Men's magazines: an A-Z

In 1980s Britain, the phrases 'men's magazines' and 'magazines for men' meant pornographic, 'top-shelf' titles. It seemed men only read about hobbies such as cars or sports – or porn. Yet, in the 1950s, Men Only, Lilliput, Man About Town and other men's lifestyle magazines sold in their hundreds of thousands every month, alongside humorous titles and glamour magazines with pin-ups. Many tabloid newspapers, which switched to an A4-ish colour format in the 1950s, also thrived, such as Reveille, Weekend and Tit-Bits. Yet, publishers let these magazines wither. Some – Men Only, Tit-Bits and Razzle – were relaunched for the top-shelf a decade or more later by the likes of Paul Raymond.
The Magforum pages in this section cover the following types of magazines:

• men's fashion and style (eg Man About Town and GQ);
• men's lifestyle (eg Town and Lilliput);
• lads magazines (eg Loaded and Maxim);
• weekly lads mags such as Nuts, Zoo and digital weekly Monkey;
• humour (eg Blighty, The Chap and Viz);
• special-interest magazines on photography, art or gadgets that use 'girlie' elements as part of their appeal;
• pin-up, glamour and girlie magazines (eg, Reveille and Weekend);
• top-shelf titles with literary ambitions (eg Penthouse and Playboy).

Adventure titles and overtly pornographic titles are not covered. The 120-plus titles are grouped alphabetically below and indexed on the right; some covers are shown at the bottom of this page.

Intro (this page) 3D titles to Boys Toys Carnival to Cut Deluxe to Esquire Fable to Front Gentleman's Magazine to Humorist	Ice to London Opinion Man to Maxim Mayfair to Monkey Nine to Playboy Razzle to Stuff T3 to Zoo Weekly
Women's monthlies History of men's magazines Joan Collins covers	Man About Town case study London Life covers