The blog is on hold while I recover from a week in hospital. Last Monday, when I was out on our disused railway track I, managed to get the lace of one boot wrapped around the hooks of the other resulting in me come to a very abrupt halt. When I tried to stand up I realised something was amiss but this time I’ve only had half a hip replacement and not a full one like last time, What is it with me, hips and art exhibitions in Wiltshire? Last time is was in Salisbury when at least I got to see the Richard Chopping exhibition whereas yesterday I should have been in Westbury for the Tom Stimpson exhibition. Hopefully normal service will be resume next week.

PAN didn’t publish many of Catherine Cookson’s novels, apart from three for children under their Piccolo imprint, but Corgi did and when I saw a piece of original artwork by Dave Pether for ‘Tilly Trotter Wed’ at a reasonable price I couldn’t resists. This artwork was used first on the series where Cookson’s name appeared as above but also reissued on a later edition. I’ve put together a few other examples on a page HERE. (Thanks to Boscobel Old Hall’s secondhand bookshop for most of them) Dave Pether was born in Southall in 1943 and lived and worked there for all his life. He went to Twickenham Tech Art College and contributed to the well known OZ magazine and was also a musician. His band ‘The Muleskinners’ were part of the early 1960’s art school R&B scene. A Motorbike accident cut short his musical career but after college he worked in an animation studio and then joined the Young Artists Agency and John Spencer before setting up his own illustration company ‘Dave Pether Illustration’ in the 1970s. In the 1990’s Dave started teaching art at Brunel University and taught there for 12 years. During this time he moved into doing video game illustration including working on the very popular ‘Lemmings’

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Back on April 20th BBC Radio Four did a dramatisation of ‘Casino Royale’ and I was going to listen to it but it appears not to be available anymore. It looks like it was a very condensed version running for just under sixty minutes. What reminded me was Jeremy Birch send me a pile of clippings from ‘The Times’ which mentioned it and the article was illustrated with a copy of PAN X232.

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Having posted a couple of Canadian editions of PAN titles recently, HERE are two more from Douglas Adams. They are almost the same as the UK printings apart from saying ‘Printed in Canada’ and having the ISBN printed on the front covers as well as the back. There are often other differences such as the paper type or card cover thickness but not this time and not even any green stained edges!

In 1937 W D and H O Wills produced a set of 40 cards featuring ‘Famous British Authors’ They were included with the 20’s pack of cigarettes as they were too big to go in the 10s. What I was impressed by was the number of authors that can be found to have works published by PAN. Maybe I need to add links to them, well maybe one day. I was intrigued to see the National Portrait Gallery included them in their collection and will sell you prints at various sizes and prices plus greeting cards and a license. You can buy a set for under £5 then it’s easy enough to produce your own and as there is no artist credited I presume they are out of copyright?

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One of the Wills cards, specifically number 39, prompted me to rescan all the PAN book covers of titles by Sir P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse. They are 107 ‘Summer Lightning’, ‘112 ‘Thank You Jeeves’ and six later titles with cover artwork by Edward Mortelmans from1968. Wodehouse was born in Guildford on 15/10/1881 and died in New York on 14/02/1975 just a month after he was knighted. He wrote 71 novels and 42 plays plus numerous short stories.

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Just to complete the trio of Wodehouse connections this week I picked up a later copy of  X709 ‘Nuts in May’ by Richard Gordon. The earlier edition has a quote from Wodehouse on the front cover. I am puzzled as to who gave away the 1973 edition as although it mentions PAN inside it says on the cover it was a TOTAL special edition. Now is that TOTAL the magazine, the toothpaste, the fuel company or something else completely?

I think I have mentioned it before but Tom Stimpson‘s sister Lesley is organising an exhibition of some of his original work in Westbury starting on the 14th June when it would have been Tom’s 70th birthday.

Why not visit Maurice at Zardoz Records and Books at Unit 4, Mill Lane, Hawkeridge, Westbury, BA134LD while you are there. Thousands of books for just a pound.

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As an aside, and just to show I’m not a one trick pony, I am also a ranger for a disused railway line that is being repurposed as a walking/cycling greenway. The first of four sections has been surfaced and an official opening ceremony took place. I was surprised to be asked to cut the ribbon it but this was probably because I have been doing management work on it since the last century. What they didn’t tell me, because of health and safety gone mad, they were kiddies scissors that wouldn’t cut a jelly hence the laughs all round!

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I recently picked up a couple of Canadian PAN editions, one with the same cover as the UK but printed in Canada, the other with a different cover also printed in Canada. What was interesting, well I though so, was that they both had green dyed page edges. The books are ‘Hungry as the Sea’ by Wilbur Smith and ‘La Luna’ by George Malko.