Latest news with #TheLady
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Lady: The decline and fall of the bible of female gentility
The Lady, Britain's longest running women's magazine, has formally announced that it has ceased publication. The magazine is famed for its etiquette advice and adverts for butlers, nannies and discreet liaisons with well-heeled 60-somethings. In a statement, the publishers confirmed recent media reports that the April edition of the magazine will be the last, but added the website with its jobs board and recruitment agency will continue. Here's a look back at its place in, and impact on, British culture over 140 years. The Lady was established in 1885 by Thomas Gibson Bowles, as a magazine for gentlewomen, a weekly guide to navigating the social minefield of well-to-do British life. Its very distinctive character was affectionately lampooned by PG Wodehouse. In his Jeeves stories, Bertie Wooster is briefly employed by a magazine called Milady's Boudoir, which was housed "in one of those rummy streets in the Covent Garden neighbourhood". The real Lady Magazine just happened to be in Bedford Street in Covent Garden. The Lady's fame owed much to its advice to women on the mysteries of the British class system. In 1936, for instance, its readers were given an update on the acceptability of novels. "The reading of fiction, not long ago thought deplorable by nearly all social workers, is now becoming almost a virtue," it noted. It's first edition began with an explanation that its objective was to cover "the whole field of womanly action". Almost all of it was written by a man, Thomas Bowles, using various aliases. It was not a huge success. Fortunes changed in 1894 when Thomas Bowles appointed his children's governess, Rita Shell, to be editor. Under Rita Shell's control, it became a successful weekly guide to women who found themselves in charge of both a household and a budget to outsource the daily drudgery to the lower classes. In December 1927, it cautioned young women "to become a good cook before you marry, darling. Then you will be competent to rebuke a staff of domestics or to dispense with one". Eighty years later, those concerns remained central. Editor Rachel Johnson was a firm believer in not being too familiar with staff, writing: "Never sit in the kitchen chatting to your nanny, it'll end in tears before bedtime." And even today there are still pages of classified adverts for livery workers and other assorted varieties of domestic help but the demand now is more for live-in carers for the elderly than butlers or nannies. That age profile has long been a concern. In 2009, Johnson was taken on to give the magazine a more youthful rebrand. She was asked to halve the average of the reader, which was, when she started, 78. A Channel 4 documentary revealed it was not universally welcomed, and Johnson's diaries later catalogued all the difficulties of aiming articles at younger readers amongst adverts for walk-in baths and absorbent underwear along with products to remove their associated odours. It was an eventful three years that made more than a few headlines. Nevertheless, while the readership did briefly increase, like most print magazines, sales have been in sharp decline in recent years. Once a weekly, it went from fortnightly to monthly. The last published figures in 2023 revealed it sold just under 18,000 copies an issue. And while the website will continue, it is the end of the line for a very distinctive bit of British culture. The current owner of the Lady, the great grandson of the founder, Thomas Bowles, Ben Budworth has spent 17 years trying to keep it afloat. He took over the running of the magazine in 2008 and over saw the controversial rebrand. His decision to sell off the Covent Garden offices and move production to a business park in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire was met with protest. The premises on Bedford Street were a seen by many of the staff as more than just another office, they helped define The Lady's character. No one had a direct phone line. Instead, calls all went through a telephonist. One former editor said work would stop at 2pm to listen to the Archers, and again at 3:30pm for tea. Johnson said the wall safe was where the tins of custard creams were stored. One particular perk was her own peach-coloured WC. Each day she would be handed two freshly laundered towels. The building was a reminder of its long history and the magazine's many contributors, among them Lewis Carroll, Nancy Mitford and Stella Gibbons, who while giving the impression of being hard at work wrote Cold Comfort Farm in the magazine's offices. However, heritage does not pay bills. Problems with a tax demand made headlines in 2024 and suggested the move to Hertfordshire had not solved the financial woes. The problem of the shrinking and ageing readership was never going away. Even the word lady has shifted over the years from being an aspiration to a term widely regarded as demeaning and disparaging. And while there are older magazines, such as The People's Friend (which did not begin as a magazine aimed specifically at women) and the American Harper's Bazaar which absorbed the even older British stalwart Queen, the Lady has a good claim on being the UK's oldest surviving women's magazine. However, 140 years on, a magazine that once billed itself as an indispensable guide to society has found that society has moved on.
