ANIMALS Magazine. Back to the 60s

 

ANIMALS magazine was launched in January 1963 by Purnell & Sons as a weekly. The editor was John Paget Chancellor (1927-2014) but television personalities were used as ‘influencers’ then as now, and the film maker Armand Denis was listed as Editor-in-Chief. For those not around then, Armand and Michaela Denis produced and presented On Safari, a hugely popular programme on BBC television in the 1950s. Not content with a celebrity editor-in-chief, Chancellor assembled  a collection of well-known naturalists and scientists as ‘patrons’ and ‘advisory editors’ (Julian Huxley, Solly Zuckerman, (13th) Duke of Bedford, Bernhard Grzimek, Gavin Maxwell, Peter Scott, Gerald Durrell, Nicholas Guppy, Alan Moorehead, Niko Tinbergen).

As well as articles ANIMALS ran extracts of books. It had an important role in drawing attention in Britain to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which it began publishing extracts soon after its launch and only four months after the book was first published in the USA.

At the time of its launch as a colour glossy, Purnells were in their heyday. However, it seems that ANIMALS was, by the mid-60s, not doing well; it is said that it ran at a loss for its four years with Purnell. In 1967 the magazine was bought by one of the assistant editors, Nigel Degge Wilmot Sitwell (1935-2017), who changed it to a monthly and cut the costs of production. Then in 1974 he changed the title to WILDLIFE. The magazine was sold to Reader’s Digest in 1978, then via another publisher to become BBC WILDLIFE which is still extant but which I have not seen for years. Nigel Sitwell, whom I got to know slightly 30-odd years ago, moved to other publishing, travel and conservation interests in Antarctica and the Galapagos.

Copies of ANIMALS are difficult to search for, given the title. It was, however, an important popular publication of its time and well worth reading as a source of what was going on in the world of animals and conservation in the 1960s.