Radical, tolerant, enquiring, pro-consumer, lid-off, helpful. It’ll be no-holds-barred, without being noisy. It should have bite without malice. Wave-of-the-future type stuff, when possible. Whiff of scandal… Serious. Non-expert. Funny.”
In early 1964, this was future editor Michael Davie’s vision for the planned Observer Magazine. The project was a long-ruminated riposte to the Sunday Times, which had launched its “Colour Section” in February 1962 with an in-your-face graphic cover of Jean Shrimpton wearing Mary Quant, photographed by David Bailey: your early 1960s cool bingo card almost filled before you had even turned the first page. It was a revolutionary break with the postwar era of newsprint rationing, when papers ran only two or three pictures a week.
So how would the Observer respond? I headed to the Kings Place Observer archive – a place I know well after two years on the regular “From the Observer archive” slot – to try to find out. In a box of testy typed memos about staffers’ expenses (“Does he need to take people to lunch on Mondays when facilities are available here?”), cover complaints (“The bodybuilding woman seems revolting to me”) and features suggestions probably better consigned to the dustbin of Observer Magazine history (“The dying art of stamp collecting”), I found a few clues.
In a February 1964 memo headed “SECRET”, editor David Astor set out some initial thoughts, the fruit of two years studying the competition. The way the new mag could distinguish itself from the Sunday Times, he thought, was by bringing a “political or social purpose” to its features and photography. It could, Astor argued, become “a vehicle for pursuing the paper’s interest in the kind of lives that people in Britain are living today”. That might span how to breach the gap left by the decline in religious belief, creating social cohesion, cures for urban loneliness or even “convenient designs for door handles”.
Put like that, the proposed colour supplement sounds a little… worthy? Thankfully Davie – then deputy editor of the Observer – was also turning his mind to how to make the planned new baby pop. In the eight-page memo, he explored how to harness the excitement around this new format and its technical and creative possibilities to make something truly new. Davie set out some key aims: the magazine should boost circulation, for a start. It should be helpful and informative; have a “bias towards the young” and “cater somewhat more for women than men”. It ought to include “one or two addiction-forming writers who appear every week” (the Sunday Times had not yet spotted the magic that regular columnists could add) and follow a formula: “News story. Features. Colour spread. Lighter features. End with a flourish.” All this would make the mag into an object “worth keeping for the week”.
This sounds more promising, but I found frustratingly little in the archive about the period from this early strategising until launch. Davie compiled a list of Things To Do Now, covering some basics: “Get some 20 or 30 ideas for colour spreads. Line up 10 good names for the early issues. Decide our rates of pay. Need a far better logo than ST.” In March, they hired – and swore to secrecy – photo-journalist Bryn Campbell as picture editor and Romek Marber as art director to look after the visuals, including that logo. Marber was the brilliant designer responsible for the cover format of Penguin books (the eponymous “Marber grid”) and designed stunning graphic covers for the Economist. His engagement letter reveals he was on a seriously chunky salary of £4,000 per annum (the average house price in 1964 was £3,360): a real financial commitment to getting the look of the magazine on point.
A flyer for advertisers produced later that year showed some of the other progress in getting a team and a product together (Marber apparently created a “promotional edition” to accompany it, which sadly I have not been able to locate). It promised a magazine that would be “specially attractive to the young and better-off”, and the ability to call on a stable of talents, including Katharine Whitehorn, Anthony Sampson and Shirley Conran.
After that there’s nothing at all until 5 September, when the eve of publication saw a flurry of congratulatory telegrams from Astor to various people involved – (“HOW PLEASANT IT WOULD BE IF WE COULD NOW ALL RELAX” read one, relatably). But what did the final magazine look like when readers took delivery on Sunday 6 September 1964 and how well had the team met their ambitious brief? To the 2024 eye, that first cover choice of pale, stale, male Mountbatten lacks the shock-of-the-new oomph of Shrimpton by Bailey (the second cover – a fabulously anarchic child’s drawing of a lion trailing a feature on young artists – has more instant appeal and Marber’s subsequent run of early covers are wonderful – all killer, no filler; he more than earned that £4,000 pay cheque). But for connoisseurs, the close-cropped photograph of Mountbatten on that first issue’s cover had real impact. It was “an intense and confrontational cover that would not be out of place on today’s newsstands,” according to Wayne Ford, Observer Colour Supplement creative director 1996–2002.
Inside, columnists who kicked things off were pretty much polar opposites. First to try to hit that “addiction forming” and youth-oriented brief was Caroline Glyn, then only 17, who wrote A Teenager’s Advice to Parents. Her column railed against parents who try to mould their children into “paperback editions” of themselves. “A new generation has new ideas and wants to express them,” she argued. Glyn was quite the character: a prodigy who was already a published author at 15, she became a nun aged 20, published nine novels and died at just 33, washing the convent floor.
On the next page, Robert Robinson complained rather fussily about people having the effrontery to call him by his first name. “If you are a hero, you will uncompromisingly address them as ‘Mr’ even as they are calling you ‘Fred’.” A motoring column endorsed the “current campaign against driving after drinking”; a reminder of how long ago 1964 actually is (drink-driving became illegal in 1967).
