Sorting through newer titles I find I have several that are by Australian authors and printed by PAN in Australian.

One of them ‘Gilt Edge’ by journalist Ian Moffitt (1926-2000) is odd in that the word PAN is redacted on the cover while it says Hinkler Books on the spine. I’ve emailed Hinkler to ask if they bought up surplus stock and put their name on it, no response so far. I did find this copy which still shows the word PAN but it’s the only one so far.
The second author is radio broadcaster Terry Lane (1939) and I’ve scanned in the three titles published by PAN although two fail my ‘PAN Man’ logo test but for completeness they are included.

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The Australian connection to Ben Ostrick (above with wife Marie and baby Lisa Dawn) or J. Oval as he is probably better know from all of the covers he did using that name for PAN is that I eventually tracked down where and when he died.It was on the 13th December 1966 and his memorial can be found near Sidney at Position 27, Wall K, North Walls, Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park, Matraville, Randwick City, New South Wales, Australia.Thanks to member’s of Ben’s family for clues of where to look. If any fellow PAN Fans are around there I’d love a photo of the memorial.

If you are reading this then it means it has successfully published itself as schedule as we are making our way back over the North Sea from Amsterdam to Newcastle Upon Tyne. I’ll report next week if I have managed to acquire anything of PAN related interest.

Last week I picked up assorted bits and pieces including some very nicely rebound editions of Jean Plaidy titles and unusually for this type of mutilated paperback they have left on the front and back covers.

The featured author of the week, which I’ve just decided will be a new  occasional offering, this time is Ross Thomas who has had six titles published by PAN. He was born on February 19, 1926 in Oklahoma City and died two months before his 70th birthday in 1995. Another edition of ‘If You Can’t be Good’ (as above) should be in the post and I will add a good scan as soon as it arrives.Thomas also wrote as Oliver Bleeck but I don’t think PAN published any of those.

Quite a while ago I made a page showing three of the four “Out and About” series titles but didn’t include the last one as sellers were asking silly prices.I have now completed the set and got the last one at a lot more acceptable price namely 99p.

I’ve added a few more covers to the Colin Dexter page and although they don’t have the ‘PAN Man’ on them they do have the PAN Crime dagger that was used for a couple of years along with several others designs for the different genres. One is odd in that there are two variants of the style that was previously used on just one title, the red dagger and the yellow rectangle. I’ve left some areas with just a message in then hope that these editions do exist but I don’t know for sure at the moment.

After putting on a PAN title with a Plastic Cover last week I have since found four more. As a site that does judge a book by its cover I’ll leave you to form your own opinions!

We lost another actor from my formative years last Thursday, namely Albert Finney. I can remember sneaking in to see ‘Tom Jones’, cert 18, when I was 13 but I was tall for my age! Alan Sillitoe received a Golden PAN award for ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’

I’ve also heard back from George Sharp regarding the cover for ‘Count Vronsky’s Daughter’ which, even with his name on the back, he says is not his! This is the second cover George says is not his even with his name on the back, the other being the 1980 edition of  ‘The White Rajah’

I was really pleased to hear from James Seabright who leads Seabright Productions of another ‘Golden PAN Award’ and this time given to Adam Kay for selling a million copies of ‘This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries Of A Junior Doctor’ Adam is touring the UK over the next few months with his show of the same name produced by James and, fingers crossed, my wife and I will get to see Adam (and maybe the award?) in Dudley in June.

It was my birthday last Wednesday and having spent the first part of it in A&E after my Iritis returned after five years I was really pleased to find what should have been a Christmas present to myself, but is now a Birthday present, had arrived a last. It is a boxed set of the first six James Herriot titles STILL in their shrink wrapped box. Now the dilemma is, as I bought them from Canada, do I open them to find out if they are they UK or Canadian editions, no clues on the outside? 

The couple of artist updates are for ‘Count Vronsky’s Daughter’ with a cover by George Sharp and ‘Storm Warning’ of which I now have a copy  and can confirm it is from 1993 with a cover by Adrian Chesterman.

