EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 15 © 2016 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

66 ABOVE: Peff's first cover for a mass market paperback was for Peter Cheyney's 'G-Man At The Yard'. Corgi 's procedure for such assignments was to provide the artist with a fully funded photoshoot with professional models, taken by a leading West End photographer by name of Arthur Brilliant. Different days indeed! ABOVE RIGHT: Peff's cover for 'From Russia With Love', published by Pan Books 1959. Later Bond covers avoided any depiction of 007. Peff's vision of Bond with oiled black hair and chiselled features has attained iconographic status amongst Bond connoisseurs. For a couple of shillings readers could enjoy the stories of world-famous authors. The books, when first published as hardbacks, could cost anything from 35 shillings up to five pounds. So there was a considerable saving on the paperback edition, and for the publishers they were becoming big business. My total involvement in cover design did not begin until the summer of 1955.” Peff ’s initial work for mass-market paperback covers was for Corgi Books . His first was for Peter Cheyney’s ‘ G-Man At The Yard’; his second was for ‘Jivaro’ (about Amazon head-hunters) and the third was for a Western, ‘Tombstone’. “The procedure for this was slightly different (from previous magazine illustrations). The difference being that Corgi was paying professional model fees and the photographic session that followed. The models played their parts well and the photographs were first class, taken by West End photographer Arthur Brilliant. It was an unusual surname, I wondered if it could be a pseudonym. Brilliant photography? Well, maybe not!” Before his world famous work on Pan Books , Sam did many covers for Panther Books in the early 1950s.