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| Look and Learn | |
|---|---|
 Look and Learn cover page from 25 March 1972 | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Fleetway |
| Schedule | Weekly |
| Publication date | 1962–1982 |
| No. of issues | 1049 |
| ISSN | 0262-6985 |
| Creative team | |
| Artist(s) | Fortunino Matania John Millar Watt Ron Embleton Gerry Embleton C. L. Doughty Wilf Hardy David Ashford Angus McBride Oliver Frey James E. McConnell Kenneth Lilly R. B. Davis Clive Uptton Eric Parker |
Look and Learn was a British weekly educational magazine for children published byFleetway Publications Ltd from 1962 until 1982. It contained educational text articles that covered a wide variety of topics fromvolcanoes to theLoch Ness Monster; a long runningscience fictioncomic strip,The Trigan Empire; adaptations of famous works of literature into comic-strip form, such asLorna Doone; and serialized works of fiction such asThe First Men in the Moon.
The illustrators who worked on the magazine includedFortunino Matania,John Millar Watt,Peter Jackson,John Worsley,Ron Embleton,Gerry Embleton,C. L. Doughty,Wilf Hardy,Dan Escott,Angus McBride,Oliver Frey,James E. McConnell,Kenneth Lilly,R. B. Davis andClive Uptton.
It featured the Pen-Friends pages, a section where readers could make new friends overseas.
Look and Learn was the brainchild ofLeonard Matthews, the editorial director of juvenile publications atFleetway Publications which was already publishing the long-runningChildren's Newspaper. An early attempt by Matthews to launch a new educational title along the lines of Italian educational magazinesConoscere andLa Vita Meravigliosa had been turned down by the board of directors.[1]
A British edition ofConoscere was brought out in 1961 under the titleKnowledge and Matthews reassessed his original proposal and approached the board again, this time receiving the go-ahead to produce a dummy of the proposed magazine.
The dummy was put together by the firm's Experimental Art Department headed by David Roberts and Trevor Newton. David Stone, a former sub-editor withEverybody's Weekly, was appointed editor and, with the dummy approved, the magazine began publication. John Sanders replaced Stone as editor before the new title reached the newsstands.
The first issue ofLook and Learn was dated 20 January 1962, and contained a wide spectrum of features ranging from articles on history (Rome, theHouses of Parliament, the story ofKing Charles I, "TheDover Road", "From Then Till Now"), science ("Eyes onOuter Space"), geography and geology (The Grand Canyon, "The Quest forOil"), art (Vincent van Gogh), nature ("The story of aseed", "Your Very OwnBasset Hound"), literature (The Arabian Nights, and its editorSir Richard Burton), and travel ("The Children ofTokio"). The debut issue also contained the first episodes of "Three Men in a Boat" byJerome K. Jerome and "The Children's Crusade" byHenry Treece, and a feature on the founding of theWorld Wildlife Fund.
The first issue of the magazine sold about 700,000 copies and settled down to a regular sale of over 300,000 copies a week.[2] Its success has been put down to the high quality of the magazine's content. Historian Steve Holland said, "The premise ofLook and Learn was to delight and inspire the imaginations of its young readers. To advance this principle, the features were clearly and briskly written and illustrated by some of the finest artists of the era resulting in a magazine of unmatched quality."[1]
The first major change to the contents of the magazine came in 1966 when it incorporatedRanger with issue 232 (25 June 1966). The amalgamation brought with it a number ofcomic strips includingThe Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, written byMike Butterworth and drawn byDon Lawrence, and the Frenchcomic stripAsterix, translated into English. The adventureAsterix and Cleopatra appears under the titleIn the Days of Good Queen Cleo, with theGauls turned intoAncient Britons andAsterix andObelix renamed "Beric" and "Doric".
This amalgamation was overseen by recently appointed editor John Davies who had replaced Sanders when the latter left to edit the short-livedRanger in 1965. Davies had previously editedThe Children's Newspaper until it merged withLook and Learn (issue 173, 8 May 1965).
It amalgamated with its competitorFinding Out in 1967.
Davies continued the magazine with the same mixture as before (the page count of the magazine having increased from 32 pages to 36 to accommodate the additional content), as did the editors who followed him, Andy Vincent (1969–1977) and Jack Parker (1977–1982).
The magazine absorbedWorld of Wonder in March 1975, andSpeed & Power with issue no. 724 (29 November 1975).
Under Parker's editorship the magazine underwent a facelift with issue 844 (18 March 1978), absorbedWorld of Knowledge in early 1981, and celebrated its 1,000th issue on 9 May 1981. Sales had been declining throughout the 1970s, a decade which saw the price of the magazine rise from 7½pence to 30 pence due to sharply increasing production costs. Price increases in the early 1980s added a further 10 pence to the weekly cost, and the editor admitted "we simply do not sell enough to meet the very heavy cost of producing a magazine of the quality ofLook and Learn and we are therefore unable to continue publication."[3]
Look and Learn folded with issue 1049, dated 17 April 1982.
