I hope this blog launches today as scheduled as I am currently enjoying the hospitality of the Dutch travelling on vintage steam ships and trains if all goes according to plan.

I may need to take my ‘Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Europe’ and so I’ve just added a scan of the first edition to the Travellers page. I spent a lot of time in the 60’s hitch-hiking around Ireland and when I looked at this book this week I though you couldn’t actually live on some of the prices quoted in the 1971 edition but on doing a few sums I think you could. It was written for the US traveller so prices tend to be in cents so 70 cents for a bed and 50 cents for a meal with an exchange rate of two and a half dollars to the pound.

I mentioned the Piccolo Craft series of books and have now found a third title for knitters, the search goes on.

I picked up a copy of the tie-in to the appalling children’s television series ‘The Double Deckers’ saying it was in the Piccolo Colour series of books but it just doesn’t seem to fit in with the ones I already have on the site, anyone any ideas apart from it does have colour photos in it?

I meant to tie this blog in with a birthday, in this case Raymond Chandler’s  but as usual have missed it by just over a week (July 23rd) PAN published nine of the Chandler titles plus he also wrote a foreword to ‘Bang to Rights’ by Frank Norman.

While looking into Chandler’s background I found it interesting in that there was the possibility of a couple of links between Chandler and Alan Bott, founder of PAN Books. Chandler came over from the States and worked on the Daily Express newspaper in 1911 and again after the war in 1920 albeit for a week! This was the time (1909/29) the Express was edited by another American, Ralph Blumenfeld, whose daughter Josephine married Bott.Chandler was also training in the RFC/RAF  but didn’t finish before the war ended. Here he is in his RAF uniform but as can be seen he has not got his wings. Alan Bott was also in the fledgling RFC/RAF and was awarded the Military Cross and Bar.

HERE is a page showing the PAN photo covers with assorted credits plus the three collections of his work. The collections have covers by Nancy Slonims who I’ve emailed so hopefully a reply soon. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Illustration at Middlesex University.
Just had a message from eBay asking if I was still interested in 9 Penguin Chandler titles so I had a look but noticed 8 were Penguin and 1 was PAN. I didn’t feel the need to buy them but I have grabbed the photo to compare cover styles. You can see it HERE

Tailpiece. Just had an email from eBay telling me that there has been a reduction on ‘The Making of Doctor Who’ and I will now save £992.97 – not a bad discount plus free postage!

There is a slight connection between last weeks blog and this in that they both include recycled artwork. On the Facebook ‘Vintage Paperback and Pulp Forum’ Ray Steptoe uploaded the cover of ‘The Paradise Game’ by Brian Stableford but said he didn’t know the artist. I thought it rang a bell and looked through my 1978 NEL edition of ‘Mechanismo’ by Harry Harrison and sure enough there it was on page 13 and credited to Angus Mckie. I’ve put together a page to show the six titles in the ‘Hooded Swan’ series by Stableford plus some of the same  artwork from other publications. I’m trying to track down McKie, who was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne in July 1951, just to ask him who commissioned the artwork, NEL, PAN or maybe they were for another publisher – any one help?

I’ve added four more covers to the Piccolo Picture Bafflers page plus an advert for them listing eight titles although I have found ten! Another cover added to the Colouring Guides so only ‘The Seashore’ (0330 298089) to go now. The picture below is from the back page of another title in the series.

The last update was one more cover on the Penelope Lively page for a later edition of ‘The Driftway’ with a cover by Eileen Gilbert

Randomly ‘Googling’ PAN covers, as you do, I came across ‘Zany Afternoons’ by Bruce McCall which was published as a Picador in 1983. It features drawings by McCall that appeared in the early 70’s in magazines such as New Times, Oui, National Lampoon, Crawdaddy and Playboy. I was forced to research this last title and managed to pick up a couple of editions from 1971 for a remarkably cheap price. I’ve put a couple of scans on the page. I hurriedly skipped past the pages of semi-naked ladies (typing difficult with fingers crossed behind my back) but lingered over the dozens of adverts for 8 track tape players.

A while ago I put on a cover and wondered if anyone recognised it as it was vaguely familiar. Well I’ve found where I’d seen it before but I don’t think it is right. The artwork is shown in an advert for the launch of a familiar book but I’ve never seen it in real life. Maybe a mock up using recycled artwork?  The advert is for sale HERE If anyone is interested in a single page ripped out of a publication for only …… have a look and see optimism.UPDATE May have tracked down the artist, hopefully more next week.

