Google has objected to one or more of the images on a page devoted to monthly women’s magazines. This page has been up for more than 10 years. Google keeps doing this and finding a new page every month to stop serving its adverts on. Each time I just take the Google ads code down and replace it with one of my direct advertisers or Amazon.
Its bots send messages saying: ‘Adult: Sexual content’ and ‘Some advertisers are choosing not to advertise on your page because of issues relating to some of your content.’
What could this be? A 110-pixel wide magazine cover with Cate Blanchett in a red dress? Does someone not like Kylie Minogue? Or Michael Caine? Even with all their clothes on?
Such arbitrary censorship reminds me of the story told by Nobel Prize winner Sir Harry Kroto in the mid-1990s. He said that his emails were being blocked because of their sexual content. What was that? His email address ended @sussex.ac.uk – it had ‘sex’ in the address!
December 1907 cover of Royal – a milestone in the history of periodical production
This, the last of 12 covers in a magazine version of The Twelve Days of Christmas, is a milestone in the history of periodical production. It is the December 1907 cover of Royal. What marks it out as special is that it is the first cover I’ve seen that looks as if it was printed from a colour photograph.
There were lots of examples of magazines colouring black-and-white photographs, but these usually used just a second process colour with the black, such as on Quiver and The Million. Unfortunately, this copy of Royal is a rather grubby example and there is a fair bit of type show-through from the re
verse side, but this would have been a spectacular image on the bookstands, the like of which would not become common for another 30 years.
The printing of photographs in magazines had only started in 1885; and the application of colour to illustrations, at first from wooden blocks, dated back to 1855. True photographic colour separations and printing did not materialise until the mid-1930s.
So this is a very early and very skilled example of colour cover printing using a photograph. It gives a very punchy result, but was not achieved easily. It was probably printed using two-colour process engraving (red and blue) with additional solids for red, blue and yellow. Some ink squash at edges of the red working suggests this is relief-printed. The design style with the white background is familiar to us today from Dorling Kindersley book covers of the 1980s.
The ‘string’ by which the teddy is holding up the Japanese doll is printed tone using the warm red used for the post box and sock with some yellow.
Detail from the cover showing the letterpress dots on the box of crayons and part of the blue R in Royal
The Royal was published by C. Arthur Pearson, whose offices were in Henrietta Street in London’s Covent Garden. It was printed by Horace Cox, at Bream’s Buildings, which is a street between Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane, just north of Fleet Street in London.
For more Christmas covers, take a look at the selection from 2019.
Hair singer Marsh Hunt on the 1968 Christmas cover of Queen magazine
The Queen dated back to the pioneering days of Mr and Mrs Beaton as a society weekly, but was reinvented for the Swinging Sixties by Jocelyn Stevens, who bought the magazine for himself on inheriting a fortune at his 25th birthday. He later turned into a toothy Fleet Street management bully (hence his Private Eye nickname, Piranha Teeth).
The American model and singer Marsha Hunt is on this 1968 cover, complete with Christmas-tree-style decorations. Her breakthrough was in the West End production of the seminal rock musical Hair, in September that year. She brought the afro into fashion – just like it is now – with Justin De Villeneuve’s iconic silhouette photograph of Hunt used for the show’s publicity. That led to a nude picture taken by Patrick Lichfield for US Vogue and the be-baubled Queen cover. Hunt was the muse for Mick Jagger’s song ‘Brown Sugar’ and mother of his first child.
This is the penultimate of 12 Christmas covers in a magazine version of ye olde English counting song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
‘Oh No! It’s the Millennium Bug!’ is the plaintiff cry from Father Christmas as his sledge plunges earthwards towards London’s Millennium Dome. That was cartoonist Nick Newman’s take for Private Eye on the software peril that the computer industry feared could bring the world to a halt at the start of 2000.
It may seem ridiculous now, but the worry was that there was a lot of software around that had not been written ever expecting to reach the end of the century, and so it was expecting all dates to begin with the numerals 19. Millions were spent searching for the bug, but in the end the catastrophe never came to pass.
Notice that the issue covers the two week-period over Christmas and New Year – a common strategy for weeklies, including Radio Times, the Economist and the Spectator.
