Queen (magazine)

Queen (originally "The Queen") magazine was a British society publication established in 1862 that also gave birth to the first daytime commercial pirate radio station serving London, England. In 1958 the magazine was sold to Jocelyn Stevens who dropped the prefix "The" and used it as his vehicle to represent the younger side of the British Establishment, sometimes referred to as the "Chelsea Set" under the editorial direction of Beatrix Miller. Stevens sold Queen in 1968 to the publisher of its rival U.K. publication Harper's Bazaar. From 1970 the new publication became known as Harper's & Queen until the name "Queen" was dropped from the masthead.

History

Queen magazine focused on British "high society" and the lives of socialites and the British aristocracy from 1862 onwards. In the late 1950s under the editorship of Beatrix Miller it was restyled to serve a younger hip readership that was defined by Miller in a style-sheet. According to Clement Freud who wrote for the magazine, Beatrix Miller's targeted reader had long hair, was named "Caroline", had left school at age 16, was not an intellectual, but she was the sort of person that one ended up in bed with.

When London, England became the focus of the Swinging 60s Jocelyn Stevens embraced models such as Mary Quant and embarked upon a project to reverse the U.K. Pilkington Report that denied any demand for commercial radio in Britain. Stevens helped to finance a pirate radio ship project that was also named "Caroline" with the initial intention of extending the targeted reader as the targeted listener. When Radio Caroline first went on the air (from a ship that was also renamed "Caroline"), it operated from the editorial offices of Queen magazine.

The Beatrix Miller style sheet for "Caroline" was given to contributing writers to the magazine because it gave authors an idea of who they were writing for. Miller left the magazine shortly after Radio Caroline went on the air and although the station changed its format when its original plan to reverse the effect of the Pilkington Report failed, the station did not change its name. Originally the radio station sounded similar to the output of the BBC but with some commercial advertising. The magazine retired the "Caroline" style sheet under the direction of a new editor who began to focus more upon its successful Society news that was written under the headline of "Jennifer's Diary". When the radio station moved from the Queen magazine offices, a new explanation of how and why the name "Caroline" came to be used by the station was offered to the public in order to divert attention away from its original source. By that time there did not seem to be any chance that the station would get a license and that the Labour Government then in power would seek to close it down as a "pirate radio" operation.

The history of the magazine and the history of the pirate radio station under the influence of Jocelyn Stevens more or less conclude with the passage of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act in August 1967. The station which at that time broadcast from two ships, continued until the beginning of 1968 without proper funding, when both vessels were towed away. In that same year Stevens decided to sell his magazine to rival publication Harper's Bazaar.

Trivia

*In "A Hard Day's Night" we see Ringo reading Queen magazine.

* At least one telephonist at "The Queen" used to answer calls with the phrase, "This is The Queen".

See also

*List of women's magazines
*Pilkington Report
*Radio Caroline

References

*Mass Media Moments in the United Kingdom, the USSR and the USA (Revised Second Edition) by Gilder, Eric. - "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu Press, Romania. 2007

External links

* [http://www.harpersbazaar.com/ "Harper's Bazaar" Official Website]
* [http://www.harpersandqueen.co.uk/ "Harper's Bazaar UK" Official Website]
* [http://www.natmags.co.uk/about_us/timeline_harpers.asp History of Harpers & Queen]