Paladin - second only to Picador as a publisher's name to set the arty-intellectual bibliophile's heart a flutter...
Radical, countercultural, polemical, esoteric, transgressive, avant-garde, youth culture ... a feast for the hungry young mind, portions selling at a reasonable paperback price. Eye-catching design.
I have six of the above Paladins - and in the the same covers as shown.
These are they
Dig the inclusion of negative quotes about Playpower on the back cover - "the book they're all talking about!"
Not all of the above were bought at the time, though.
Back in the day, Picador and Paladin titles were usually displayed in spinners.
You know what I mean, those rotating wire-metal things with basket compartments that hold about 4 to 6 paperbacks.
One of those commonplace things that were totally part of the bookworm's life, but no one seems to have seen fit to take a picture of one. At least one crammed with Paladins and / or Picadors.
They still use spinners in Oxfam but they tend to be crammed with vintage Penguin + Pelican non-fiction.
Well, after searching online for a goodly while, I did find an example and it seems to be contemporary too: from a Chorlton charity shop - a Paladin spinner, a Picador spinner and a Virago spinner, all in a row. Not the wire basket type though.
The Paladin and Picador designs aren't nearly as characterful and grabby as back in the day though. Nor do the books themselves seem be as cool or esoteric.
(On second thoughts - maybe they just repurposed the spinners and have crammed them with books by sundry nonaligned publishers?)
Now this was the sort of typical Picador paperback that greeted the eye back in the day


Now I'm wondering if Picador did any non-fiction in those days.... everything I can recall having on the imprint (some DeLillo, a Vollmann.... what else?) was a novel or short story collection.
Ooh, the amount of hours in my life I spent rotating those Picador and Paladin spinners.... ogling the offerings, the opportunities for mind expansion.
Now what is it with UK publishers and the letter P?
Panther
Pan
Picador
Paladin
Penguin
Puffin
Pelican
Peregrine
Pluto
Palgrave
Polity
Persephone
Pimlico
I remember the news agents on the corner of the road that I lived in used to have a couple of Spinners in the corner. New English Library were always on one and random Pans Picadors and Paladins on the other.
ReplyDeleteI was an SF nerd so I looked out for the Futura logo.
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