We spent the last few days travelling in our camper around National Trust properties with second hand book shops dropping off books. They are more than happy to receive ones that are actually more than two years old and not just fiction paperbacks unlike charity shops. It took two days and four visits before we could begin to move around  the camper without having to shift boxes every time. We eventually visited seven properties (and not one PAN spotted on a shelf to add to the ‘As seen in a NT property’  section) finishing up at Baddesley Clinton on what was advertised as the first day of their annual weeks book sale. They had been setting up the day before and had been happy to sell and had actually raised £1,200 on that one day while last year it was only £400. The total last year was well over £50,000 so who knows what it might be this year but at least £11 of it will be mine!

Having shown some of the E V Thompson titles with covers by Cecil Viewig I picked up  ‘Becky‘ but with a cover by Gwyneth Jones. This cost me all of 50p and I was even more pleased to find it was signed by the author.

I also picked up another version of the Mollie Hunter book ‘The Ghosts of Glencoe’ with an unattributed cover but again pleasantly surprised to find it signed by the author although this one cost me a whole £1.

I also found a reference to a Geoff Taylor cover on his website he did for a Mollie Hunter title that implied it might never have been used but I managed to find it had and although not Piccolo but Fontana Lions I’ve added it to both the Geoff Taylor and Mollie Hunter pages.

I also heard from Ray in Australia last week but I’m going to hold fire on that until next week where hopefully it will tie in with another couple of items.

Having mentioned the artwork I bought from Geoff Taylor recently I’ve added this and a cover he did for Piccolo to his page HERE. I’m getting the artwork framed so I’ll put better photos on then. Geoff also authored a couple of books and I’ve added a scan of one but the other I’ve bought hasn’t arrived yet so it’s from the web. This one cost me £4.99 although a few sellers were asking a bit more!

Geoff did the cover for a reprint of ‘A Pistol in Greenyards’ by Mollie Hunter and he says the figure on the cover was a self portrait. I’ve got various copies of all the other titles by Hunter that PAN published under the Piccolo imprint.The majority are by Gene or Jene Hawkins as both names are mentioned and I’m presuming they are the same person. You can see them HERE. Not sure why there are two versions of ‘The Stronghold’ when they are so similar, just the change of font and style? Jene Hawkins did the Piccolo cover for ‘Kings and Queens’ but apart from that I can find very few other examples, just this record sleeve.

I did contact Ivan Lapper who painted the cover for ‘The Ghosts of Glencoe’ and he replied “I did some book jackets for Pan years ago. It was such a long time ago I haven’t got a record of what I did any more” which is quite understandable.

Having mentioned Peter Corris and his private eye books I bought the PAN edition under their Picador imprint called ‘A Cliff Hardy Collection’ of his three novels PAN published separately. I am currently half way through and they are an enjoyable read and not too taxing for bed time.

I picked up a copy of the campaign book for Irwin Shaw’s novel ‘The Young Lions’ I started to look at how many different edition I had and so far it is seven. I’ve scanned them in plus the most interesting part of the campaign book and put them HERE

I had an email a while ago from Ray Wallace who kindly pointed out that there was an edition of ‘The Dam Busters’ I didn’t have on the page so it was another to add to the ‘must get’ list. Having now got a copy of the 1972 edition with extra printing on the cover and a different ISBN I’ve added it to the page HERE Thanks Ray.

..…. and I knew my Australian agents wouldn’t let me down regarding Peter Corris. I asked if there were other titles by him which had the PAN Man logo and Stuart Radmore emailed back to say there were two and would I like scans? Luckily I found them very competitively priced on Australian eBay and with my sister from here in the UK visiting her daughter in Darwin it looks like cheap postage as well. They will be added at sometime in the future but here are the images from eBay. Thanks Stuart.

This is one for our Australian readers as I picked up a copy of ‘The Dying Trade’ by Peter Corris from 1982 which is an PAN Australian edition. On looking to see if he had any more titles published by PAN I see he has but they all seem to be from the 1990’s so doesn’t have the PAN Man logo (as I’m going to call it) Has anyone got any others of his books without the later ‘waves’ logo?

Still sorting bits and pieces and found I had a hardback copy published by John Long of ‘Gossip to the Grave’ by John Burke from 1967. What is interesting is the comment inside which you can see HERE  and also that he changes from one of his pen names Jonathan to his real name of John.

