{"id":18595,"date":"2026-07-20T06:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T05:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/?p=18595"},"modified":"2026-07-20T06:19:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T05:19:12","slug":"reluctant-legionnaire-the-godfather-and-ralph-vernon-hunt-aka-james-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/2026\/07\/20\/reluctant-legionnaire-the-godfather-and-ralph-vernon-hunt-aka-james-bond\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Reluctant Legionnaire’, ‘The Godfather’ and Ralph Vernon Hunt AKA ‘James Bond’!"},"content":{"rendered":"

With just two identifiable David Tayler roughs for PAN to go, this week we have G141 ‘The Reluctant Legionnaire’<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/a> by Michael Alexander. Michael Charles Alexander was born in London (20\/11\/1920 to 19\/12\/2004) the son of Rear-Admiral Charles Otway Alexander and the Dutch patrician Antonia van Geermans, making him half English and half Dutch. He was educated at Stowe and then Sandhurst. He distinguished himself during the Second World War but was captured behind enemy lines and sent to Colditz Castle. After the war Alexander pursued a varied career in publishing and business and authored several notable works including GP46 ‘The Privileged Nightmare’<\/a> <\/strong><\/em>jointly with Giles Romilly.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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To tie in with the launch of the film of Mario Puzo’s book<\/span> ‘The Godfather’<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/a> in 1970 PAN informed book sellers all about what display materials were available. This is a page from<\/span> ‘The Bookseller’ <\/span><\/strong><\/em>magazine<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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Ralph Holmes Vernon Hunt was the nephew of Alan Bott and joined Pan Books as Sales Director, working his way up to Managing Director in 1969. He had previously worked at Hudson’s book shop in Birmingham and I had an email from blog reader Alun who worked there from 1973 to 1985 and remembers Vernon Hunt and said he was a nice chap. What always amuses me though is that Vernon Hunt was used as the model for James Bond and John Hadfield referred to him as a ‘virile adventurer of the book trade’ as in this letter! John Charles Heywood Hadfield (16\/06\/1907 to 10\/10\/1999) was an English writer and publisher, best known for his 1959 comic novel ‘Love on a Branch Line’<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

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Looking at him in the photo below, third from left, I can’t really see it myself.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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With just two identifiable David Tayler roughs for PAN to go, this week we have G141 ‘The Reluctant Legionnaire’ by Michael Alexander. Michael Charles Alexander was born in London (20\/11\/1920 to 19\/12\/2004) the son of Rear-Admiral Charles Otway Alexander and the Dutch patrician Antonia van Geermans, making him half English and half Dutch. He was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}