That cover interview was the first of a three-parter with Mountbatten, then 64, like the century. The first episode tackled the war years when he (reluctantly) took control of Combined Operations, the technologically ambitious force that coordinated the Normandy landings. Highlights include run-ins with an irascible Churchill and hiring the ape specialist Solly Zuckerman to join the team of scientists, which resulted in some confusion: “He had written a book called The Sex Life of Primates and we, ignorant fellows that we were, thought that primates meant archbishops.”
A picture spread on Goldfinger, the third Bond (“a new kind of film”), made attention-grabbing use of colour, starting with a nude, waist-up shot of a gold-painted Shirley Eaton. Art director Ken Adams described how he had spent his £100,000 budget constructing his own Fort Knox (the gold ingots were made of clay; the top layer aluminium “for Bond to heave at his enemies”), Bond’s gadget-packet Aston Martin and even a laser.
Over eight colour-saturated fashion pages, Hélène Gordon-Lazareff, French Elle’s arbiter of taste, gave her verdict on the new collections. There were, she wrote, “daring, but interesting décolletés” and “a lot of fur”. The pictures feature big bows at Dior and ostrich trim at Cardin. The main take-home was “the fantastic importance given to slacks”. Gordon-Lazareff conjured a near future when trousers might be more mainstream: “In a few years, women will be able to wear them for travelling… without looking either extravagant or eccentric.”
A photo essay on the beleaguered London Stock Exchange, shaken by a wave of scandal, captures an archaic world of bowler and top hats, “two or three thousand men in dark suits” and the post-trading floor scattered with paper slips. Dennis the Menace grimaced out of an analysis of the decline in kids’ comics, which had a twofold explanation: “Children are more sophisticated and… television meets most of their pictorial and violent needs.” The editor of Wham! thought comics were a useful “safety valve” for “the lusty, healthy child who shouts for independence”.
Clement Freud’s food column offered ways for a hostess not to “spend the entire evening among her pots and pans”. They included an artichoke dip featuring cheap butter and Weetabix, “plebeian pigeon” and the somewhat leftfield suggestion of fried Croque Monsieur strips, post-pudding.
My favourite feature, though, is Shirley Conran on DIY for girls. A double-page picture spread combining all the DIY kits and projects she made “in one frenzied afternoon” is a wonder of graphic, bright 60s design and Conran’s text is full of carefree fun. A friend, she relates, managed to DIY her own leopardskin coat from a rug and butchered a lamb for her new deep freeze, but came unstuck when she tried to make her flat open plan by knocking down a wall: “It happened to be structural.” Conran’s own projects for the article are more modest: a tray table, a burglar alarm, decorated plates and a deckchair. Her tips for sisters wanting to do it for themselves? “READ and KEEP to the printed instructions.” Also, ideally, have “someone to complete the job… when you get stuck or bored.”
The many ads conjure 1964 even more evocatively. War on Want advertised for donations (“Sight for the blind, food for the hungry, healing for the leper, home for the despairing: £15 provides a home for eight destitute Algerians”), but mostly it was the era of hi-tech consumer big brands. G Plan furnished with “flair!”, Crimplene promised convenience (“Wash it tonight – wear it tomorrow!”) and Bri-Nylon X-21 carpets new textures, exciting colours and hard wear. A Vogue Duramel bath offered “smooth glossy perfection”, much like the face you might get from Magic Secret’s “original and proven wrinkle-smoothing skin lotion”, available from Harrods.
Mod cons were very much in: a “fully automatic washing machine costs less than some twin tubs”; Hoover, £38.4.10 for the deluxe model, was “the cleaner that cares – deep down” and “More housewives choose a new Colston than any other dishwasher.” Best of all, there was the comfort revolution offered by central heating. “Husband dear! Where is the queen of your heart?” a Mobilheat Service ad asked, over a picture of a poor beleaguered housewife on her hands and knees, struggling to clean with lukewarm water. A rival went the opposite way with glamour: a full-colour pic of a woman in a swimsuit on a beach and the alluring promise: “For a lot less than the cost of a fortnight’s foreign sunshine, you could buy effortless Potterton heating.” A third central-heating ad reads eerily now, with its “Is Britain getting warmer? YES!” (the reason back in 1964: “So many of us can afford High Speed Gas central heating”).
Then there’s booze and fags. There are three cigarette ads and one jaw-droppingly sexist ad for Black & White whisky reminiscent of Don Draper on one of his less-inspired flights of fantasy: “His is a world of beautiful things. Cars, yachts, girls. But only one woman. Like only one whisky.”
How was the new magazine received? A few letters to the editor made it into the archive. A journalist, Wallace Jackson, wrote that he found it “utterly and absolutely splendid”. Someone wrote, sportingly, from the Times with congratulations, noting the first issue should “give your competitors some food for thought”. Best of all is a highly detailed letter to David Astor from one Mrs Megan Wintle of New Cross, London, offering “congratulations on a fine effort”, which had allowed her to enjoyably waste much of the day. Mrs Wintle listed what she liked (the Goldfinger pictures, which were “superb”; and Clement Freud), but also what she didn’t. Those included Caroline Glyn’s “juvenilities” (“no more, please”) and the Mountbatten cover story (boring: “I am 26 years old and was seven when the war ended and since then I’ve never stopped hearing about it in print”). David Astor (I think) responded with exquisite noncommittal politeness: “Thank you very much for your most encouraging letter… I have noted your adverse comments also and will think about them.”
Special thanks to Stephen Pritchard, John Nuttall-Smith, Sue Arnold, Bob Low, David Mansell and Neil Libbert