I’ve also been trying to track down the Sue Grafton ‘Alphabet’ covers for D, E, and F by Tom Adams. I thought I found them but turns out none of them are the right edition although they have the right ISBN and date. What is interesting is that they have the PAN Crime logo on the front of two of them whereas this was just on the spine of the T A ones.Was this one of the new logos from the 1990’s to go with the Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror ones I wonder?

After mentioning the logos that PAN introduced in the 1990’s I came across an advertisement in the ‘Interzone’ magazine which showed three of them. All the books listed below them have the sci-fi logo apart from ‘Heorot’ when I couldn’t find a PAN edition. Click HERE to see them. The advertisement for the magazine was from the back of ‘Grounded’
I always look through books before I pass them on and was pleased to find this newspaper clipping from 1997. I don’t know where I got the book but it is from our local paper, the Express and Star.
I’m a great fan of the work of Tom Adams especially the dozens of Agatha Christie covers he painted for Fontana and the Raymond Chandler covers for Ballantine (I have over a hundred examples of these titles which may one day be scanned) He also did a few for PAN including the three John Fowles titles ‘The Magus’, ‘The Collector’ and ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ and Siverburg’s ‘The Capricorn Games’ After his success with the Christie titles PAN commissioned Tom to paint the covers for the ‘Kinsey Millhome Mysteries’ series by Sue Grafton. He got as far as ‘J’ before he lost rapport with PAN according to the book ‘Tom Adams Uncovered’ I’m trying to complete the A to J set and HERE are the results so far.

After reading the book ‘Hardware’ featuring artwork by Chris Foss I think he did ten covers for PAN some of which were a bit of a surprise as they were not S/F. Click HERE for the list of titles which will eventually be scanned in.

I have also been in contact with artist Geoff Taylor who painted three S/F covers for PAN in the late 1970’s as I was asked by a fellow PAN Fan if I knew who painted the Douglas Hill cover for ‘The Shape of Sex to Come’ and Geoff’s name popped up. It turns out he painted one that wasn’t used which I’ve shown HERE along with three other PAN covers that were used plus a Piccolo title. He was also involved with the ‘War of the Worlds’ album artwork. I’ve not discovered who painted the Hill cover, any suggestions?

Back in January I got an email from Melissa at the British Dental Journal as she was trying to contact artist Alan Cracknell as they wanted to use part of a poster he painted for Colgate on their front cover. I contacted Alan on her behalf and he said that was fine but nothing seemed to happen. I checked up last week and found it was used in March so a quick reminder to Melissa and she was a good as her word and send several copies, one of which I forwarded to Alan.

It was goodbye to Harlan Ellison who passed away last week (28/06/18) He had several titles published by PAN including ‘The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World’, ‘Deathbird Stories’ and ‘Approaching Oblivion’

I’ve decided to include the five covers for the Larry McMurty titles published by PAN even though ‘Lonesome Dove’ doesn’t have a PAN man in its logo, it’s there just for completeness – well that’s my excuse.

We’ve been away in the camper for a few days and I was hoping to be sitting out on the longest day of the year with a nice cool beer until at least 22:00 but we were actually huddled inside from 20:00 as the sun went in and there was a chill wind. On the plus side we did visit a couple of National Trust properties with second hand bookshops and I seemed to have picked up mainly Jackie Collins titles which I did intend to scan and add this week but time has beaten me. Maybe next week? Unfortunately no additions to the ‘PAN Books as see in National Trust’ properties this time.

A few of the Collins covers has artwork by Chris Moore and I’ve just been reading ‘Journey Man – the art of Chris Moore’ as I mentioned him last week plus ‘Professional Airbrushing’ by Tom Stimpson. The other Chris is Chris Foss and I’ve been in email contact with his daughter Imogene who has promised me a spreadsheet of his titles and publishers which must be a very long list. I’ve also been reading ‘Hardware’ which helps me with some of his early PAN covers that had not name.