BBC News
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Lady: The decline and fall of the bible of female gentility
The Lady, Britain's longest running women's magazine, has formally announced that it has ceased magazine is famed for its etiquette advice and adverts for butlers, nannies and discreet liaisons with well-heeled a statement, the publishers confirmed recent media reports that the April edition of the magazine will be the last, but added the website with its jobs board and recruitment agency will a look back at its place in, and impact on, British culture over 140 years. The 'whole field of womanly action' The Lady was established in 1885 by Thomas Gibson Bowles, as a magazine for gentlewomen, a weekly guide to navigating the social minefield of well-to-do British life. Its very distinctive character was affectionately lampooned by PG Wodehouse. In his Jeeves stories, Bertie Wooster is briefly employed by a magazine called Milady's Boudoir, which was housed "in one of those rummy streets in the Covent Garden neighbourhood".The real Lady Magazine just happened to be in Bedford Street in Covent Lady's fame owed much to its advice to women on the mysteries of the British class system. In 1936, for instance, its readers were given an update on the acceptability of novels."The reading of fiction, not long ago thought deplorable by nearly all social workers, is now becoming almost a virtue," it first edition began with an explanation that its objective was to cover "the whole field of womanly action".Almost all of it was written by a man, Thomas Bowles, using various aliases. It was not a huge success. Fortunes changed in 1894 when Thomas Bowles appointed his children's governess, Rita Shell, to be editor. 'How to sack a servant' Under Rita Shell's control, it became a successful weekly guide to women who found themselves in charge of both a household and a budget to outsource the daily drudgery to the lower classes. In December 1927, it cautioned young women "to become a good cook before you marry, darling. Then you will be competent to rebuke a staff of domestics or to dispense with one".Eighty years later, those concerns remained central. Editor Rachel Johnson was a firm believer in not being too familiar with staff, writing: "Never sit in the kitchen chatting to your nanny, it'll end in tears before bedtime."And even today there are still pages of classified adverts for livery workers and other assorted varieties of domestic help but the demand now is more for live-in carers for the elderly than butlers or nannies. Rebranding The Lady That age profile has long been a concern. In 2009, Johnson was taken on to give the magazine a more youthful rebrand. She was asked to halve the average of the reader, which was, when she started, 78.A Channel 4 documentary revealed it was not universally welcomed, and Johnson's diaries later catalogued all the difficulties of aiming articles at younger readers amongst adverts for walk-in baths and absorbent underwear along with products to remove their associated odours. It was an eventful three years that made more than a few while the readership did briefly increase, like most print magazines, sales have been in sharp decline in recent years. Once a weekly, it went from fortnightly to monthly. The last published figures in 2023 revealed it sold just under 18,000 copies an issue. Custard creams in the safe And while the website will continue, it is the end of the line for a very distinctive bit of British culture. The current owner of the Lady, the great grandson of the founder, Thomas Bowles, Ben Budworth has spent 17 years trying to keep it afloat. He took over the running of the magazine in 2008 and over saw the controversial rebrand. His decision to sell off the Covent Garden offices and move production to a business park in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire was met with protest. The premises on Bedford Street were a seen by many of the staff as more than just another office, they helped define The Lady's character. No one had a direct phone line. Instead, calls all went through a telephonist. One former editor said work would stop at 2pm to listen to the Archers, and again at 3:30pm for tea. Johnson said the wall safe was where the tins of custard creams were stored. One particular perk was her own peach-coloured WC. Each day she would be handed two freshly laundered towels. The building was a reminder of its long history and the magazine's many contributors, among them Lewis Carroll, Nancy Mitford and Stella Gibbons, who while giving the impression of being hard at work wrote Cold Comfort Farm in the magazine's offices. The L word However, heritage does not pay bills. Problems with a tax demand made headlines in 2024 and suggested the move to Hertfordshire had not solved the financial woes. The problem of the shrinking and ageing readership was never going away. Even the word lady has shifted over the years from being an aspiration to a term widely regarded as demeaning and disparaging. And while there are older magazines, such as The People's Friend (which did not begin as a magazine aimed specifically at women) and the American Harper's Bazaar which absorbed the even older British stalwart Queen, the Lady has a good claim on being the UK's oldest surviving women's magazine. However, 140 years on, a magazine that once billed itself as an indispensable guide to society has found that society has moved on.
