This week there are two David Tayler roughs for G201 ‘Sabotage is Suspected’ by John Baker White. One is a pencil rough closer to the finished cover than the painted one which is completely different but does have the title written along the bottom edge. Baker White (12/08/1902 to 10/12/1988) was born in West Malling, Kent. He became a very early member of the British Fascists when he undertook undercover operations for Sir George Makgill’s Industrial Intelligence Bureau.  In 1945 he was elected a Conservative politician and was a journalist and author. PAN also published his book G212 ‘The Big Lie’

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This weeks random author is Desmond Lowden. Lowden (29/09/1937 to 19/05/2024) who was born in Winchester and went to St. Pilgrim’s School there. He started work at Pinewood and Shepperton Studios, first working as a runner and then moving on to assistant editor. Desmond travelled to work in the South of France as a deckhand and then to Crete as a TEFL teacher. He married his wife Gillian while in Athens, and the couple returned to Winchester, where they had two children. Lowden was award the ‘Silver Dagger’ in 1989. PAN published five on his novels one of which, ‘Bellman and True’ was made into a film in 1988.

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A couple of blogs ago I mentioned ‘War Story’ by Derek Robinson but the link went to the stamps in one copy of the book I have and not the cover as intended. Hopefully the link above is now the correct one. I’m wondering if anyone has a copy that doesn’t have a sticker over what I presume was the original price in Australia and were there other countries included? I was hoping it was an Australian printing but alas not the case.

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UPDATES Having mentioned ‘Skeletons’ by Glendon Swarthout and how BookFinder mentioned there was a copy available but didn’t list where, my email to them must have done something as it appeared shortly after and I bought it to add to the page. I have also added three more ‘Donkey’ books by Elisabeth Svendsen.

In amongst the Tayler bits and pieces I picked up recently was a rough with ‘Avalanche’ penciled on the bottom. I thought it didn’t look like the cover I remembered and I was right. I can’t see a signature on my copy unless it’s under the price sticker.

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While looking through all the David Tayler printer’s proofs I spotted something I’ve never seen before. ‘A Town Like Alice’ has a gold background to the title which I’m presuming was because this was intended to be on the 1,000th title published by PAN. Was it too expensive to actually use it, can anyone throw any light on it?

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PAN published the first five titles in the ‘Yellowthread Steet’ series by William Marshall. He wrote 16 books about Detective Chief Inspector Harry Ffeifer of the Royal Hong Kong Police and there was a 13 part TV series loosely based on Marshall’s books in 1990. According to Wikipedia William Leonard Marshall was born in Sydney in 1944. He worked as a playwright, journalist, proofreader, and morgue attendant and was a teacher in an Irish prison. He was also the author of several series of police novels set across the globe and in various centuries. He lived in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Wales, Ireland, and USA, before returning to Australia in 1983 with his wife and daughter. He died in 2003.

As I mentioned last week I recently pick up a box of David Tayler related material when I visited Maurice Flanagan at Zardoz Books in Westbury. There are literally dozens of printers proofs of his covers plus several roughs both painted and drawn in pencil. I’ll be featuring them in the coming weeks as blog items. The first one is for PAN 434 ‘The Gun Tamer’ by Max Brand where the rough is the mirror image of the final artwork. I have also included a link on the front page of my website to a pencil rough by Tayler for ‘Lieutenant Hornblower’ until some ‘new’ news comes up.

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The CD ‘Come Spy With Us’ has a PAN pastiche, or is that homage, cover. Why they had to put fake crease lines on it I don’t know as, annoyingly, we get enough of those anyway. It has 25 themes to ‘spy’ related film and television series. In the accompanying booklet they feature a few PAN books covers along side a bit of blurb.

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While in Warwick I picked up a copy of ‘Down Among the Donkeys’ by Elisabeth Svendsen as it looked vaguely familiar but was published by Whittet Books, a publisher I hadn’t come across before. On getting home I found why it rang a bell as it was a title previously published by PAN with the same cover but with the PAN logo covered over. I have a few examples of this sort of thing including Totem titles from Canada and Hinkler in Australia. PAN also published ‘The Great Escape’ by Elisabeth Svendsen as a Piccolo. Both titles are illustrated by Eve Bygrave.

