Tales from the world of magazines

The great swindler Horatio Bottomley and John Bull magazine It took 30 years to expose one of the biggest fraudsters in history who used the pages of both the Financial Times and John Bull magazine to promote his money-making schemes.

Several periodicals have used the title John Bull Arthur William À Beckett brought out his John Bull in 1903 after resigning as deputy editor of Punch.

Time Out perfected the city listings magazine How London's weekly listings magazine Time Out became a global force and saw off Virgin's Richard Branson.

Women in the First World War as seen in magazines War affected all aspects of women's lives, from war-worker fashions to nursing on the front lines and fighting in Serbia.

Digital magazines: news and a history timeline
Digital magazines weren’t invented for Apple's iPad, publishers have been trying to create such a medium for decades – and there are still many systems vying for leadership ...

Colour in Victorian magazines
Coloured magazines in Britain date back to 1855, but whereas the Victorians pioneered many aspects of the periodicals industry, they were slow to expand the use of colour ...

Madonna on Vogue magazine front covers
Vogue editor Anna Wintour was once told that a Madonna front cover would 'never sell' – in fact, newsstand sales rose 40% ...

The History of Men's Magazines
The launch of Loaded is the stuff of legend. It revolutionised magazines – and Dennis took 'lads' mags' to the US with Maxim. ...

News magazines: 'I see a whale'
For Oz editor and Maxim founder Felix Dennis, What Car? was the original whale, but a news weekly really paid off …

Manipulating photographs: secrets of the retouchers
More hair, smaller boobs, longer legs – photographs have beeen retouched and manipulated for a century …

Robert Maxwell's European
Robert Maxwell proved to be a big con-man, but before falling off a yacht, he tried to launch a pan-European paper …

Celebrity and the Press
One Saturday, Jonathan Ross came on Russell Brand's radio show to plug his book. They played a prank. The BBC received 2 complaints. Nothing was heard for a week. Then all hell broke loose ...

Celebrity Price War
The first week of May 2004 saw the celebrity-based weeklies fighting for market share, with the main weapon being price.

Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd played Liverpool in 1974 on their Wish You Were Here tour. The programme looked like a comic ...

Timeline – A history of magazines
Read about developments in technology, distribution and corporate strategy as well as the influence of periodicals on culture.

Magazine relaunches
For publishers, autumn is a time for revamps, redesigns and relaunches as magazines enter the big season for sales and advertising.

Not Private Eye and dodgy Maxwell
Rumours swirled around Robert Maxwell but, for most of the Press, he was a no-go zone. Private Eye mocked 'The Bouncing Czech' and faced one of the most vicious libel cases.

Women’s weeklies: turned upside down since the 1980s
The traditional women's weeklies – based on the home and family – were shaken up in 1987 by German publishers. They hardly had time to draw breath when celebrities moved in ...

Car magazines 1993: a watershed
Top Gear became a bestseller for BBC/Redwood but Carweek lost Emap a fortune. How did it happen?

Emap launches Car Week
In July 1993, the advertising industry weekly Campaign reported that McCann-Erickson had been appointed to run a £3 million campaign for Carweek, Emap's biggest launch yet.

Life on She in the 1980s
She stood out from the crowd. It was unconventional, risqué, slightly mad and a lot of fun to work for and read. An Economist journalist recalls his time on the magazine in the 1980s.

Other people's stories
Guardian energy editor Terry Macalister went to an exhibition and found himself looking at his younger self on the cover of a punk fanzine from 35 years earlier.