PAN Fans Club

Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

PAN Fans Club - Let's talk about PAN paperbacks, the blog for those that do judge a book by its cover. Main site is at www.tikit.net or www.panfans.club

Robert Carrier 1923 – 2006

In 1971 PAN brought out a set of six ‘mini books’ (approximately 5″ x 5″) written by the ‘Peter Pan’ of cooks Robert Carrier. The six books gave suggestions for suppers, luncheons, barbecues, breakfasts/brunches, dinners and children’s parties. I have often seen individual titles for sale but I’ve only just acquired the set in a slip case. Click on the picture of Robert Carrier to go to his page.

Carrier0

Sorry for another short posting but my iritis has returned after an absence of twenty years so the world is currently a haze while I have to keep putting drops in my eyes.

“I don’t believe it!”

Quick blog this week as I have been away ‘up north’ for the ‘Great Goodbye’ where 6 A4 steam locomotives were brought together for possibly the last time as 2 are going overseas. Very impressive but very popular with over 72,000 visitors during the few days they were there.ShildonWhat also caught my eye last week was the chutzpah of a company selling on eBay. If you do a search for ‘Alan Bott’ in the Art Category with Title and Description ticked you may come up with 84 hits. They are all prints from the book “The Londoner’s England” which must have been taken to pieces. The price range goes up to £16.99 for one page (!!!!) when on AbeBooks you can buy a complete book for under £5, why not buy two as some pages are double sided?

Christie at Bantock House

While looking through a local paper ‘The Black Country Bugle’ I noticed three articles all mentioning Bantock House. The first was about it being praised by Michael Portillo visiting as part of his railway journeys series, the second was the council wanting to close it down to save money  but the third was the one that caught my eye. Unfortunately I was to late to see it but they had run an exhibition called ‘A Tribute to Agatha Christie” and the picture showed some book covers. It was ‘Dumb Witness’ that jumped out and so I’ve made a page to show all the PAN editions that I found I have.
PortilloI’ve also added an extra Somerset Maugham cover, a 1974 edition of ‘The Moon and Sixpence’ but it seems this is a ‘one off’ as I’ve not found any others with this style of cover.

William Somerset Maugham

I intended to put this on last month around the time of Someset Maugham’s birthday but Russell Braddon got there first alphabetically speaking as they were both born on the 25th January. Someset Maugham was born in Paris (in the British Embassy so he can be called British) in 1874 and died in Nice on the 16th December 1965. I have put together a page of the titles PAN published over 30 years and I know there are some titles not included. I found a couple published by Penguin but were they also published by PAN at sometime? I’m sure someone will let me know.
HeadIncidentally I mentioned the title ‘The Explorer’ in a previous blog and I’m still looking for the edition with the back cover actually printed from the block I have.

Gordon King Cover Artist

While looking at Hodder ‘Saint‘ covers as mentioned recently I noticed a couple were signed Gordon King. I thought this name sounded familiar and on further investigation I found a few he painted for PAN. Thanks to the net I managed to get an email address for him and after sending him a few covers he kindly replied confirming or rejecting ones I wasn’t sure about. I have put together a page to show the covers I know of including some from PAN plus other publishers.

IMG_6680This is Gordon holding a cover for an unknown title, does anyone recognise it? I think it looks a little like some in the ‘PAN Romance’ series (a work in progress) while others Mills and Boon! Gordon has now moved on from book covers to more lucrative commissions.

Russell Braddon ‘Naked Island’

Russell Braddon was born January 25th 1921 and although the author of many books he is best remembered for ‘The Naked Island’ which was first published in 1952 by T. Werner Laurie Ltd. The cover was by Ronald Searle who was a prisoner with Braddon in Burma and is probably most well know as the creator of St Trinian’s School. His drawings, used to illustrated Braddon’s book, were in the hardback but not the PAN editions. NakedI have included scans of six different PAN editions but let me know if you have others. I found it interesting to see the references to how many copies have been sold over the years.

“World sales approaching a million copies!”
“Over 850,000 copies sold in PAN alone”
“Almost 1,000,000 copies sold in PAN Books alone”
“Over 1,000,000 copies sold in PAN”
“More than a million copies sold”

Other Braddon titles in PAN are ‘Nancy Wake’ and ‘Nancy Wake’ ‘End Of A Hate’, ‘The Year Of The Angry Rabbit’, ‘The Proud American Boy’ and ‘Committal Chamber’

The ‘Double Dagger’ Series

Every now and again I come across a series of PAN books that should not really be on the site but the Agatha Christie ‘Double Dagger’ covers just appeal to me. They reasons they don’t really fit are 1) a few years later than the remit of the site but this has never stopped me before and 2) they are photos not ‘real’ artwork.

DoubleDagger

I think it is the quirky and inventive use of the associated objects to form faces although some are better than others. Up to now I have 14 titles but I’m sure someone will let me know if I have missed any?

My personal favourite

My personal favourite

For those embracing the new technologies you can scan the QR code below to go to the page on your mobile device. This will probably be the first and last time I use one of these but having now got a phone that reads them ……….!

Panfans

A Loo With A View?

Astley Book Farm

Just planning a visit to the above when I remembered photos I took when I was last there. It is not everyday that I use my camera when visiting the toilet but this time I made an exception and if you click HERE you’ll see why.

Whilst talking about remembering, or rather forgetting, I don’t know if I ever put on a link to a page I made about PAN Books despatch centres after I visited a couple in 2012. Please ignore if you have already seen this but if not click HERE.

Happy 2014 – but not for Geoff!

Happy New Year to all PAN Fans everywhere.

Geoff

I recently met up with artist Geoff Tristram who was ‘Mr November’ to my ‘Mr October’ in the display corner of our local museum. I tracked down one of his book covers which he kindly signed for me. His website shows many examples of his work but unfortunately I can’t find any of the paperback covers he has done. The reason I say it may not be a ‘Happy New Year’ for Geoff can be found by clicking on this link!

PS Just caught an item on the radio where the ‘British Medical Journal’ has analysed James Bond’s drinking and the prognosis is not good! They have produced a chart to show their conclusions.