From the magazine

The Lady vanishes

Rachel Johnson
Rachel Johnson in the editor’s chair at the Lady 
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 05 April 2025
issue 05 April 2025

The moment I stepped out of the Covent Garden sunshine and into the regal offices of the Lady magazine, it was like stepping into a 19th-century Tardis, and I was already in love. ‘I’m going for the editorship hell for leather,’ I wrote in my diary (published in 2010). ‘I’ve even been out and bought and read a copy of the magazine for the very first time!’

It was the funeral parlour ambience. The genteel tones of the telephonist, Ros, taking calls from deaf dowager duchesses placing adverts for a couple to prepare light luncheons and do some gentle housework in return for accommodation in the gatehouse.

It was the fact that the Lady was the inspiration for P.G. Wodehouse’s Milady’s Boudoir, the organ for which Bertie Wooster, of course, does his only recorded instance of paid work: a feature on ‘What the Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing’.

It was the fact that Lewis Carroll did the puzzle; the founder was Thomas Gibson Bowles, the grandfather of the Mitford sisters and the great grandfather of Ben Budworth, the man who was guiding me upstairs for my interview for the plum role as only the ninth editor of the magazine since 1885.

It was the fact that Nancy Mitford contributed and that her father, David Freeman-Mitford, was general manager for a spell, but was so bored he spent the time ratting with his pet mongoose in the basement.

It was all of the above – but it was really the fact that I’d been sacked by the Sunday Times, I had three children in private school, it was a delicious challenge, and also Ben made me laugh.

As we mounted the handsome central staircase to the editorial floor, I trailed my hand over the cream paintwork, and was told it had been done ‘oh, very recently – in time for the Coronation’ (Elizabeth’s that is).

I peeked into the editor’s corner office. I could almost see Stella Gibbons writing Cold Comfort Farm and gazing out of the sash windows on to Maiden Lane, her floor piled with unsolicited manuscripts, as she came up with deathless passages about Seth, Flora and sukebind.

Ben opened the door to the boardroom where the other three living Budworth brothers and their mother, Mrs Budworth, the granddaughter of the founder, sat at a mahogany table in imperious silence.

Over tea in bone china cups, with Whistler drawings and oil paintings of whiskery ancestral Bowleses gazing down at us, I faithfully lied that I would, if appointed, break none of the house rules (no sex, celebrities or politics). I promised I’d never put Tracey Emin on the cover. Afterwards Ben, whose previous job had been training helicopter pilots in Florida, said he’d be in touch.

When I arrived on my first day, I did so with a Channel 4 documentary crew in tow (filming a documentary called The Lady and the Revamp). Soon after that, I managed to call the magazine ‘piddling’ to a Sunday Times interviewer. And on it went.

Even though I’d created blanket coverage of the small circulation magazine for gentlewomen, the matriarch soon stormed up from her seat, Deerbolts Hall in Suffolk, and asked me to jump out of my window.

Mrs Budworth gave endless interviews describing me as ‘vain, publicity-mad, overpaid, obsessed with penises’

Mrs Budworth gave endless interviews describing me as ‘vain, publicity mad, over-paid, obsessed with penises’, all of which, let’s face it, were some of the biggest tributes I’d ever been paid in my career.

Vanity Fair described my tenure as ‘ceaseless brouhaha’, but I spent the best, most fun years of my working life at the Lady. Mary Killen did a column, Alexander Chancellor was my television critic, Joan Collins came in for tea, and Kelvin MacKenzie asked to pick a cover (he chose Alan Titchmarsh over Twiggy – and the issue tanked).

Even if I didn’t succeed in halving the average age of the reader from 78 – yes, average age 78 – and doubling the circulation in the teeth of an advertising recession as the internet was eating everyone’s lunch, I had the most enjoyable time trying.

‘I don’t know what’s more dangerous, landing a chopper in a hurricane in the Everglades, or running a small circulation magazine for old dears in Covent Garden,’ Ben used to say. I would beg him to paywall the crown jewels – the small ads everyone bought the magazine for, not to read features about Mary Berry at 90 – but he never would. The upstairs-downstairs readers died off or migrated to Mumsnet, Craigslist and Radio H-P.

The magazine was weekly, then fortnightly, then monthly. And now the staff – who work out of a shed in Borehamwood – were sent a letter on Saturday, saying the financials are dire and that the old girl was going into liquidation after 140 years. The April issue is the final one.

I just texted Ben to say that I’m sure I had a £20 luncheon voucher somewhere if he’d do me a sweetheart deal (I’ve always wanted a title) for the Lady, but he hasn’t answered, not yet. Like so many other things that I’ve loved and lost, the Lady is vanishing.

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