As I’ve said many times before the pricing of books is a real mystery to me.
Having noticed I had three of the four Piccolo ‘Out and About’ series I thought I’d see if I could get the missing title. No luck on all the usual sites so I just thought I’d try some Amazon sites abroad as I’ve had some success in the past. I found the title “Farmer Joe’s Farm’ on a couple of them namely Italy and Spain. What I can’t get my head round is the price they were asking having only paid pence for all the others, how do they come up with these for a children’s 16 page book? Have a guess and then click on the sites below to see how close you came.

Did you get anywhere near? With the turmoil here in the UK and the pound falling against the euro I think I may have to give it a miss at the moment!

I have now got the third Dan McGirt book ‘Dirty Work’ with a Josh Kirby cover.

Finally I occasionally get asked some strange questions and I think Jem Birch wins for his last one but then again I do like a challenge. He asked if ‘Jet’ at three characters was the shortest PAN title and ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ with 42 characters was the longest? Luckily I have all the titles in one mammoth spreadsheet so thinking back to all those courses I ran on Excel I remembered how to ask for the maximum and minimum characters in a cell. The results were:

X593 Booth’s Handbook Of Cocktails And Mixed Drinks 46
G714 The Second Pan Junior Crossword Puzzle Book 43
X537 The Girl On The Bus and Other Love Stories  42
G505 The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner  42

M213 Mia   3
MP106 Sex 3
X15 Jet  3

So Jem was right with the shortest but not the longest.

We recently went to see the unveiling of a bust of celebrated author Jerome K Jerome who was born in Walsall in 1859 and lived there for almost two years before his fathers business collapsed and they moved to London. He rarely came back but in 1926 was made a Freeman of the Borough. He died the next year but I don’t think there is a connection!

I have included him as I am not only a PAN Fan but also of Jerome and have a large collection of his works and in fact one of his stories ‘The Dancing Partner’ appears in PAN X71 ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’

The chairman of the Jerome K Jerome Society, Tony Grey, is on the left and the bust was unveiled by local lad Jeffrey Holland on the right.

So from the birth of JKJ to a trio of books about the other end of life, ‘Famous Last Words’, ‘A Small Book of Grave Humour’ and ‘Dead Funny, Another Book of Grave Humour’ The latter two are rare examples of shaped books as I was told it was very expensive to do die cutting. Other examples are James Bond titles like the bullet holes in ‘Thunderball’ and the film strip on “From Russia With Love’

Off down to Wiltshire this week to meet up with Maurice Flanagan at Zardoz Books, report next blog

Just a couple of things this week as the weather has been too nice to be sitting in front of a computer.

I picked up a book by a US author I have to confess I’d never heard of, Dan McGirt (sorry Dan) but the cover looked vaguely familiar. Was PAN trying to cash in on a considerably more well know author writing books of a similar genre? Click HERE to see if you agree.

While scanning the covers and looking at the spines I was reminded of the fact PAN had a whole series of different logos, this one fantasy, for different subjects in the 90’s. I once found a page with them all on but can I find it now …..! Maybe next week.

It was only while restacking books after the cat had a narrow escape from a collapse that I noticed in the early 1970’s series of Jalna titles, linked to the Canadian TV series, that some were printed in the UK and some in Canada. I’ve not got enough duplicates to hand to see if all 16 were printed in both countries or whether it was a case of some here and some there? Something to investigate in the future. I also noticed that although all the Canadian editions were printed by Ronalds-Federated Ltd there are 4 different printers for the UK editions.

The edition of ‘The Master of Jalna’ is dedicated to Hugh Walpole who was a very good friend of  Alan Bott, founder of PAN Books and has been mentioned previously, Walpole dedicated at least two of his publications to Bott.

The opening title for ‘Play School’: was created by Hilary Hayton in 1964 who established a team dedicated to contributing graphic design. illustration and animation to BBC TV Children’s Programmes.

In the 70’s Hilary created ‘Crystal Tipps and Alistair’ resulting in  50 x 5 minute animated films and the publishing of 10 Crystal Tipps books and two annuals.

In 1982 Hilary started her own animation studio to produce ‘Doris’ which was a series commissioned by ITV and based on her ‘Doris’ books published earlier that year by Piccolo. A second  series followed with 40 x  5 minute films and 13 more ‘Doris’ books but not published by Piccolo.

Following on from last week I’m still puzzled by the apparent mind reading antics of websites. Why did eBay offer me a copy of Tit-Bits from 1950 with an article about the off-side rule by Jimmy Hagan? Did it scan my brain and found that in fact we lived next door to Jimmy Hagan in the 1960’s when he was manager of West Bromwich Albion football club as the club owned the house. Apparently he often entertained well  known football persomalities such as Don Revie, Tommy Docherty and Jeff Astle there but all I remember is shooting the gnomes in their garden with an air rifle belonging to their son – ah – happy times!

PS I have emailed Hilary Hayton but no response so far.