‘It’ll have bite, be radical and funny’: celebrating 60 years of the Observer Magazine

It’s six decades since David Astor launched the first issue of the Observer Magazine. Here, we look at its evolution Observer Magazine writers share their memoriesA gallery of a few of our favourite covers Radical, tolerant, enquiring, pro-consumer, lid-off, helpful. It’ll be no-holds-barred, without being noisy. It should have bite without malice. Wave-of-the-future type stuff, when possible. Whiff of scandal… Serious. Non-expert. Funny.” In early 1964, this was future editor Michael Davie’s vision for the planned Observer Magazine. The project was a long-ruminated riposte to the Sunday Times, which had launched its “Colour Section” in February 1962 with an in-your-face graphic cover of Jean Shrimpton wearing Mary Quant, photographed by David Bailey: your early 1960s cool bingo card almost filled before you had even turned the first page. It was a revolutionary break with the postwar era of newsprint rationing, when papers ran only two or three pictures a week.