somerset Maugham’s copy.
09 Library Of Congress
18 University Of Tulsa
25 The King’s School Canterbury from the R T Risk Collection
29 Yale University
37 National Library Of Scotland
40 Huntington Library
41 Sold by Biblio to ? S/C G/J
42 Godfrey Holdstock S/C
44 Stanford University
45 University Of Melbourne
46 Lilly Library
49 UCLA Library
58 Dee MacLean (Jack and Edith Eliot)
65 Alexander Turnbull Library
68 Sold by Harper Field Auctioneers to ? 2018 S/C
71 Simon Dunant
76 Ann Bolam Gifted by Hart-Davies S/C with George Cukor on it
80 Ann Bolam
81 Library of Congress (Jean Hersholt)
84 Boston University
87 University Of Texas
88 Bodleian Library
89 British Library
92 Cambridge University
93 London Library
94 British Library
100 University of York (Ronald Storrs) Gifted by Sir Rupert Hart-Davies

I’ve also included Walpole’s ‘The Crystal Box’ of which I have number131 or 150. 


Just by coincidence I spotted a couple of titles linked by the word ‘Fear’, the first being ‘Reign of Fear’ with a cover by Ian Miller published as a PAN Horror and the second ‘The Grip of Fear’ with a cover by Sam ‘PEFF’ Peffer published by Digit. Sellers of the latter title can ask up to three figures for it but as to whether or not they sell for that I don’t know. What I do know is I got if for a price I was pleasantly surprised by.


This weeks ‘New Titles’ features ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and it is from mid 1975. It also highlights ‘The Rainbird Pattern’ by Victor Canning  as “one of our finest and most consistently successful crime writers”

John Le Carré, ‘New Titles’ and ‘Piccolo Paperbacks 75’ Catalogue

Sorting out David John Moore Cornwell titles I noticed how may variants of his covers there are specifically where the R’s of his penname are squashed together (careful how you say that) David Cornwell was born on the 19th October 1931 in Poole, Dorset and died on the 12th December 2020 in Truro, Cornwall.


This weeks ‘New Titles’ cover features ‘Down to a Restless Sea’ by David Graham and I think it is the only one of his six titles, written under various names, published by PAN. Graham was the pen name of Evan (or Wilbur) Wright (1919–1994) a British crime fiction author born in South Shields.


I have scanned in the complete catalogue of ‘Piccolo Paperbacks 75’ as mentioned last week. I have not tried to do anything fancy like page turning etc as I have never had that much success in the past so I just put them all on a page.