This week I will be assembling and then stocking 600 feet of books shelves which are stacked in my ‘library’ This is about three quarters of the amount I think I can fit in with the rest becoming available when the book stacks on the floor get transferred to the shelves. The ones in the photo are later titles with ISBN’s which will be shelved in alphabetical order.

I was pleased to get a ‘comment’ last week from Bert Whetstone who said:

“I’ve been a fan of Koziakin’s “Mazes” series of books since I was a kid in the 1970s. These are the books titled like “Mazes 2” and they were a bit more complex than the “Mazes For Fun” series.
Information on Koziakin is hard to come by, but a few months ago I bought a 1973 jigsaw puzzle maze by Koziakin which had some information about him on the back of the box.
Koziakin is of Russian descent, born in Yugoslavia during WWII. His family immigrated to the USA from Germany in 1947, to the east side of NYC. In the late 60’s he worked as a Graphic Artist for NBC on The Tonight Show and The Today Show. He began publishing his maze books in April 1971.
As it turns out he also produced maze greeting cards and a 6-foot “hanging maze” banner. The “hanging maze” along with the maze jigsaw were manufactured by Gameophiles Unlimited which seems to have been a small specialty gaming manufacturer located in NYC.
Aside from that, I have reason to believe Koziakin is still alive and resides in northeast New York state. But that’s all I can tell you”

After looking through US Whitepages I replied to Bert to say I’d found a Vladimir  Koziakin living at Redkill RD, Fleischmanns, NY 12430 but I’d also found a death record for someone of the same name. Unfortunately as my wife’s subscription to Ancestry is only for the UK I couldn’t check it the States.

In July 1973 the ‘Daily Mirror’ used two of Koziakin’s mazes on their ‘Junior Mirror’ page and also mention that PAN Book 2 was available. You can see them HERE if you scroll down. This might just be me but I was amused by the advert for ‘painful piles’ next to the maze. The only painful piles I’ve had lately is when stacks of books have fallen on my head but hopefully soon to be a thing of the past!

I’ve realised, after the reference last week to ‘PAN as seen on television’ I’ve not got a page for ‘PAN as seen in films’ as now, thanks to a suggestion from Robin Harbour, I’ve found a PAN featured in the film ‘The Spy With A Cold Nose’. Any more references grateful received.

I’ve also got a screen shot from the TV series ‘Grand Designs’ thanks to Bazeer Fulmore in Australia who spotted a shelf full of Shute titles. Bazeer runs the fantastic www.pizgloria.com site and I’ve appointed him my Australian agent (maybe I should tell him this?) This edition of ‘Grand Designs’ featured a property in Northern Ireland first shown in the UK in September 2017. We used to watch GD but Kevin McCloud who presents it is so full of ‘doom and gloom’ as to the outcome because they’ve not got a project manager etc, which always resolves itself after the last adverts, we’ve stopped watching it. Looks like we may need to start again.

With the ‘library’ room actually finished I now need to order the shelving, well enough for two thirds as I need floor space to sort the jumbled stacks of books into alphabetical order before putting them on the shelves. I’m also hoping to catalogue them all at the same time but I’ll see how long that takes.

Amongst the first piles were several titles in the 1970’s series of ‘PAN Classics’ which was the successor to the ‘Bestsellers of Literature’ series from the 1960’s (another page that really does need updating) I usually like to show the actual cover I have but I seem to be several short so I’ve resorted to images off the web which will be updated as I go along. Click HERE to see them so far. I’m also looking at the later series from around 1980 as they often used the same artwork and some of these list the artist.
It’s interesting in that when I bought my boxed set it was very cheap as it only had five of the six titles. I knew I had a copy of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ which I could put in it but try as I might I couldn’t squeeze it in with the others. I’ve just noticed on eBay someone selling a set and asking £50 but I’m more interesting working out if they are the same thickness as mine, where’s that ruler?
A couple of updates including a scan of a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Progress of Julius’ which I’ve shown as a web image for quite a while but have now got one of my own,

As with these things I just said I’d not added to my “PAN as seen on Television” section for quite a while and then add one a couple of weeks ago and followed by two in the last week

Last week the UK ground to a halt because of Siberian wind and snow dubbed the ‘Beast from the East’ by the papers or ‘Winter’ as we call it. No post here for days but a rack and pinion railway engine I bought off eBay in the States arrived in just over a week! 

Last week I mentioned finding another George Sharp cover, ‘The Totem’ by David Morrell. I emailed George and he replied that it is actually him modelling and the shot was taken by a photographer at Artists Partners.

I’ve also been trying to make sense of all the PAN Classics titles and editions and found six Austen titles from 1981 were painted by Jooce Garrett who now lives in Switzerland. I sent him an email and he very kindly replied;

“I will gladly add what I can to your fine website. First off, as you will see when I dig out the artwork and take the photo you want, that I am a chap. I have put together a list of the jobs I did for Pan, mostly for David Larkin, but latterly with Gary Day-Ellison. I was with Artist Partners and, though I did occasionally make the pilgrimage out west from Soho, mostly they took the briefs and did the running around. I was impressed with the freedom David gave me. The instruction back then was to leave the top third of a book jacket free for the type, but David let me do those little vignettes on the Jane Austens. I think the red is his scribbles on my roughs. I’ll be in touch again when I’ve taken that photo”

I’m not sure what happened, typing mistake possibly, but I addressed Jooce as Ms, looks like he has forgiven me. Jooce also included a list of other covers he did for PAN and I’ll try and track them down to add later, luckily he included the year as well so that will help. As for getting hold of the six Austen titles, that’s proving difficult due to my constant complaint of sellers not showing the actual coves, just stock images. Any way here is one of them plus the rough Jooce mentioned.

