Paul Makepeace,

Gloucestershire

Ibecame a This England reader in spring 1984 as I was going abroad on a business trip. After checking-in, I browsed the magazines on offer for something to read during the flight. My eyes fell upon the front cover of a magazine which showed a picture of a house from my home county of Derbyshire. Although I had not heard of the magazine before, the title This England appealed to me. As a patriotic Englishman since my scouting days this was the magazine for me.

The flight passed quickly and I had a very pleasant read. As I had been associated with the publishing trade all my working life, I wanted to know where the magazine was produced. I was pleased and surprised to find that it was in Cheltenham where I had just moved to only a few weeks before. I became a regular reader, passing it on to my mum who was also delighted with it, but disappointed that it was quarterly and not monthly.

Ten years later, having been made redundant from the travelling job, I wrote to Roy Faiers, the Editor and founder of This England. He made me very welcome and offered me the position of Production Manager which I was delighted to accept. Over the following 17 years, we progressed from manually pasting up the bromide text into pages, to full page computer make-up including all the images. All the 14,000 photographic transparencies were also scanned into a computer searchable picture database.

The magazine has changed slightly in content and appearance over those 33 years, but it is still informative and a delight to read. Congratulations on reaching 50 years and I hope it gives readers pleasure for many more years.