The earliest occurrence of "you can't judge a book by its cover" noted in the Oxford Book of  Proverbs was in 1929 but was probably untrue then in its literal sense and was certainly untrue when Penguin started in the 30s and colour banding told you what category of book you were looking at; orange for general fiction, green for crime and so on.

Covers have moved on a lot since then and their importance in attracting attention and sales is probably enormous.  I say probably since I haven't come across any quantified reporting and didn't manage to get that question in at the talk about how a cover for the paperback edition of Far Rockaway was achieved.

 It came from a competition at Edinburgh College of Art. The artist, Astrid Jaekel, produced a work from which the publisher's inhouse design team developed the final cover and endpapers.

Coincidentally on my way to the talk I walked along Rose Street where more of Astrid's work is on view decorating the windows of a rather drab building with a poem by George Mackay Brown.

There's an article and pictures here  and this is a little sample
 
Standing around for an hour in the kitchen of The Freemasons' Hall may not sound like a bundle of fun but that's site specific theatre for you.  And indeed it was a well nigh perfect setting for Pinter's The Dumb Waiter.

It's a little gem of a piece, puzzling and tension ridden and this production largely does it justice.

From my window I can see Arthur's Seat and from the mountain you can, according to the late 19th and early 20th century climber Caleb Cash see twenty of Scotland's peaks.  Unlike Munro and Corbett he hasn't lent his name to any category of mountain but thanks to what sounds to be a most interesting book we can now talk of the Arthurs which is how the author of Caleb's List, Kellan MacInnes, has christened them. His book is part guide book to the twenty mountains, part biography of Cash and part memoir of recovery from Aids.

It's now on Brian's list of must reads.