This 1945 issue of Woman promised Christmas Specials! But this was just six months after the defeat of Hitler, so it was a thin issue – paper rationing was still in place until 1952. Among the special features were a romantic fortune-telling game and the ‘loveliest jumper in colour contrast’. Top of the bill though – as was typical in women’s weeklies for a century – was fiction, in this case by Mary Howard and Dorothy Black, who between them wrote more than 150 romantic novels spanning most of the twentieth century. Alongside writers such as Ida Cook (Mary Burchell), they were stalwarts of the Mills & Boon style of fiction.
Black, writing under what was her maiden name, worked as a journalist before becoming a novelist in 1916. She was a vice-president of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. The association gave its annual award to Howard three times between 1960, its founding year, and 1980.
This is the ninth of 12 Christmas covers in a magazine version of ye olde English counting song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
A coloured cover for the 1903 Christmas double issue of The Strand
Most British magazines were slow to introduce colour covers, but many made an exception at Christmas. The Strand followed the trend – set by the Illustrated London News in 1855 – with a 1903 double issue and a coloured version of George Charles Haité’s iconic rendering looking eastwards along the famous street from the bottom of Southampton Street. (The first version was from the bottom of Burleigh Street, but this was updated by just changing the street sign when the George Newnes office moved a couple of streets farther west.)
The ‘grand Christmas double number’ also doubled the price to a shilling (12 pennies).
A&F Pears, the soap maker, tended to take the back covers for these issues. For the Christmas 1904 issue of the Strand, it used the famous ‘Bubbles’ painting, which had first been published as an advert almost 20 years before.
‘Bubbles’ on the back cover of The Strand in 1904
This is the eighth of 12 Christmas covers in a magazine version of ye olde English counting song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Pictorial Comedy was a monthly magazine of ‘stories, humorous pictures, varied reading’. Each issue typically ran to 32 pages plus the covers. At a shilling a copy, it was expensive. The Strand, for example, was sixpence – half the price – as was the society weekly the Queen.
Pictorial Comedy aimed to depict ‘the humorous phases of life’ through the eyes of eminent artists. Prominent among its roster was Charles Dana Gibson, an American artist renowned for portraying beautiful women. Its pages were slightly larger than A4, and many images were printed full-page, or across a spread, so many will have been mounted and framed.
The printer and publisher was James Henderson at Red Lion House in Red Lion Court, just off London’s Fleet Street.
The striped effect visible on the cover is caused by the impression of the letterpress type on the reverse of the page coming through.
This is the seventh of 12 Christmas covers in a magazine version of ye olde English counting song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Our Bubble, a children’s magazine edited by Dr Barnardo
The title of this children’s weekly – Our Bubble – has a certain resonance these days. Back in 1894, though, soap bubbles were reminiscent of childhood, as exemplified by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Millais’s ‘A Child’s World’. Pears had added a bar of soap to that 1886 painting to turn it into one of the world’s most recognisable advertising images, ‘Bubbles’.
Our Bubble was edited by Dr Barnardo and was one of several publications he published between 1874 and 1900 to raise funds for his children’s homes and other charitable activities. These included the Children’s Treasury, Our Darlings, and then Our Bubble: Coloured Pictures for Boys and Girls.
Four weekly issues, costing a penny each, were collated with a supplement each month and sold for sixpence. A chromolithograph was added to the Christmas part. The monthly parts were then gathered as an annual volume entitled Our Bubbles.
Thomas Barnardo opened his first home in 1870 and by the time he died in 1905 had helped almost 100,000 children.
In the late Victorian era, children’s magazine’s were far more likely to use colour than their adult counterparts. It was seen as a big factor in appealing to youngsters. Even the biggest-selling mainstream titles such as the Illustrated London News reserved colour for Christmas and other special occasions. This stayed the case in Britain pretty much until the 1930s, when a combination of colour covers and some pages inside using photogravure printing became common.
