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

Category Archives: PAN Books

“So Long and Thanks For All the Fish” Promo Material etc

Peter Tiejten (whom I’ve mentioned before and worked with Ken Hatherley in the Art Studios at PAN in the 70’s) was responsible for book promotions. I have several photos of  bits and pieces used to promote the 4th book in the ‘HHG’ series “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish’ HH5Peter writes “Douglas Adams always caused the cover and promotion departments loads of problems because of his late delivery of manuscripts. Usually the cover and display material had been completed before Douglas had finished writing the book – which meant anything went. “So long, and thanks for all the fish” called for a stuffed bird in a display case on the front of the brochure (obviously!) and inside, another picture showed the plug having been inserted in a socket; the bird had disappeared from the perch and all that remained were a few feathers! Each display bin was sent out with “a fistful of feathers” along with the books. Douglas was a lovely chap who very kindly signed a copy of “So Long…” for me BEFORE it had been printed. How? He signed a blank dummy book – which I still treasure!!! ”

I’ve put a few more of the photos on this page

Gary Day-Ellison, PAN Design and Art  Director (1977 to 1988) at the time said “Now, this is what I mean by massively late. Sales needed a cover to rack up the orders. I had to deliver the design for the hardback jacket before Douglas produced the book. I made him promise to tell me what he had in mind. On his way out of the Fulham Road offices he stuck his head round my office door to brief me. He said, “It’s called ‘So Long and Thanks for All the Fish’. And left.I sat, lost for words. A few minutes passed and his head re-appeared, “But there are no fish in it.“, he declared – and fled. This left me license to match enigma with enigma. And when the penny eventually dropped, it landed in a pint of Guinness and produced a ‘lenticular print‘. I found one of a walrus that morphed into a dinosaur, originally produced as a give-away for a cereal packet. Douglas Adams wrote in my copy ‘The silliest jacket in the history of history itself'”

Thanks

Click on walrus to see it morph.

Which Anniversary Year?

I think 2015 should be the year PAN celebrates 70 years but they probably won’t until 2017. PAN was registered as a limited company on the 1st September 1944 and their first title ‘Tales Of The Supernatural’ was published in 1945 hence 70 years this year. For some reason or other PAN decided that ‘Ten Stories’ from 1947 was their first title (well it is numbered 1) but their CEO up to September 2007 Richard Charkin, on his blog, agreed with me. I’m too modest to also mention the several glowing reference he gave to my website such as “Anyone who is the least bit interested in the history of publishing will enjoy Tim’s brilliant ‘First 25 years of Pan Books’ website. In particular, the covers are sensational, the site has scores – all evocative”superA couple of PAN related ‘projects’ I have in hand include a visit to the ‘British Museum’ to actually see the original bronze on which the ‘Golden PAN’ award is modelled now it’s back from it’s world travel’s and not normally on display. The other is updating the pages on the founder of PAN Books, Alan Bott. I have a family photo album that belonged to his son, Simon, (kindly lent to me by his son, Adrian) and I will include a lot of these soon. Here is a sample one of A J Bott with A S Frene(?) in front of a Desoutter Sports Coupe from 1929Alan John BottFinally I have a small pile of 6 Barbara Cartland titles to add to her page which will bring the total shown up to 100, definitely going to stop there!

Happy New Year 2015

Happy hunting for all those elusive titles and I know it’s going to be the year I get that last title on my list X705 – or maybe not.

Just getting ready to hang up this years calendar and to all those who wanted one, sorry they’ve all gone, which is not surprising as there is only ever one. Last year it was a selection of Sam ‘PEFF’ Peffer covers and this year features the Shute covers of George Sharp. Unfortunately PAN did not foresee that I would make a calendar and only published 22 titles which messed up my two covers a month. I’ve had to pad out December with a couple of other examples of George’s work.

Here’s to the next 52 blogs for 2015 which will be another eclectic mix of topics but all vaguely PAN related including, hopefully, something for everyone.

UPDATE Having added a screen shot to the ‘As Seen on TV’ section last week, the first for ages, just like buses another comes along. It’s one for the eagle eyed from the antiques programme ‘Bargain Hunt’

Happy Christmas 2014

KingsWith Christmas upon us this week I thought I would mention ‘The Christmas Book’ edited by David Larkin and published in 1975. It is called “a graphic celebration” but is really just a collection of 40 Christmas themed pictures by different artists ranging from Arthur Rackham, through Norman Rockwell to Anne Mandeville.

I have also managed to add screen captures to the list of “As Seen on Television“ in the Miscellany section, something I’ve not done for a while. It was an edition of ‘Flog It’ and they auctioning a model of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but it also included a copy of the PAN title from 1968 for which John Burke got paid the princely sum of £875 outright.. When they were talking about the book the couple who brought it in expressed surprise when told the original story was by Ian Fleming in spite of it quite clearly stating this on the cover! I was hoping to include a clip but BBC IPlayer has just changed the format and it will only play through their viewer but I like a challenge ….

15th Birthday, Jack Hayes and Barbara Cartland

We’re raising the flag to celebrate
the fact that www.tikit.net
will be 15 years old tomorrow.

Flags

By Hayes, not for PAN but Hamlyn. the cover of ‘Flags’

Hanging on my wall for many years have been a couple of original covers by Jack Hayes, fortunately both signed, of two titles from the ‘Captain Blood’ series by Rafael Sabatini. This made me look to see how many other covers he painted for PAN and with the two already mentioned I make it seven.
One thing I have not managed to find out is any real details of his life, DoB, death etc. so if anyone can help?

