While counting up my copies of X350 ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ with the Hawkey style cover I find I have 8 so far. There are still a few variations such as without and with price in UK shillings as well as cents, the 3rd printing text block with a 4th printing cover plus the elusive Australian printing. The ones I have scanned are from the copies I have and will add others if I come across them but it’s not something I’m actively looking for at this moment in time unless someone out there has another variant they no longer want?
I was wondering how Gordon Young was as he is now over 100 and was ships boy on the ‘Laloun’ which brought the early PAN titles over from France where they were printed from 1947. I’m pleased to hear he is still on course for his 101th. It was while trying to find out how he was I came across a talk he gave to the Milford on Sea Historical Research Society. Thank you to them for letting put their YouTube video HERE or you can read this precis. “I joined the Royal Navy, signing up at 17 (1942), did my time on the Lower Deck serving in a Mine Layer as a very ‘ordinary ’seaman, doing sea time to qualify for Officer Training, commissioned as a Midshipman (1943) served on a LCT and was at the Normandy Landings in June 1944. Then had a spell ashore to qualify in Navigation and Watch Keeping and was posted to an Escort Carrier and spent most of the rest of the war in the Far East and was at Singapore for the surrender of the Japanese. By this time I had got my first stripe and was now Sub Lieut. W G Young RNVR. I was due to be ‘demobbed’ in the October of 1946 and spent the last three months at a Shore Base in Scotland where I met Lieut. Commander Saunders RNR and that is when my career with Pan started.”
While watching Mastermind on BBC TV my wife suggested I go on it answering questions on PAN Books. If I could take part in the celebrity show I don’t think it would be a struggle with general knowledge questions like ‘What animal goes woof woof?’ and ‘The word veg is short for ?’ I asked ChatGP to come up with 20 questions so see how you go, not really that taxing. Answers, as if you’ll need them, will appear next week.
- In what year was Pan Books registered as a limited company?
- Who was the former WWI flying ace and journalist who founded Pan Books?
- What was the very first book published as a Pan paperback in June 1947?
- Which famous artist and author designed the original Pan logo of the Greek god playing pipes?
- Unlike its rival Penguin Books, which used plain color bands, what visual feature did Pan use to make its covers more commercially appealing?
- Due to post-war paper shortages in the UK, where were the first Pan books printed before being shipped across the Channel?
- When the first shipment of 10 titles arrived at Tilbury, why did customs officers initially suspect they were “dirty books”?
- Which author’s James Bond series first appeared in UK paperback under the Pan imprint, starting with Casino Royale in 1955?
- Established in 1962, what milestone did a Pan title have to reach to earn its author a “Golden Pan” trophy?
- Which Pan Managing Director (and nephew of the founder) served as the cover model for James Bond on several 1960s editions?
- Pan was the primary paperback publisher for the long-running “The Saint” series by which author?
- In 1959, Pan launched a highly successful series of anthologies that ran for decades; what was it called?
- For much of its early history, Pan was owned by a consortium of four major publishers. Can you name two of them?
- In the 1950s and 60s, what prefix was added to the numbers of Pan’s slightly larger, more expensive paperback editions?
- Which author, whose tales of a Yorkshire vet became a global phenomenon in the 1970s, was a mainstay of the Pan list?
- In the 1950s, the Mervyn Peake logo was eventually replaced by a simpler version designed by whom?
- Which 1979 cult classic by Douglas Adams became one of Pan’s biggest hits of the era?
- In what year did Pan Books cease being a consortium-owned company and become wholly owned by Macmillan?
- In 1990, Pan officially merged with the trade division of its parent company to become which modern publisher?
- Which author of “glitz and glamour” novels like Chances and Rock Star had joined Pan as a major bestseller?