I managed to make it over to the Pop Up Bookshop in Wolverhampton and there is certainly a lot of books considering it is only has a temporary stay for a few times a year. Unfortunately there wasn’t anything that caught my eye although it seemed well attended with people holding handfuls of books but they looked a little newer that ones I was after. If you are thinking of going here is the location and opening times again. It’s in the Community Hub in the Mander Centre until 21st March and the opening hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm, Saturday 9.30am to 5pm, Sunday 11am to 4pm.

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We didn’t make it to our annual stay in the camper on Warwick Racecourse before Christmas last year as unfortunately it was our sister in laws funeral in Bridlington. So to avoid loosing our booking fee we moved it to last week when the site reopened and of course we had to visit the secondhand book shop at the NT property of Baddesley Clinton on the way over. The photo shows just one of the several rooms they have, I think this one was mainly non fiction. They have made over a £1,000,000 from books donated by visitors including us. I bought three for 50p each and was convinced I hadn’t got two of them and of course I was wrong. One of the perils of not having wi-fi to check. One being ‘Inspector West Makes Haste’, another being ‘War Story’ with interesting stamps inside and the third being ‘A Radio for Kevin’ in the Wellington Square reading series. I had to have this although modesty forbids me mentioning who wrote the software for the BBC Model B computer to accompany this series. They are having their annual Book Fair from August 8th for three weeks so hopefully we won’t be away this year. While we were over there I visited several charity shops but the one secondhand bookshop in Warwick was closed at the time. We did got to the MAD Museum in Stratford which we can highly recommend if you are around there although nothing to do with books.

Our blue camper parked up at Warwick Racecourse site right by the finishing post. The other vehicles are not as close as they look but those JCB flags really made a noise as they rattled on their posts every time the wind blew.

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It was down to Westbury yesterday (08/03/2026) to the Book Fair and Open Day at Zardoz Books organised by Maurice Flanagan where we also bumped into Jules Burt. It was busy with more people turning up as we left. I came away with three books, three David Tayler roughs and a big blue box of mystery items related to David Tayler. I’ll be working my way through it and items will be appearing in future blogs.

This weeks random author is Glendon Swarthout (08/04/1918 to 23/08/1992) who was an American writer and novelist. Several of his novels were made into films including ‘Where the Boys Are’, ‘They Came to Cordura’ and ‘The Shootist’, which was John Wayne’s last work. These were all published by PAN plus another three. I couldn’t find if I had a second printing of ‘They Came to Cordura’ so I bought a cheap bundle with this included. I then found the copy misplaced on the shelf so was a bit miffed until they arrived when I found they were all titles in unread condition. I replaced all but one of the copies I already had with them. I’m looking for a copy of ‘Skeletons’ as the only one I’ve found so far is in India. Glendon was inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame which is in the library of the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming. Just as an aside I have been to this museum a few years ago when we stayed in one of Buffalo Bill’s cabins. The 83 log cabins originally housed workers building the City of Cody in 1914.

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I’m still trying to find out if PAN actually published a third printing of ‘Trouble in July’ by Erskine Caldwell for which I have the artwork by Hans Helweg. I made a page of the 1964 Caldwell titles that are down as re-do in Helweg’s ledger for which he got paid £50 16s for each but I’ve just found I missed one, namely ‘Georgia Boy’ so the omission is now rectified. I asked Elly, PAN archivist, if she knew if the 1964 re-do was used but she only has a record for the 1959 and 1960 printings which both use the same Helweg artwork although it does say new cover.

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I have a stack of later PANs which I will add to the site when I feel like it. This week pick is ‘Thy Neighbour’s Wife’ by Gaetano ‘Gay’ Talese (07/02/1932) He is an American writer who worked as a journalist for The New York Times and Esquire magazine during the 1960s. and wrote 14 novels of which ‘Thy Neighbour’s Wife’ with cover artwork by Peter Collins is the only one published by PAN. Peter Collins ARCAS (1923 to 2001)  studied at the Royal College of Art, winning a scholarship. Leaving in 1950 he then worked as a commercial artist producing some well-known posters for clients including British Railways and British European Airways. He was the Art Director at Odhams Press and spent time designing for both ICI and Shell.