After posting the above I promised an update which can be found if you click HERE. The police apprehended the miscreant and it seems he was not the only ‘wrong ‘un’ with a connection to PAN going by the other clippings I found!
As I’ve mentioned a few times I get regular packets of clippings from ‘The Times’ from Jeremy Birch who goes through the papers with a fine tooth comb to find anything that can be related to PAN Books or their authors. This time there was something different in the contents, a napkin (or is it a serviette?) from the restaurant ‘Piz Gloria’ on the Schilthorn in Switzerland as featured in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ It appears to be an original from around 1969 when packs where sold in the souvenir shop. I need to ask Jeremy how he came by it.
PHEW
Just a quick reminder‘The Paperback and Pulp Fair’is in London on Sunday 8th November. I’m trying to see if I can combine it with a visit to my son in Kent as it is much easier and cheaper to get the train from him as I have before but with the price of fuel to get to him ……. The poster uses the cover from the 1974 NEL edition of‘The Omega Point’by George Zebrowski with artwork by Ray Feibrush. Organiser Neil Pettigrew teils me he has bought a large collection of PAN books and will be offering many of them for sale at the fair.
While catching up on the news in the Esher Mail from November 13th 1957 as you do, I spotted the above article. Fortunately it sounds as if no books were injured in the incident. These premises were the distribution centre for PAN which open the previous year. Were the miscreants caught? Tune in next week to find out.
I was pleased to receive my copy of a 2027 PAN calendar, for which I scanned several covers, from Gwilym Lloyd at Paprika Prints. Most years I make one with PAN covers just as a bit of fun to give family members but this year, and I don’t want to appear disloyal, but they feature 1950s ‘ANTICIPATION’ covers by Rene Brantonne.
After uploading a page of the covers of books written by Margaret Powell I had forgotten to include a couple of letters from her. I have now added them at the bottom of the page. One was sent from PAN’s office to an aspiring writer and the other, from presumably her home address, to a young mother’s group where she thinks her charge of 15 guineas for a talk will be too much for them. I’ve asked several sites how much that would be now and get varying answers but probably around £300. I’ve done talks about our disused railway and said pay me what you think it was worth and I’ve received between £25 and £100. I did one for the U3A and I was told it was their biggest turn out and apparently everyone stayed awake!
I’d like to give a quick shout out to Ed Hamrick of ‘VueScan’ software. When I first started scanning in 1995 I was using a Canon, then changed to an Epson Scanner/Printer and all the time the supplied software met my needs. I could scan and get it to paste directly into Paint Shop Pro which I still use, in fact I’m still running the 1998 version as I don’t find I need all the bells and whistles of later updates. In around 2019 I changed Scanner/Printer again and the old scanner software no longer ran and the new involved a lot more stages than before so I looked around and found ‘VueScan’ When I got into it I found I could almost do the same as before but it took just one more stage which I could accept BUT on a recent update my ability to preview, crop, copy and then paste into Paint Shop as a cropped image disappeared, I got the whole scanned area, not just the cropped part. I contacted Ed at ‘VueScan’ expecting to be told why do you do what you do, just add scan but that was one more stage I didn’t need. Thankfully Ed took it on board and after a couple of failures I am now pleased to say I am now back to a working edition as I use it so once again thanks to Ed for taking my request so seriously.
This weeks random title is for ‘Sphinx’ by Robin Cook of which I have three editions, none with particularly inspiring covers. It was made into a film with Lesley-Ann Down in 1981. I’ve not read it or seen the film so I can’t pass comment although I have been to Egypt and seen the Sphinx when there was a lull in the rioting so instead of hoards of tourists there was just a few and we were outnumbered by the locals selling tat.
I picked up a couple of Piccolo titles with a Scottish theme as they are set in the Orkneys. They are both by George Mackay Brown and I don’t think they have ever been read and they both have covers by Paul Slater. George Mackay Brown (17/10/1921 to 13/04/1996) was a Scottish poet, author and dramatist with a distinctly Orcadian character. He is widely regarded as one of the great Scottish poets of the 20th century. He also wrote ‘Six Lives of Fankle the Cat‘ for children but this was not published by PAN but by Chatto Windus.
The news of Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, passing at the age of 86 last week reminded me of the time I met him in Foyles bookshop at PAN’s 70th birthday bash where he was presented with a ‘Golden Pan Award’ for selling over a million copies of ‘Only Time Will Tell’ I didn’t really have that much time to form an impression but I do like the quote from Sheridan Morley who is supposed to have said “At the interval I went to the toilet, and there beside me was Ringo Starr. He asked if I knew this Jeffrey Archer bloke. I said everyone in Oxford was trying to work out who he was. Ringo said: “He strikes me as a nice enough fella, but he’s the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it” Having sold over 320 million copies of his books worldwide he must have been doing something right, maybe I’ll get around to reading one someday.
René Louis Brantonne (3/1/1903 to 6/10/1979) was a prolific French illustrator and graphic designer who died this week 47 years ago at the age of 77. His defining legacy is his vibrant, otherworldly cover art for the legendary ‘ANTICIPATION‘ science fiction paperback series. Betweeno 1951 and 1977 Brantonne illustrated hundreds of covers and fundamentally shaping the visual identity of mid-century French science fiction. I’ve included him because as I’ve mentioned before publisher Fleuve Noir recycled PAN covers and I think they are my second favourite after PANs of course. Brantonne was one of several well known French artists such as Jean-Michel Nicollete and Mandy (Philippe Mandilas) who painted s/f covers. To find out more about ‘ANTICIPATION’ and Brantonne HERE is some suggested further reading. I’ve still got a couple of hundred more covers to scan, it’s a work in progress.
I was pleasantly surprised to get an unexpected letter from Australia recently. In it was a bookmark to go with ‘The Art of Renato Fratini’ which was apparently for original supporters which I had forgotten all about. I’ve now tucked it into my copy of the book for safe keeping.
Margaret Powell (October 1907 to April 1984) whose best-selling books about her experiences in domestic service inspired the TV series ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ and ‘Downton Abbey’ was born in Hove. One of seven children of a house painter and charwoman, the family lived with her grandmother in three rooms. Her parents could not afford to let her take up the grammar school scholarship she won and instead, at the age of 13, she became a laundress and later a kitchen maid. After marriage and motherhood, noting that she had nothing to talk about with her eldest son who was preparing to go to university, she took evening classes, passing her O-levels at the age of 58. Her memoir, ‘Below Stairs’ was published in 1968, and was an immediate success. Further books followed and Margaret became a popular guest on television talk shows. A blue plaque marks her birthplace and her name is on a bus in Brighton.
I have to say, if there was a prize for the most unaspiring series of book covers, then these could well be in the running but then again that could just be me?