The Guardian
06-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Women's magazines still thriving despite closure of The Lady, the ‘journal for gentlewomen'
It launched in 1885 as a 'journal for gentlewomen', a place where classified advertisements always attracted the right calibre of domestic staff: one who was savvy enough to buy and read The Lady. Today, the classified ads for housekeepers and butlers remain, accompanied in the April edition by horoscopes, puzzles, a column praising nightingales, a recipe for grapefruit creams and an article on how to help dogs enjoy road trips. But not for much longer. Despite claiming to have a 'robust' readership of 11,000 'affluent' subscribers, The Lady – one of Britain's longest-running magazines – is expected to close imminently after the Times and Daily Mail reported that it was going into liquidation. Far from heralding the end of women's magazines, however, publishing experts believe the demise of The Lady after 140 years actually highlights the remarkable success of print titles that continue to attract female readers in a digital age. 'In today's world, you need to address your niche – and the problem for The Lady is that their niche evaporated,' said Jeremy Leslie, founder of magCulture, which stocks more than 700 magazines at its London shop. 'We have plenty of examples here which are specialist, have a loyal readership and encourage the belief that there's a very bright future for magazines.' During its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century, The Lady was a classic example of a beautiful magazine with a clear-cut community of readers, he said – rather like the women's magazine The Gentlewoman today. 'The Gentlewoman is the perfect foil to a magazine like The Lady,' he said. 'The name implies that it's perhaps part of the same milieu as The Lady once was. But it couldn't be more different. Their readers are younger, self-motivated, successful women who enjoy fashion while also having a serious career.' Penny Martin, editor in chief of The Gentlewoman, said: 'I'm sorry to see any women's title go. At the same time, I don't know any woman who would want to be addressed as a 'lady'.' The Gentlewoman, which has a circulation of 90,000 copies per issue, does not see its readers as consumers who fall into a particular lifestyle category or class, Martin said, but as people who share a 'mutual interest in the same subjects and a love of quality journalism and print culture'. She added: 'I think publications that continue to deliver that magazine craft will continue to thrive.' The first periodicals marketed at female readers were published in the 1690s, but it wasn't until the 1770s that they began to resemble modern women's magazines, according to University of York professor of English Jennie Batchelor. 'That's when you can have a high-calorie recipe on one page and an article on how to keep yourself looking gorgeous on the next.' The readership of women's magazines, which has always included men, greatly expanded during the 18th and 19th centuries as women became more literate, she said. 'Magazines played a hugely important role in giving women access to information and knowledge they couldn't get in other forms.' Female writers managed to make a name for themselves in women's magazines, before journalism was considered a viable profession for women. By the 1880s, editors were vying for readers in an 'incredibly overpopulated, really competitive' marketplace. 'One of the ways they succeed is by specialising and finding their readers – and that could be by special interest, like gardening or literary fiction, or it could be along class lines,' Batchelor said. Just as The Lady once did, new women's magazines thrive today when they can speak to a 'really quite specific' target market about their interests and ideas in a 'very authentic way that nobody else can', said Steven Watson, director of Stack, a magazine subscription service that surprises readers with a different independent title each month. The best magazines make readers feel part of a community of people who share the same worldview, enabling their publishers to charge higher prices and still retain a loyal subscriber base, said Watson. Mother Tongue, a biannual print magazine which interrogates and celebrates modern motherhood, charges £20 per issue. Worms, a female-led literary magazine dedicated to amplifying marginalised voices, charges £17.50. By contrast, a subscription to the monthly Stylist magazine, the second most popular women's magazine in the UK after Good Housekeeping, costs £5.75 a month. 'When your audience can see that you care about the things she cares about, and you're using your platform to do something about that, it really makes sense why you exist in her life,' said Stylist editor-at-large Alix Walker. The title recently ran a campaign to improve support for women who suffer miscarriage and baby loss. 'There's so much content coming at all of us today, you've got to fight for your bit of her attention.' Walker said that knowing your reader is crucial to a magazine's survival. 'As soon as you lose sight of who she is, you lose her.' The journalist and author Rachel Johnson, a former editor of The Lady from 2009 to the end of 2011, said last week that she had tried – and failed – to halve the average age of the magazine's readers, which was 78 when she started her tenure. 'It's very hard to keep reinventing something, endlessly, to adapt,' Leslie said. 'In the case of The Lady, perhaps the surprise is that it's managed to last this long.'