It’s sad to report another artist has gone, this time it’s John Burningham who died on the 4th January but it wasn’t announced until last week. He illustrated many books but as far as PAN Fans go it is probably for his work for ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ that he is most well know. PAN published two editions in 1968, the first under the Piccolo imprint and the second as a film tie-in. Interestingly, although John illustrated the text in both, his work only features on the cover of the 2nd printing. Paul Wright is credited for the 1st.

It is a strange coincidence in that only this week I got a later copy of ‘Fiasco’ and was trying to work out the signature on the cover when I realised that this was also Paul Wright. I’ve tried to contact him to ask if he did the covers specifically for PAN or if they were recycled as he was a prolific marine artist, no reply so far. He also did the text illustrations for the Piccolo editions of the five Alexander Barrie novels (the above is an example)

I picked up a copy of ‘Learn to Paint Portraits’ by Roger Coleman which included the photo above. Roger painted covers for 1974 PAN Nevil Shute series which were also used for the US Ballantine editions. In the book he shows how he works on a portrait and I though one example looked familiar.It is of another PAN cover artist Michael Leonard whose self portrait hangs in the Ferens Art Gallery in Kingston-Upon-Hull except when we go to see it and all the portraits were replaced by contenders for the 2017 Turner Prize nominees. The book gave me a location for Roger and I’ve managed to track down an address for someone with the same name there and a letter has gone off. As usual fingers crossed but no response up to now.

Having been away vising our son in Kent since Christmas I was hoping to get back and find a pile of books waiting to be added to the blog but I’m sadly disappointed so for the first blog of 2019 and numbered somewhere around 370 it’s going to be almost a content free one. One book I was really hoping for was from the States I ordered it at the beginning of December so was not happy to get an email the day before Christmas to ask could I confirm the address they had was correct before they sent it!

I did get one book in the post on Christmas Eve from Germany which arrived a couple of days after ordering and cost me a lot less, including postage, than other copies from here in the UK. It was another Pearl Buck title from the 1973 series, this one was ‘Mandala’ with a cover that looks very much like one by Michael Johnson. I have few of his to query so I may send him an email soon.

We did have one sadness the day before Christmas Eve in that we lost one of the cats that live at the end of our road. There are a few which we all look after and Archie was a lovely friendly silver tabby but didn’t really want to live indoors. Sadly he got knocked down by a car and was dead when we found him. I think we were all in tears when Jeanette from across the road said “I’ve only just wrapped his present from Joey” (their cat) I don’t think you have to be a cat lover to empathise with this.

Here’s hoping that 2019 turns out to be a more relaxing year than 2018 with Brexit done and dusted.I have said in my last blog I voted to remain but now I just want it sorted one way or another. At least we’ve all got our PAN’s to take our minds off the real world and I can always go and bash some brambles on our cycle track for which we’ve just received a certificate for all our hard work in 2018!

Wishing you all a Very Happy 2019

Tim

PS Santa did let me down, no sign of X705 no matter how hard I looked under the tree!

While looking for some background information on Pearl Sydenstricker Buck I clicked on a link which gave me the message below. Does this mean when we Brexit the EU in March I can visit the site? At this point I would like to reiterate I voted to stay in spite of all the ‘old people’ being accused of voting to leave. Can we please just get it over and done with one way or another. Moan over.

I have been sorting my Pearl Buck titles and found four of her novels with the later style of cover. I’ve put these on a page HERE and am currently re-scanning all the earlier editions which will feature in a later blog.

I have a few copies of the paper sculpture book ‘Cromwell’ by Godley and Creme but another one I got recently has a ‘With Compliments’ slip inserted in the fold. I think it is a British company although I’ve not managed to track one down with the same logo. I bought it from Australia (It was too much of a bargain to resist even with the p&p) but as it only lists a UK price on the back I’m presuming it was from the UK.?

Here is this years offering of a Christmas themed title. I was going to include one of the puzzles but they are all so awful I can’t bring myself to choose the least worst! It’s 0330 312146 from 1989.

… and finally can I wish all my fellow PAN Fans a very Happy Christmas and that you get all you want off Santa. I’ve got fingers crossed for the last title I need ‘X705’ I’m sure he won’t let me down this year as I been really good – honestly!