"Children of the 1950s regarded heroic, adventurous and distinguished people as their models and beacons. The Young Elizabethan's patrons included the violinist Yehudi Menuhin as president, the composer Benjamin Britten, the scientist Julian Huxley, the leader of the 1953 Everest expedition Brigadier Sir John Hunt, the showjumper Pat Smythe, the Oxford don Lord David Cecil, the author Noel Streatfeild, the Chief Scout Lord Rowallan, and the heroic World War II fighter pilot Squadron Leader Neville Duke. The poet Stephen Spender and the cricketer Colin Cowdrey wrote articles. Readers were invited to study the colophons [...] of different publishers - Rupert Hart-Davis's fox, Allen Lane's penguin - and to read David Cecil's biography of Lord Melbourne, or Rosemary Sutcliff's historical novels."
I'm not up on children's magazines of the present day, but I doubt they can compete with the above description of Young Elizabethan, edited by Kaye Webb (whose biography by Valerie Grove, So Much to Tell, is the source of that passage).
Collins was the magazine's earlier incarnation, on which Call Me Madam has a good post.
I remember feeling sorry for a friend whose more-middleclass-than-us parents bought The Children's Newspaper but banned comics. I'm sure even back then most children preferred the Bash Street Kids to colophons! I dodubt I would have swapped my Bunty!
Posted by: Mary | 06 February 2018 at 05:33 PM
Sorry, doubt. Why do I always notice the typo a second too late?
Posted by: Mary | 06 February 2018 at 05:34 PM
Yes, colophons - a bit recondite, perhaps!
At least they had Molesworth sometimes.
Posted by: Cornflower | 06 February 2018 at 05:48 PM
I've just read Callmemadam's post. Actually, those serials sound rather good - and who wouldn't like a food parcel from Canada!
Posted by: Mary | 06 February 2018 at 06:06 PM
I'd forgotten that post! It was later reprinted in Folly magazine and in the following issue someone said I was quite wrong about the history, so don't take that as gospel. (I was working from internal evidence :-))
I enjoyed So Much to Tell and I think I reviewed that, too.
Posted by: Callmemadam | 06 February 2018 at 07:08 PM
I'm enjoying it very much though I haven't reached the real meat (the Puffin years) yet.
Posted by: Cornflower | 06 February 2018 at 08:29 PM
Indeed!
Posted by: Cornflower | 06 February 2018 at 08:34 PM
I was very fortunate that I was brought up by parents who had the village newsagent's shop, and therefore had a super time reading everything I could lay my hands on, provided I kept it clean. As well as that I had my comics, Girl and School Friend, and also my favourite magazines (Ideal Home and Homes & Gardens ... yes, even as a child I loved décor mags!), and then Honey magazine when that started out in the late 1950s/early 1960s. But I also had Young Elizabethan (it later became, after my time of reading it, just Elizabethan. It was a bit dry, but I liked the readers' letters and Molesworth of course, chiz, chiz, chiz (unless you have read Molesworth that will be meaningless, and it's still meaningless even if you have read Molesworth!)
As copies of this mag are as rare as hens' teeth, I began at one time to wonder whether there really had been such a magazine that I looked forward to each month, and then I managed to buy three copies on Abe. But they were expensive and when I saw them I was just slightly disappointed. They really were very boring indeed! As for the children's newspaper, I didn't bother with that at all!
Margaret P
Posted by: Margaret Powling | 06 February 2018 at 09:57 PM
I do remember Honey magazine. It seemed so glamorous.
Posted by: m | 06 February 2018 at 11:05 PM
How interesting, Margaret!
(Happily, Molesworth lives on on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reelmolesworth )
Posted by: Cornflower | 07 February 2018 at 08:56 AM
Judging by these covers ( https://goo.gl/YUUMqC ) it must have been.
Posted by: Cornflower | 07 February 2018 at 09:02 AM