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
As The Lady dies we must fight more than ever to cling on to our Britishness
It was that rare publication read both upstairs and downstairs. A magazine founded in 1885 that combined practical features with advertisements for staff, and that was the longest running women's magazine in the country. Until now. This April's edition will be its last. But unlike Just Stop Oil, The Lady is no virile serpent's head. Its death means exactly that: a little piece of old, traditional Britain dead and buried. And its demise makes me feel a little mournful. Although it's like that feeling one gets when a pub or village shop shuts. You wonder why it closed then realise that one of the reasons was that you never actually went there. But then I can offer an excuse that I'm not a lady, nor one of those kinds of ladies, and I've not had enough cause to either find myself frequently advertising for household staff nor, having made an early decision to scribble rather than buttle, seeking relevant work. Yet the magazine's demise is sad because it represents another brick eroded, then slipping out and falling to the ground, smashed to dust, from the edifice that was once our great nation. And The Lady was a proper magazine. It had its own building in the middle of London, at number 39/40 Bedford Street in Covent Garden – although it had its heart ripped out when, in 2019, it became physically not a building but a bunch of desks at the Kinetic Centre in Borehamwood. A phenomenon mirroring the state of its advertising and editorial: just as the nouveau pauvre dowager duchess finds herself with her stately home flogged and her staff let go, she downsizes to a flat in London's Dolphin Square with nothing but a weekly cleaner who can't speak English. The Lady had battled a long-term falling readership and more recently a catastrophic tax bill and a slide in popularity that not even the appointment of Rachel Johnson to the editor's chair in 2009 could arrest. A salutary lesson perhaps that if you want to protect either your magazine or your country from oblivion, a Johnson at the helm is no guarantee of success. The Lady's first issue, published on Thursday February 19 1885, priced at sixpence and with the tagline of 'A Journal for Gentlewomen', carried advertisements for linen and silk, 'iced savoy moulds', 'fashionable bonnets', the services of 'velveteers', as well as sheet music for 'new dances' and 'songs for ladies voices'. Its final issue, domestic ads for cooks and chauffeurs aside, features a short story on a granny's 90th birthday and a recipe by Tom Parker Bowles for Gugelhupf; a fruity cake cooked for a dinner given by Queen Victoria at Windsor, on May 14 1874 for His Imperial Majesty, Tsar Alexander II of Russia. All such little British gems are now discarded like a crumb of that cake. I'm thinking of the likes of the visiting GP; he with his doctor's bag and stethoscope who actually came to your actual house. Or the vocational, charming and incorruptible Conservative member of Parliament, unlike today's rasping and bitter, power-hungry lunatics. Or country sports like shooting and stalking or hunting: once a natural extension of the landscape, as normal and unobtrusive a human endeavour as dry-stone walling, but now politicised and hated. Or fishing, which was once about relaxing by the idyllic banks of a river with maybe the prospect of taking a fish home for dinner, now a televised sport for bores made utterly pointless by 'catch and release'. Or being able to sit somewhere for a few hours and read a book without a small computer by your side buzzing every few minutes with demands and awful news from the outside world. Or a world where a pub offered only wine, ale or spirits and the only fizzy drink was a tonic for your gin and there was no such thing as 'non-alc' (unless that referred to some rare person who wasn't, like most people, a happily functioning alcoholic). Trinity College London published a survey this week of British polite-isms, those refined phrases that actually conceal awkwardness or, indeed, seething resentment. The top 10 includes: 'Ooh, could I just squeeze past you?' (Please move out of my way), 'Sounds fun, I'll let you know' (I'm not coming) and 'No rush' (I need it now). These phrases are one of the few great British things we have left. And I'm reminded of my grandfather Sacheverell who would often say to visitors: 'Will you come back and visit me again before too long,' within about five minutes of their arrival and we all knew what he actually meant. So as The Lady dies we must battle to cling on to what is left of our Britishness. And if that's not a butler, it's a polite-ism. Use them or we'll lose them. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
