Hoping you all had a good Christmas and that things may be beginning to return to ‘normal’ in 2023.

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I might not have got the number one book on my wanted list (X705) but I did get something I’m pleased to add to my extensive collection of all three(!) ROMO stereo viewers. I mentioned one a couple of weeks ago but a little too expensive even for Santa it seems so I got one of the ‘standard’ ones instead. The reason I collect these is not just because I like them but because they were first produce in France in the 1950s by Robert Mouzillat who was also a director of PAN Books.

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I have been sorting out my titles by G H Vallins of which PAN published three in many editions between 1951 and 1972. It also gave me a chance to remember my visit to Val Biro back in 2012 where he signed several books with his covers. George Henry Vallins (29/05/1897 – 30/10/1956) was born in Shoreham near Sevenoaks, Kent and was educated at Beckenham County School and King’s College London. He served in the army towards the end of the First World War, after which he became a schoolmaster, first at Wreights School, Faversham, and then for many years at Selhurst High School, Croydon. He published a volume of poems and co-edited several anthologies for the use of English teachers. In 1933 he married Mary Janet Herringtpn in Croyden. In 1936, together with H A Treble, he published ‘An ABC of English Usage’ which was described by The Times as “an admirable if sometimes controversial little work” After the Second World War he published ‘The Making and Meaning of Words’ and then, according to The Times, “his best and wittiest handbooks”, ‘Good English’ (1951) and ‘Better English’ (1953). The paper commented “Both are delightful reading not merely for the soundness of the doctrine but for the combative tone of the writing” Vallins was a contributor to Punch and The Times Educational Supplement He died in hospital near his home in Banstead, Surrey, aged 59. The obituarist in ‘The Time’s described him as “a valiant champion for the purity of the English language”.

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Listening to the news last week I heard that Mike Hodges had passed away. on the 17th December. It was only when they mentioned films he had worked on that I remembered he wrote the screenplay for ‘Get Carter’ from the novel ‘Jack’s Return Home’ by Ted Lewis. As far as I can tell PAN only published this Ted Lewis title and ‘Plender’ although he wrote nine books altogether.

Wishing all PAN Fans a Happy Christmas and that you get all those titles that are top of your wants list.
(I know what mine is!)

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I have recently been communicating with Rog Peyton who has kindly sent me several lists of book covers by well known artists, but then again maybe only well known to some of us! He also scanned a couple of Arrow covers by Derek Stowe plus a query one and asked if Derek was OK? It has been a while since I last spoke to him so it was a good excuse to do so. After a few calls that went unanswered I began to wonder but I eventually got him, he had just come back from hospital. He sounded very chirpy, and we had a good chat which was brought to a halt by his lunch arriving. I’ll ring him again soon to carry on our conversation. I’ve added the two definite covers to Derek’s Panther/Arrow page HERE as they are signed. They are ‘The Black Gang‘ by SAPPER (H, C, McNeile) and ‘The Flying Fifty-Nine’ by Edgar Wallace, The query was does anyone know who painted this ‘Dracula’ cover as Derek said it wasn’t one of his?

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As I have said many times I find the ephemera around PAN Books just as interesting as the books themselves. A case in point are badges PAN gave away in the 1990s. I know there are three of them and so far I’ve managed to obtain two. I’d love to get the missing one if anyone could help?

As promised last week here are the 13 covers I have in what I call the ‘Blue Flash’ series of Science Fiction titles. What prompted me to get them out and rescan them was looking through ‘Rayguns & Rocketships’ which features cover art for S/F titles from many publishers including PAN. Click on the pages above to see them. Once again if you know of any I have missed please email or leave a comment.

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I was sad to hear of the death of Squadron Leader George Leonard Johnson, MBE, DFM, better known as ‘Johnny’ Johnson, on the 7th at the age of 101. His and his colleagues stories are told in ‘The Dam Busters’ by Paul Brickhill. This is a significant title from PAN as it was their first book to sell a million copies. George tells his own story in his book ‘The Last British Dambuster’ written in 2014. There seems to be a debate as to whether or not it is ‘Dam Busters’ or ‘Dambusters’ as both are frequently used.

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I managed to find another edition of ‘Bottersnikes and Gumbles’ by S A Wakefield in PAN’s ‘Young Piper’ series, this one being from 1988. I’ve also added the Puffin edition from 1972 as it has the same cover artwork by Desmond Digby as the Piccolo edition from 1984 but with the trees in the background moved to the other side. I still need to find a 1988 edition of ‘Gumbles in Summer’ as the two copies I ordered that were supposed to be it both turned out to be the 1984 edition.

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….. and last but by no means least my website is celebrating its 23rd Birthday on the 16th. of this month. Here’s to many more blogs in the years to come. It was there before Twitter and the way things are going, possibly after as well!