This is the sixth of 12 Christmas covers in a magazine version of ye olde English counting song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
Nova set out to break the mould of monthly women’s magazines and many of its covers were built on hard-hitting ideas with words and images to match. Even at Christmas, the lines on this 1966 cover – ‘Still no room at the inn?’ – remind the reader that all is not right with the world. Edgy cover lines on other issues included: ‘They consent in private’; ‘Fifty years after the vote, only the chains have changed’; ‘Why can’t they stay at home?’; and ‘We know she fell – but did TV give her a push’. That fourth cover line was above a Peter Blake painting of the 11-year-old Mary Bell, who had killed two babies; I leave you to figure out the topics behind the other three.
This is the fifth of 12 Christmas covers in a magazine version of ye olde English counting song The Twelve Days of Christmas.
A blue paisley pattern jacket and yellow trousers provide a colourful outfit for this skater as she inscribes the magazine’s name on the ice. The artist isn’t credited but Ideas, a general weekly magazine, was printed and published by E Hulton & Co in Withy Grove, Manchester. Sir Edward Hulton had built up the company, which was based on newspapers and magazines founded by his father, also Edward Hulton. These included the Daily Sketch. However, he had sold the company earlier in the year.
His son, the third Edward Hulton, bought Farmer’s Weekly in 1937 and used it as the foundation for Hulton Press, buying up Stefan Lorant’s Lilliput and launching Picture Post. After the Second World War, Hulton’s Eagle revolutionised the comics sector. With the demise of Picture Post in 1957 and contraction in the magazine industry, Hulton sold off his titles and was himself knighted.
A Heartfield montage on the cover of Picture Post dated 9 September 1939
Billy Fury? James Dean?
Acorn User magazine cover from December 1982. This issue would have been edited from the Bedford Square offices
Madonna on the front cover of Cosmopolitan magazine in the US for May 1990
Woman’s Own liked clean cover designs in the 1930s with few cover lines – but notice Ursula Bloom promoted her for a special article (30 July 1938)
Front cover title from Woman’s Own from 19 May 1955
Racy illustration by Oldham for the weekly magazine Woman
FHM June 2004. But what’s happened to the nipples on Abi Titmuss?
A whacky contrast in all senses of the word from the previous week
53 Bedford Square in London’s Bloomsbury. This Georgian building is up for sale at £12 million
Madonna rides again on the cover of Cosmopolitan with its May 2015 issue
The Kitchener poster shown in the third part of the Great War partwork in 1933
Popular Flying in 1934 when it was edited by Biggles creator WE Johns
Evil victim: Diana Rigg on the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine, 28 February 1982
Peter Hack-Brookes cover for Oz from September 1971 – a copy from a US magazine cover by Peter Driben from 1949
Chilprufe advert from Queen magazine in 1961
Mussolini writes for the right-wing Britannia magazine in 1927
Look, spring 2009
Girl Illustrated front cover with Dr Who girl Katy Manning and a Dalek
One of Miss Fish’s drawings of Eve, from the popular Tatler column
Last issue of Rupert Murdoch’s Today newspaper (17 November 1995)
Leader magazine led the world in putting Marilyn Monroe on its cover in April 1946
Strand magazine front cover from March 1891 by George Charles Haité
Je Suis Charlie – Charlie Hebdo’s website after the murderous attack on its Paris office
This cat with its amazing, lip-licking tongue is from a Whiskas advert of 1964
The return of the Daleks to Dr Who in 2005 sparked this gatefold cover for the Radio Times
The first Daleks cover for Radio Times in November 1964
Home Chat cover from 19 September 1914 with a front cover story about supporting the Queen’s Guild, which had been set up as a way for women to back the war effort
Racy French weekly Vie Parisienne from 1926
Kate Greenaway painting called ‘Darby and Joan’ on Illustrated London News – or is this a pair of radical printers?
John Bull in 1917 – the magazine was used as a promotional tool for Horatio Bottomley’s financial schemes
Cover of BOAC’s inflight magazine Welcome Aboard in 1970
A colour cover for Crusoe magazine of January 1925
New Statesman 1993 jan 29 John Major Clare Latimer
Lilian Hocknell artwork revived for Christmas 2014 Vintage View from Woman’s Weekly magazine cover
Cute cover-up: Naomi Campbell on the cover of GQ in April 2000
A letterpress flyer for the latest serial in Pictorial Magazine – could this 1902 image have sparked Alfred Leete’s imagination?