   
As Jooce mentioned Artist Partners as did George I asked if they knew each other but seems they only knew of each other.

Lastly HERE are a random selection of press cuttings featuring ‘The Botts’, Alan founder of PAN Books and his wife Josephine.

As promised last week here are more pages from the film exhibitors campaign books I scanned from photocopies Robin Harbour had from Anthony Southall.
There are several large pages that all mention PAN Books. They may load slowly but they can be found HERE.

Again while sorting I’m left pondering “Was it really worth it?” when I see covers a couple of years apart looking very similar. They were both for ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ one from 1974 and the other 1979. All I can think is that the 1979 edition was designed to look like the other Carre covers with the stylised name.

….. and yet another cover from prolific artist George Sharp which I’ve emailed to him as he says he can’t remember a lot of them but they bring back memories of the time. This is another Morrell cover from 1979. I’m awaiting his response.

I was really pleased to get an email from James Bond aficionado Robin Harbour to say he had just acquired the exhibitors campaign book for ‘You Only Live Twice’ and as it mentioned the PAN edition published to coincide with the film release, was I interested? As it was A3 and Robin doesn’t have a scanner big enough he offered to pop round with it and luckily he doesn’t live that far away.

One of the pages not only shows the book but also extra display pieces. To see them click HERE. The photo of the rocket was one Graham Rye of “007 Magazine” sent me a while back while the other two are from Nick Bennetts collection. Over the page were details of a competion run by W H Smith for window displays, the accompanying photo was a mock up showing all the bits being used. To see previously shown displays click HERE.

I’m always on the look out for PAN/Ballantine joint publications and have now got another one to add to the list. It is “The Basic Book of Organic Farming” with a cover by David Larkin who was art director at PAN at the time.

   
While Robin was here he also brought photocopies of other campaign books featuring PAN’s which he got from Anthony Southall. I’ve scanned them in and although the quality is not as good as they would be straight from the originals I’ll shown them next week.

…. and finally the answer to last weeks puzzle was less than a centimetre.

Not sure our few days away were that restful with the gale force winds and rain but on the plus side it did get to 15 degrees, not bad for this time of year.

I found the books I’d put on one side but I’m still one and possibly two to find to go on the shelves. The title was ‘Tim’ by Colleen McCullough and I’ve got five examples plus one that only seems to be show as ‘Stock photo’ but I suppose it exists? The other is one that I’m sure I have somewhere that I was sent as a review copy when I worked in Special Ed. In my mind it was just a plain yellow cover with the writing in white but after forty years it might just be a figment of my imagination. See the covers HERE

I know it is a bit morbid but I do look at obituaries, hence spotting Peter Mayle on the 18th January but I missed the passing of Peter Wyngarde three days earlier. I think most people will remember him from his role as ‘Jason King’ and PAN published two titles featuring King. They were written by Robert Miall AKA John Burke who received £525 for each of them for the first 40,000 titles. Click HERE to see the covers and contracts.

….. and finally another screen capture for the ‘PAN as seen on TV’ page with a copy of ‘For Your Eyes Only’ appearing on Bargain Hunt where all the latest captures seen to have come from.

Sorry there is only one item this week for two reasons. The first being that we are taking advantage of the better weather and having a few days away in our camper (luckily has a great diesel heater in the back) and secondly I’ve put the  different versions of the title that I was going to feature somewhere safe! Hopefully I’ll have found them by next week.

This weeks page is about PAN Book Week which apparently, according to the newspaper article, first started in Birmingham in 1959 which is a bit odd as I have a cutting announcing a PAN Book Week in Falkirk in 1955. I’ve also included cuttings for Aberdeen from 1961 and 1962. Click HERE to see them. I’m currently trying to find what happened to 1960 and did it continue after 1962? Keep reading the blog as I’ll update if anything turns up or please let me know if you have anything to add.

I’ve learnt a new word this week namely ‘quair’ which is the Scots word for ‘book’ a variant of the English word ‘quire’ This was because I came across ‘A Scots Quair’ by Lewis Grassic Gibbon published by PAN in 1982 to tie-in with the BBC Scotland production of ‘Cloud Howe’ one of three titles published as an omnibus. In 2016 ‘Sunset Song’ the first title in the trio was voted Scotland’s favourite book of all time!
Click HERE to see the covers, any idea of the artist?

I also came across another couple of books with a Scottish theme, a pair of titles by Lea MacNally. They are shown HERE

The third Scottish sounding item is in fact not Scottish and nothing to do with books. Our campaign to reopen the old railway line between Walsall and Lichfield now has an official name for the greenway. It is the ‘McClean Way’ which sounds Scottish but in fact John Robinson McClean was born in Belfast and was one of those really famous Victorians nobody’s heard of these days. He built and ran the railway back in the 1850’s and also built a pipeline which ran alongside it. Now looking for a printer to print a few hundred way markers so we can officially label it. Waiting for ructions from a few NIMBY’s next week as we are bringing in a digger as the clearing of the drains etc. has got beyond our capabilities!I’m to modest to actually say who designed the logo but I am rather pleased with it!