Our GOLDEN years
On Yours’ 50th birthday we look back at all we’ve achieved over the past five decades thanks to your generosity, help and loyalty
Birthdays are better when they’re shared and, as we reach the incredible milestone of 50 years of Yours magazine, we want to share ours with you – our loyal readers. Yours is much more than a magazine. First launched in 1974 with a mission to celebrate and champion the lives of older people, we have over the past five decades created a community of like-minded people with shared values and a shared history.
The charity Help the Aged (now Age UK) launched Yours with the aim of creating something targeted to an all-too-often forgotten section of society. The newspaper was distributed by willing volunteers via clubs, day centres and churches and instantly became a hit. These benevolent beginnings set the tone for what would become the UK’s kindest magazine.
In 1988 Yours was bought by publishing company Emap, which turned it into a monthly magazine and appointed dynamic Yorkshireman Neil Patrick as editor. From the beginning Neil wanted Yours to be a mixture of friendship, information, laughter and support that is still at the heart of what makes Yours unique.
Caring and campaigning
In 1996, Yours spearheaded Age in Action Week, to raise funds for various charities helping older people. Neil did a marathon cycle
Kindness remained at the heart
tour of Britain and raised an amazing £80,000. Following an appeal to help the people affected by the Chernobyl disaster Reader Care Editor Rosie Sandall found herself taking a truck filled with donations from generous readers to the Ukraine.
Inspired by readers’ attitudes to life, in 2015 we launched the Sowing the Seeds of Kindness campaign. The aim was to encourage everyone to join in performing small acts of kindness regularly, and on our Meeting Place pages we always had space for readers to acknowledge and say thank you for a kindness they’d received.
Celebrating you
A central part of Yours is celebrating your lives. Although society can make the over 50s feel invisible, we pride ourselves on highlighting the stories of ordinary women doing incredible things, from The Yorkshire Rows, the oldest women to row across the Atlantic, to friends Joanne Vines and Sammy Barcroft who turned a double-decker bus into a shelter for the homeless. Or people like grieving mother Marie McCourt who campaigned to introduce Helen’s law, and cancer
survivor Debbie Dowie who raised more than £1 million for life-saving NHS equipment.
We celebrated your important role in the family with our Grandparent of the Year Awards and encouraged a positive, healthy attitude to life with our 50 Over 50 campaign.
Handing over
After an amazing tenure in charge of Yours Neil stepped down in 2004, handing the reins over to Valery McConnell. It was the year of our 30th birthday and it was clear that, although our values stayed the same, our readership was changing. Valery, like many of our new readers, was one of the baby boomer generation and she set about updating the magazine. Cover stars such as Vera Lynn were replaced by the likes of Twiggy and Lulu, but campaigning, caring and kindness remained at the heart of the magazine.