Winnie the Pooh appeared exclusively in colour in six 1928 issues of Home Chat
Detail of Helena Christiansen’s face from the Vogue cover
Karl Marx as the Uncle Sam derivative of Kitchener
Germany’s leader, Kaiser Wilhelm, with his flamboyant moustache and military uniform, at the start of World War I. He is described as ‘The Ravager’
The first Sunday Times colour section from 4 February 1962 (though the cover is not dated)
Vivian Blaine from the London stage adaption of the musical Guys and Dolls on the cover of Picture Post in 1953
An in-your-face spread from Loaded in May 1995
John Gwynn’s poem ‘A Death Mask’ in the Strand magazine appears to have been inspired by a drowned woman in Paris
The first issue cover of John Bull from 1 April 1903
Margaret Banks drew this charmer for Home Chat magazine in 1938. Note the baby is wearing reins
This 1946 holiday season cover from John Bull forecasts a web fate for the slumbering gent
Ronald Searle’s cartoon glossary to printers’ jargon
Debbie Harry and Blondie on the first issue cover of Smash Hits from November 1978
Anna Wintour was told this Madonna cover would not sell
Town magazine and the`Girl in Red Water up to her Charlies’ cover from September 1965
This logo from the Daily Mail echoes the original masthead for Answers Magazine
Marion Jean Lyon in 1923
Woman’s Fair from January 1940 filled with content from the US, including a Jon Whitcomb cover illustration
Bovril advert of Hercules fighting a lion by Stanley Berkeley from Young Gentlewoman magazine of 1892
Blighty pin-up cover for the popular men’s weekly by MB Tompkins in 1958 (16 August)
Madonna cover from i-D dated March/April 1984
José Ferrer as Cyrano de Bergerac on this Everybody’s magazine cover from 10 October 1951. The design has a 3D effect, with the nose appearing to stand proud of the page
Hand-drawn title for Drawing magazine, February 1916
Marc Jacobs 2014 Playboy special issue in perspex box
Home Chat, a leading women’s popular weekly, from 14 May
Tom Browne’s drawing shoe incredible attention to detail; he could do so much with so little
The Observer Magazine cover shows Alexei Sayle as the Hitler diaries forger in the 1991 TV series Selling Hitler
‘Mother Christmas’ cover for Needlewoman magazine from December 1925
Kate Moss in Corinne Day photograph on cover of the Face in July 1990
A different look for the cover of Smash Hits, also in February 1984
Beautiful Britons glamour magazine first issue cover from November 1955
Marilyn Monroe on the cover of Blighty from 1956
This is the cover for the relaunch of Woman’s Own in 1937 as a colour weekly. Note this is a true self referential cover because the woman is holding a copy of the magazine she appears on!
Raphael Sabatini’s Captain Blood brought to visual life on the cover of Pearson’s Magazine (1930) by Joseph Greenup
Cover of Le Petit Journal of 25 June 1916
Opening of 5-page article on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey with sketches by Clive Arrowsmith in Town magazine
‘K of K’ – Kitchener of Khartoum – caricature by Will Scott on the cover of Drawing magazine in February 1916
The first issue cover for Carlos, an inflight magazine for Virgin in 2003
Eddie Hapgood, the England and Arsenal captain, on the cover of Weekly Illustrated in 1934 with his son, Tony
The pointing man from an advert in London Opinion magazine, 17 September 1910
Weekly Illustrated magazine pioneered photojournalism (3 March 1936)
Diana Rigg as The Avengers’ Mrs Peel on the cover of TV World in 1965
New Illustrated starts to change its name to Record Weekly in 1920 (January 17 issue)
HMS Queen Elizabeth super dreadnought by Harry Hudson Rodmell on the cover of New Illustrated magazine (18 October 1919)
Adrian Flowers took this Nova cover (July 1971)
The Penny Magazine shows itself being sold from what looks like a railway station stall in 1904
The glossy monthly Queen occupied the old Tit-Bits office in 1947