Punch magazine!

The first edition of Punch was published on July 17, 1841, four years after Queen Victoria came to the throne. Its founders, wood engraver Ebenezer Landells and writer Henry Mayhew, got the idea for the magazine from a satirical French paper, Charivari (indeed, the first issue was subtitled, "The London Charivari").

Landells insisted that Punch should be less bitter than other British comic publications and of a higher literary standard. The name was hit upon at an early meeting – someone remarked that the magazine should be like a good Punch mixture – nothing without Lemon (referring to Mark Lemon, the magazine’s first editor), whereupon Mayhew shouted “ A capital idea! Let us call the paper Punch!”

The magazine was set up with capital of £25… and the future soon looked bleak. The circulation refused to rise, money ran short and it began to look as if Lemon would have the same success with Punch as he did with his previous enterprise, a pub which went bankrupt.

But then he had the bright idea of publishing a big annual issue called the Almanack which sold an astonishing 90,000 copies and Punch was on the map. In the medium term, however, it continued to struggle for survival until it was taken over by the printing firm of Bradbury and Evans (which became Bradbury and Agnew in 1872).

The magazine then entered its golden age, a period in which it enjoyed great success for decades. When a magazine becomes identified with a period it very often fails to survive it. The readers of the Strand Magazine in Edwardian days, or of Life between the wars or of Picture Post just after, would have been unable to imagine those household names ever vanishing, yet vanished they have.

So what was the secret of Punch's survival?

More than anything, it was its ability to find the wavelength of an age. Even in Victorian days Punch did not stand still. In its early years, the years of the Chartists and the unrest that swept through Europe in 1848, it was radical. The most famous example of this was Thomas Hood's "Song of the Shirt", which moved people's consciences over sweated labour. But by the 1860s it had become milder, less inclined to attack the Establishment or support the underdog, and this too was in tune with the rising middle class and the feeling that the British Empire had come to stay.

A succession of superb artists on Punch ensured that the manner in which it played safe was brilliant. The drawings of Leech, Keene, du Maurier, Tenniel and many only slightly lesser men may not have prompted any revolutions or moves to man the barricades, but they still represent the most authentic and memorable picture of Victorian England that we have left. And it is forgotten that Punch was one among many humorous magazines in the nineteenth century it was not even, in fact, the only one called Punch.

It was, however, the only one of the breed that continued to flourish for another hundred years, almost as if it was a national institution that could not be allowed to die. This status as a part of British history is a source both of great pride and huge annoyance to Punch, a millstone as well as a medal.

Each time Punch has made a significant advance in tune with the times - when Malcolm Muggeridge introduced a sharper, more acid note, when Bernard Hollowood finally abandoned the old cover, when William Davis engineered such coups as a full-scale parody of Playboy - critics have grumbled that this isn't how a national institution should behave.

What they forget is that Punch only survived and flourished by changing its reality as well as its image. The magazine was bought from Bradbury and Agnew in 1969 by United Newspapers (only the second time it had changed hands).

A promotional booklet produced in 1974 was full of confidence for the future: "It has found new security within a large organisation and an added confidence to combat the gloom of the 1970s with cheerfulness, humour and even optimism." By the late Eighties, however, circulation had dropped to an alarmingly low level and three editors in three years failed to arrest the decline. Punch was eventually closed by United in 1992 and it looked like the end for a title which had become loved around the world.

Salvation came in the form of Harrods proprietor, Mohamed Al Fayed, who relaunched the magazine with a glittering party at Harrods in September 1996. The magazine soon positioned itself as a thorn in the side of the Establishment, with a series of irreverent exposes. These included Murdoch by his butler, the most intimate look yet at the world's leading media mogul, and The Mandelson Files, a mouldbreaking investigation into Peter Mandelson, then the most feared member of the New Labour government.

Sadly, the magazine failed to regain its place in the hearts of the British public and closed again in 2002, leaving a legacy of over 160 years of humour and wit unsurpassed in publishing history.

The pictures shown are those of the first and the last number of the magazine.