The London Magazine has never been among my own favourite reading it has a rather self consciously metropolitan tone, and predominantly Swinging Sixties at that. It is, however, one of the few recent literary magazines in English to last over a long span and to maintain genuine standards of literacy and quality it has and keeps a distinctive, consistent character, tone and layout, and it takes a wide and informed view of the arts (some of its articles and features on painting and cinema over the years have been particularly good).
As Alan Ross points out in his foreword to this issue, none of the influential literary reviews of this century, including Horizon, New Writing and Encounter, have lasted anything like as long, and he also points out its record in publishing avant garde poets, among them Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin, Derek Walcott, etc. This number includes poems by Alan Brownjohn, Anthony Thwaite, and John Fuller a substantial memoir portrait of Jean Stafford by Roy Watkins, and a striking war story by the late James Han Icy, entitled The German Prisoner, which was written in the 1930s and early copies of which were destroyed by the police. There are also a large section on 20th century photography, numerous book reviews, and drawings by the Anglo American painter R.B. Kitaj. It is rather a pity that while the magazine itself is tastefully laid out and well printed, the quality of its black and white photographs should be often fuzzy and inferior though the Kitaj drawings seem to be well enough served.