{"id":18712,"date":"2026-08-24T06:29:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T05:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/?p=18712"},"modified":"2026-08-28T11:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T10:55:08","slug":"tales-from-my-spinner-rack-nicholas-blake-and-the-art-of-renato-fratini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/2026\/08\/24\/tales-from-my-spinner-rack-nicholas-blake-and-the-art-of-renato-fratini\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Tales From My Spinner Rack’, Nicholas Blake and ‘The Art of Renato Fratini’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While making one of my visits to PizGloria<\/span><\/strong><\/a> to see what’s new I was interested in a link Bazeer had put to a YouTube video by Gary Sassaman. It was number 28 in his series ‘Tales From My Spinner Rack’<\/span> <\/strong><\/a>and this time it was looking at James Bond paperbacks. I was pleased to see PAN titles were prominently displayed. Bazeer mentions it in on his website as he gets a thanks and a plug at the end.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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This weeks random author is Nicholas Blake, the pseudonym of poet Cecil Day-Lewis. PAN published five of his novels in the first ten years of PAN specifically PAN 99 ‘A Question of Proof<\/em>‘<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, PAN 111 ‘There’s Trouble Brewing<\/em>‘<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, PAN 237<\/span> <\/span>‘Minute for Murder<\/em>‘<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, PAN 308 ‘Head of a Traveller<\/em>‘<\/strong><\/span><\/a> and PAN G282 ‘The Whisper in the Gloom<\/em>‘<\/strong><\/span><\/a> and then there seems to have been a lull until 1971\/2 when they published four more titles<\/span><\/strong><\/a> with rather unimpressive covers, well that’s my opinion. Cecil Day-Lewis (27\/04\/1904 to 22 \/05\/1972) was an Anglo-Irish poet and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death. The mystery stories he wrote under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake mostly featured the fictional detective Nigel Strangeways, starting with ‘A Question of Proof’<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a>….. and it has finally arrived with a thump on the doorstep, all 448 pages. It seems a long time ago that I contributed to a Kick Starter project for a book on the work of prolific artist Renato Fratini. It is certainly a weighty tome and covers the full range of his work from film poster to magazines etc and a large section on book covers. It was to this I turned first to see which, if any, PAN covers were included. It was a bit sparse but I was pleased to see ‘One Love is Enough’<\/span><\/strong><\/em> as I was never sure if this was by Fratini. The book is called ‘The Art of Renato Fratini’<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/a> and is by Timothy R Smith.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While making one of my visits to PizGloria to see what’s new I was interested in a link Bazeer had put to a YouTube video by Gary Sassaman. It was number 28 in his series ‘Tales From My Spinner Rack’ and this time it was looking at James Bond paperbacks. I was pleased to see […]<\/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\/18712"}],"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=18712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tikit.net\/panfans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}