Alan Ernest Cracknell, Artist and Illustrator
22 August 1937 – 20 April 2022

Last week I was sorting out Christmas cards which reminded me to check out what Alan Cracknell had been doing recently. We’ve exchange cards for several years, but I was really sorry to discover Alan had passed away and that I had missed it. He was 84 and was “an illustrator and artist who possessed a prodigious imagination and a meticulous and detailed technique” to quote his obituary which I’ve added to his page. It is from the Hampshire Chronicle. Alan sensibly didn’t ‘do’ emails and so I often got requests to pass things onto him, which I was happy to do, especially concerning commercial ventures utilizing his artwork some of which came to fruition. Goodbye Alan, I’ll really miss our chats on the phone. but it was good to speak to Alan’s wife Evelyn and daughter Sarah to pass on belated condolences.

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I noticed there was an exhibition of Ladybird Books original artwork that started recently which reminded me how many of their covers were by familiar names having also painted for PAN Books. I’ve put a couple of examples on a page HERE

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I love stereo viewers and as I have mentioned before there is a connection between the French ROMO stereo viewer and PAN Books. Robert Gustave Mouzillat was founder of La Stereochromie which traded as ROMO, a stereoscopic image company. In 1947 he became a director and participated in the development of publishing company Pan Books. With the support of the board of Pan Books he developed a means of exploiting a new printing technique, combining text with images. This took him into the use of the photographic process in printing. He later formed a company, of which he was the sole owner, to conceive and develop a camera to produce a 3D Camera. I have a small collection of them but unfortunately this item that has just appeared on eBay is a little too expensive for me at nearly £900.

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Frederik George Pohl was born on the 26th November 1919 in New York and died on the 2nd September 2013 in Palatine, Illinois, United States. I meant to post his covers last week before his birthday but as usual – forgot! Better a little late than never so HERE are the six titles he edited and the four title he wrote published by PAN. I think these are all but if you know another please leave a comment. I do have a few more of the ‘Galaxy Readers’ but not PAN with two from PERMA and one from Pocket Books. The first six were edited by H L Gold while the 10th was edited by Pohl but not published by PAN.

After mentioning that the ‘Olga da Polga’ stories were coming to BBC TV they started last month. They are only based on the Michael Bond stories, these being written by Sara Daddy. The original books were illustrated by Hans Helweg and HERE is the link again and you will need to scroll down the page.

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While scanning covers in what I call the ‘Blue Flash’ series of Science Fiction titles I noticed one of them was signed by Arthur Chales Clarke (Born 16/12/1917 in Minehead, Somerset and died 19/03/2008 in Colombo, Sri Lanka) It also had a inscription saying where and when it was signed but the memory of the recipient wasn’t 100% right as you’ll see if you click on the link HERE The rest of the ‘Blue Flash’ covers will be in next week’s blog.

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If you haven’t seen Jules Burt’s videos then you’ve missed a treat. One of his latest was filmed when he visited Maurice Flangan at Zardoz Books which my wife and I visited in 2016. Click HERE to see this video. I’m still amazed at the quantity of paperbacks and have spent many a happy hour clicking on pause and rewind to scan the spines. I love that Australian artwork that appears at about 25 minutes and the David Tayler roughs at about 20 minutes shown above and below. PS Thanks for the website mention Jules.

I’m pleased to announce that Jules Burt’s fourth and final video he filmed when visiting me in September is now available. This looks at some of my original artwork from PAN and other publisher. Click on the image above, “sit back, relax and enjoy” and I hope you do as much as me.

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Not sure if I’ve posted this before but here is a link to the James Bond ‘White Covers’ series from 1969 and 1972. I can remember scanning them in and putting them on a Facebook page but not in a blog. This was just after Mike VanBlaricum kindly provided me with a larger image of the original artwork for FYEO which now resides in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois . This artwork was one of the items sold at the Bonham’s auction in 1991.

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I remember well the name David & Charles as in my youth I joined their book club. There was a great introductory offer then you had to buy one title a month for so long. I think a lot of those titles have now gone to National Trust secondhand bookshops in an unread condition. IN 1971/72 PAN reprinted about 23 of their titles and labelled them the ‘David & Charles Series’ Oddly one of the books lists ‘The West Highland Way’ as being by Turner and not Thomas. The following passage is from their website;
‘David and Charles was founded over 60 years ago on 1st April 1960 by David St John Thomas and Charles Hadfield in Newton Abbot, Devon. It became synonymous with books on Britain’s canals and railways and quickly became a leader in illustrated non-fiction, publishing across numerous categories. The ownership of the company has changed several times over the years. In July 2019, the current management team completed a buy-out of the business from the American company, F+W Media. David and Charles are now based in Exeter, Devon’

Just one item this week but it’s a good one as we can now add another name to the roll of honour for designed four of the covers for the PAN Horror Books series.

Having recently been in communication with artist Sean Coleman he mentioned a friend of his, a fellow artist named Hogan Brown. Hogan’s father, Ken Brown, was responsible for designing some of the covers in the PAN Horror Series back in the 1960s. Unfortunately, Ken is no longer with us but I would like to say a big “Thank You” to Ken’s wife Ruth who sent me the following recollections.

Recollections of Ruth Brown

As far as I can remember…….

We had moved to our first “bought” house in Teddington 1967. It was a small modern house with a single open plan ground floor. (Relevant!)

My husband, Ken Brown, had joined the BBC as a graphic designer in 1964 when the in-house graphics department was formed, dealing with opening titles and promotional content for future programmes.