05-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
As The Lady dies we must fight more than ever to cling on to our Britishness
It was that rare publication read both upstairs and downstairs. A magazine founded in 1885 that combined practical features with advertisements for staff, and that was the longest running women's magazine in the country. Until now. This April's edition will be its last. But unlike Just Stop Oil, The Lady is no virile serpent's head. Its death means exactly that: a little piece of old, traditional Britain dead and buried. And its demise makes me feel a little mournful. Although it's like that feeling one gets when a pub or village shop shuts. You wonder why it closed then realise that one of the reasons was that you never actually went there. But then I can offer an excuse that I'm not a lady, nor one of those kinds of ladies, and I've not had enough cause to either find myself frequently advertising for household staff nor, having made an early decision to scribble rather than buttle, seeking relevant work. Yet the magazine's demise is sad because it represents another brick eroded, then slipping out and falling to the ground, smashed to dust, from the edifice that was once our great nation. And The Lady was a proper magazine. It had its own building in the middle of London, at number 39/40 Bedford Street in Covent Garden – although it had its heart ripped out when, in 2019, it became physically not a building but a bunch of desks at the Kinetic Centre in Borehamwood. A phenomenon mirroring the state of its advertising and editorial: just as the nouveau pauvre dowager duchess finds herself with her stately home flogged and her staff let go, she downsizes to a flat in London's Dolphin Square with nothing but a weekly cleaner who can't speak English. The Lady had battled a long-term falling readership and more recently a catastrophic tax bill and a slide in popularity that not even the appointment of Rachel Johnson to the editor's chair in 2009 could arrest. A salutary lesson perhaps that if you want to protect either your magazine or your country from oblivion, a Johnson at the helm is no guarantee of success. The Lady 's first issue, published on Thursday February 19 1885, priced at sixpence and with the tagline of 'A Journal for Gentlewomen', carried advertisements for linen and silk, 'iced savoy moulds', 'fashionable bonnets', the services of 'velveteers', as well as sheet music for 'new dances' and 'songs for ladies voices'. Its final issue, domestic ads for cooks and chauffeurs aside, features a short story on a granny's 90th birthday and a recipe by Tom Parker Bowles for Gugelhupf; a fruity cake cooked for a dinner given by Queen Victoria at Windsor, on May 14 1874 for His Imperial Majesty, Tsar Alexander II of Russia. All such little British gems are now discarded like a crumb of that cake. I'm thinking of the likes of the visiting GP; he with his doctor's bag and stethoscope who actually came to your actual house. Or the vocational, charming and incorruptible Conservative member of Parliament, unlike today's rasping and bitter, power-hungry lunatics. Or country sports like shooting and stalking or hunting: once a natural extension of the landscape, as normal and unobtrusive a human endeavour as dry-stone walling, but now politicised and hated. Or fishing, which was once about relaxing by the idyllic banks of a river with maybe the prospect of taking a fish home for dinner, now a televised sport for bores made utterly pointless by 'catch and release'. Or being able to sit somewhere for a few hours and read a book without a small computer by your side buzzing every few minutes with demands and awful news from the outside world. Or a world where a pub offered only wine, ale or spirits and the only fizzy drink was a tonic for your gin and there was no such thing as ' non-alc ' (unless that referred to some rare person who wasn't, like most people, a happily functioning alcoholic). Trinity College London published a survey this week of British polite-isms, those refined phrases that actually conceal awkwardness or, indeed, seething resentment. The top 10 includes: 'Ooh, could I just squeeze past you?' (P lease move out of my way), 'Sounds fun, I'll let you know' (I'm not coming) and 'No rush' (I need it now). These phrases are one of the few great British things we have left. And I'm reminded of my grandfather Sacheverell who would often say to visitors: 'Will you come back and visit me again before too long,' within about five minutes of their arrival and we all knew what he actually meant. So as The Lady