Having succumbed to a mad ‘bulk buy’ of Barbara Cartland titles I am now up to 94, all scanned and bookmarked on the site but never again! I may see if I can find a few more to get to 100 but I don’t think I’m inclined to be a completest this time even if it meant I could find out if “A Kiss From A Stranger” was the only one with the PAN logo bottom right instead of top left like all the others so far!
NB With so many images on one page it does take a while to load!

Last Seen Wearing ……

Having returned late last night from a long but very cheap coach trip weekend away in Belgium (made even longer by 2 people having out of date passports only discovered on returning to the UK which now means the driver’s passport gets confiscated until sorted so we couldn’t leave them behind even though most people wanted to!) I realised I’d forgotten this weeks blog so bit shorter than usual. On the plus side we did get to see(?) the De Panne 19th Endurance cycle race on the beach in thick fog. It also had a second hand bookshop and I was pleasantly surprised to find four in Rochester when we called in for a couple of hours on the way down to Folkstone. Unfortunately couldn’t find anything I wanted to buy at a price I was willing to pay!

Last week I was moving books around and picked up a copy of “Last Seen Wearing” by Hillary Waugh and happened to glance at the back where there is a supposed memo to PAN from P.C. After racking my brains I came up with Peter Cheyney as fitting all the criteria and so contacted Adrian at his excellent Peter Cheyney site to see if he agreed. It was then that Adrian pointed out that Cheyney died in 1951 and the book was from 1960, maybe it just takes PAN along time to make decisions – nine years?

I cannot discover who the artists were for either of the variations of cover but the 64/66 variation is in a series and I have a scan of the original artwork for ‘The Neon Jungle’ but is listed as artist unknown. I presume the same artist did all of these so will check on the others.Neon Jungle X446This has inspired me to look at more back covers, something which is on my to do list plus scanning them and getting them on the site along with larger rescans of all the titles.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

DoyleA TV crew are currently filming about a mile away from where I am at the moment working on a dramatisation of the book “Arthur and George’ by Julian Barnes although the location is supposed to be secret. Here’s a report in the local paper.
This has prompted me to sort out all the later (from about 1970) Conan Doyle titles from PAN with ISBN numbers as the earlier ones with PAN numbers are already on the site (100, 106, 177, 286, 333, and Doyle linked GP20 ) plus the Harlequin/PAN Canadian edition of ‘The Lost World’

The later editions and titles can be found by clicking HERE or on Sir Arthur above.

PANI have also received a pile of PAN beer bits and pieces from Tomi in Croatia following on from my reference to it after visiting Croatia last month. I’ve added them to the page but I forgot to include the green opener in the picture so here it is!

Ian Miller

Every now and again I see a cover and there is just something about it that makes it stand out but I’m not always sure why. One such cover was the 1972 edition of ‘The Guardians Of Time’ by Poul Anderson. I know of three editions of this published by PAN, the 1964 having a cover by W Francis Phillipps but no idea for the 1977 edition. I only know the artist for 1972 after a Google search turned up a website showing the original artwork. Ian Miller was born in 1946 and grew up in London and Manchester. Between 1963 and 1967 he enrolled at Northwich School of Art, before embarking on a degree at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, where he began to paint and graduating with honours in 1970. Miller’s earliest work included magazine and book jacket illustrations, including a host of illustrations for paperback titles. I am currently putting together a page of covers he produced for PAN, watch this space.Werewolf

Do I hear the “The Trumpet Major”?

Back in June we visited Thomas Hardy’s cottage in Higher Bockhampton, a hamlet in the parish of Stinsford (we also paid our respects at his grave in Stinsford churchyard) Unfortunately I couldn’t find any PAN’s lurking on shelves to add to my series of ‘PANs Spotted In Historic Buildings’ but I can add to my collection of photos of ‘Famous Toilets I’ve Sat On’HardysCottageHardy did not feature in PAN’s early booklists very often as I can only find PAN 268 “The Mayor of Casterbridge” from 1953 and PAN M207 “Far from the Madding Crowd” from 1967. PAN 268 has a cover by the elusive artist R Sax of whom very little appears to be known, can anyone help? As I’ve mentioned before I have a CD of over 500 examples of original PAN cover artwork and 23 of these are confirmed as Sax with several more listed as Sax? so I’ve made a page of those which are definitely his.

Later, in the days of ISBNs, PAN published “Tales from Wessex” as a TV tie-in in 1973 and “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” in 1979 as a film tie-in.

In 1978 they published eight of Hardy’s titles (images acquired from the net)

     

PAN also published accompanying Brodies Notes for most Hardy titles. Hardy11
FOOTNOTE – After contacting the CEO of the company hosting my WordPress blog in frustration to complain about the erratic loading speeds I actually got an email from him almost straight away telling me he was on holiday but passing on  my concern to a senior person. I later got a call from him to apologise and since then things seem better so fingers crossed.

 

Signed Copies

cc7
While sorting through a pile of ‘special’ duplicates (ones that are not good enough for the shelf but have something to make me keep them) I’d forgotten the 3 Charles Chilton signed titles I’d bought on eBay last year. They came with a photo of Charles Chilton holding ‘The World In Peril’ when he was interviewed by the BBC for a programme of which I can find no record – does it ring a bell with anyone?

 

EM3


Eric Malpass, who died 18 years ago last week, had three of his books published by PAN ‘Morning’s At Seven’, ‘At The Height Of The Moon’ and ‘Fortinbras Has Escaped‘ The first two titles were very popular in Germany where they were both made into films with music by James Last.

 

BH3
One book that has been on my shelf for quite a while is ‘I Owe Russia $1200’ which cost me 50p and is a bargain as it has been signed by Bob Hope (!) I could believe that a charity shop would not think it genuine (if they actually spotted it) but having looked at other samples of his signature I’m not ruling it out as apparently he was a prolific signer.