I’ve also now got the last of the 35 Ballantine UK editions of their Adult Fantasy Series. It is ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’ and although not a joint PAN publication is does have the UK and Commonwealth prices sticker on the back. I’m slowly scanning them in so HERE is the link to the ones I’ve done so far

We went to the cinema last week to see the film ‘SOLO’ which, in spite of the critics reviews that slatted it, my wife and I really enjoyed. It was while I was in the foyer I notice, or rather couldn’t fail to notice, a 3D advert for the upcoming film “The Meg” Does it look familiar ? Here are some ‘JAWS’ covers for comparison.
After Douglas Anderson put on list of all the PAN/Ballantine Adult Fantatsy series of 35 titles I checked mine and found I had 34 of them (anyone got ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’ in UK version?) Douglas asked for scans of 4 he hadn’t seen so those are ones I’ve done first and can be found HERE Some say PAN/Ballantine, usually as an overprint, on the cover where as others you have to check inside.

Being in a second hand bookshop last week and having some time to spare I started looking through a box of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books as a while ago I bought a folder of artwork by the late Jack McCarthy. These was mainly used as the frontispiece for the stories, plus a few page illustrations but none of them are labelled. Up to now I have found three so was really pleased to find this fourth one but still several to go. As far as I know McCarthy, of whom I can find nothing, didn’t paint any covers for PAN.

As it was Father’s day yesterday I received a great 3D card from our four cats and the vixen who calls in most days. Apparently ‘they’ chose it to remind me of the time last September when we met Julia and Axel at the ceremony where they were given their Golden PAN Awards.

UPDATE It appears there weren’t UK PAN printed editions of some of the Ballantine titles with a few printed in the USA but with UK, AU, NZ and SA cover prices. I’ve added one example to the page ‘Vathek’. Just another thirty titles to scan.

Still sorting through piles of books I came across the boxed set entitled ‘Haunted Houseful’ which consists of four Piccolo titles from around 1973. I don’t know who did the artwork for the box cover but HERE is the link to see it and the covers.

I picked up a copy of ‘Leaving Cheyenne’ by Larry McMurtry from 1989 and thought I’d add the other four titles by him published by PAN but I realised this could break my newly self imposed rule that the books must still have the figure of Pan on the logo and not the later ‘waves’ If I put all the titles on one would do so, I’ll ponder until next week

What I found interesting was that the cover above needed two artists, the lettering by Chris Moore and the background by Tom Stimpson. I emailed Chris up in Lancashire and he kindly and speedily replied “Hi Tim, Checked out your website and it’s really nice to see that someone has taken an active interest in a field of work that has largely gone unnoticed over the years. Several of your featured artists I know personally” Chris also pointed me in the direction of a website where I can find a list of his Sci-Fi covers which are many to say the least.
Both Chris Moore and Tom Stimpson painted covers for PAN and the links go to a couple of pages with a few examples that I will add to over time.

Having spent a few days down in Kent, on the Monday, which would have been Ian Fleming’s 110th birthday, we visited St Margaret’s Bay to go to the South Foreland Lighthouse (long story there I might save for another day) The guide pointed out the Granville Hotel from the top of the lighthouse and said that’s where Fleming was staying at the same time as Noel Coward (who wrote ‘Star Quality’) and where Fleming wrote ‘Moonraker’ Now I believed this until I came home and started checking and have to say I’m still a bit confused. The Granville Hotel was demolished in the late 1990’s and apartments are built on the site but as Fleming leased a property in St Margaret’s Bay, namely ‘White Cliffs’ would he stay in the hotel? He took on the house in 1951 off Noel Coward who acquired it in 1945. Fleming also wrote ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ while living here.

We also saw the house called ‘Moonraker’ at 32, Granville Road and designed after the description of Hugo Drax’s in the book.

I’ve now got two more copies of ‘The Towering Inferno’ film related books but disappointingly it doesn’t say who designed the cover for ‘The Glass Inferno’ but ‘The Tower’ was by the New Studio Inc.

After helping Emma Donoghue track down her Golden PAN Award she very kindly sent me a signed bookplate which I’ve stuck in the front of my proof copy of ‘ROOM’

I’ve also added a couple more scans of UK Exhibitors Campaign books featuring ‘The Last Angry Man’ and ‘Kings Go Forth’

…. and finally Bazeer in Australia spotted another PAN appearing on a television programme and I spotted one a while ago so they’ve now been added to the ‘PAN as seen of TV‘ page.