10 designers were recruited from various different disciplines – Ken came from the advertising agency J Walter Thompson, having trained as an illustrator at Birmingham College of Art.

As well as working 9 to 5 at the BBC, he also occasionally took on freelance work. He didn’t have an agent – it was usually through recommendation or word of mouth.

One such commission was to design the covers for the series of Pan Book of Horror Stories. Because of the day job, he did the designing and photographing of the covers at home, in the evening. I specifically specify the evening and not the weekend because by now we had a young son and the very nature of the content of the covers was obviously not particularly child friendly, so we had to make sure he was asleep! The sight of his father’s head swathed in bandages and smeared with blood might have damaged him for life

Then there was the head full of worms ….

…. the severed head in the hat box ….

…. and the wedding cake complete with dagger and dripping blood.

I think Ken sometimes borrowed things from a friend in the BBC props department (a serious misdemeanor) ……. I know he borrowed a cobweb device from there.

I don’t know where he got the rubber head from (he cut it open and added the worms) but it lived in the top of the wardrobe for several years after the “shoot”. And the wedding cake (made out of cardboard and plaster) was consigned to the garage.
It was all VERY low tech but great fun to do and enormously successful – hence the interest to this day.
I hope this adds some insight and is of interest.

PS. My son has grown up into a very nice, well-adjusted person ……… so no harm done!

Footnote from well-adjusted son Hogan

I found the wedding cake drying in the airing cupboard when I was a kid, which was a bit of a shock, I also kept the head with the worms for many years, though what happened to it I do not know.

Pleased to find that Jules has now put up excellent video number three from when he visited in September. This one looks at PAN related ephemera such as point of sale material and catalogues that are just as interesting as the books themselves. Thanks Jules and happy to share these with fellow PAN Fans. Click on the image to see the video.

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In 1986 John Robert Fowles (Born Leigh-on-Sea 31/03/1926 Died Lyme Regis 05/11/2005) returned to PAN after leaving them for Cape and Triad around the early 70s His return was announced in a 1986 highlights brochure which featured the cover from the Cape hardback cover of ‘A Maggot’ and not the PAN edition.

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Having recently mentioned a pastiche cover of ‘Live and Let Die’ which could fill in the gap in the ‘still life’ series of JB covers I was pleased to see a posting on another Facebook page for the same title. This showed a photo of Paul McCartney reading a copy of ‘Live and Let Die’ apparently just before he went on to write the theme to the film. Apologies to whoever posted it as I can’t find the comment for a name. Other editions are three numbered GP83, two as X233 and two with the ISBN 0330 102338

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Elizabeth MacKintosh (Born Inverness 25/07/1896 Died London 13/02/1952) who wrote under the name Josephine Tey had several titles published by PAN. She is probably best known for her Inspector Alan Grant series of which there were six but only four published by PAN. I thought the five titles published in 1973 in the same style would be five of these but no, one features Miss Pym. I’ve also included the 1972 edition of ‘Brat Farrar’ which is not in the same style! Still wondering why one never read edition of ‘A Shilling for Candles’ has the red edges?

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I recently noticed some pastiche covers for ‘Inside Number 9’ by a fan of the series and also of the PAN Horror covers. The artist is Sean Coleman and he has combined both interests in a set of six postcards. They are available to buy and I’ve added them to a page HERE plus several other examples he has done previously. They can be bought via Sean’s site at Coleman Design

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Having mentioned previously the book ‘You Can’t Play to Win if You Don’t Know the Rules’ in the 1986 highlights brochure which didn’t seem to exist I contacted PAN.  Almost by return I got not one but two explanations thanks to Alysoun and Chloe. Chloe says “From what I can tell the originally suggested title was “You Can’t Play to Win if You Don’t Know the Rules”; we have a contract for the same book where it is called “Fast Forward: A Survivor’s Guide to Corporate Politics”; but the name it was eventually published under was “The Po-Po Principle: A Survival Guide to Office Politics” I’ve not found a copy of ‘Fast Forward” but I have of ‘The Po-Po Princple’ Not an inspiring cover!

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Finally, just a quick note to say I’ve heard from Chris Hughes who is selling off his collection of titles mainly just with numbers, so the first 400 or so. If you have any wants, he is happy to be emailed at chris.hughes20@gmail.com

Every now and again I get out a copy of the ‘Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics’ which seems quite straight forward with the book in front of me but trying to use it in everyday life is a different story. I though there were only two PAN editions, but I have just come across a third which I’ve added to the page.

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I have had a couple of people ask about the cover of the hardback edition of ‘The Dam Busters’ produced after selling a million copies in paperback. In Jules ‘Rarities’ video I mentioned a glassine wrapper which seem to be new to some so here is a description.

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I have a couple of ‘With Compliments’ slips from the 50s but Ray sent me photo of one he’d found in a book which had been typed on. It looks like it could be for review copies of 2 titles but they were published 3 years apart? The titles are ‘The Angry Mountain’ and ‘Death and the Sky Above’ I noticed the address is the same but the telephone number has changed, anyone any idea when this might have been?