EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 4 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

66 Johnny Mains draws back the shroud to reveal the stories behind the cover art for Herbert Van Thal’s infamous Pan Book of Horror Stories. The Nightmare Painters ABOVE AND FACING PAGE: One of the artists whose work came to the attention of David Larkin during his tenure at Pan Books was Alan Lee. A succession of darkly Gothic covers for Pan including ‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Tales of Terror and Mystery’ and the covers to the 16th and 17th Pan Book of Horror Stories prompted Larkin to commission Lee along with friend and fellow fantasy artist Brian Froud, to collaborate on the best selling book ‘Faeries’, which propelled the work of both artists to an international audience. The Pan Book of Horror Stories is the infamous, longest running horror anthology series that ran from 1959 until 1989. It was collated under the guidance of two editors: Herbert van Thal and, following van Thal’s death, by Clarence Paget. It is widely accepted that the first fifteen books contained the best content, and the content of the last fifteen earned the series almost legendary status. In fact, you may well have been amongst the many children in the playground, huddled together, swapping gory tales in the form of beaten up copies pinched from older siblings. Over 600 stories by around 400 authors found their way into the series—and some of those made it to the top spot: the springboard for the cover of the book itself. Titles like ‘The Squaw’ by Bram Stoker; the iconic, snarling cat on the cover of Pan Horror 1, or the painting from Pan Horror 16 depicting Norman Kaufman’s ‘An Experiment with H20’. They say one should never judge a book by its cover, but if it wasn’t for the cover art on The Pan Book of Horror Stories , these books may well have been less well regarded. A lot of the noise surrounding the series, like many other forms of entertainment at