It’s unaccountably satisfying to track down magazines from all over the world to bring them to Magalleria and to be able to tell everyone what you’ve found. Yet oddly more exciting is to have a new magazine spring up in your own backyard that seems, well, so exotic. When SOME SUCH magazine appeared this month we just about had to go and lie down in a dark room.
I have to declare that we’ve known about SOME SUCH for some time, and we also feature in it. The magazine’s editor and publisher, Robin Savill, is a regular patron of Magalleria and we both believed there was a need for a magazine that dug a little deeper into Somerset life. A lot of people are moving here – Frome, Bruton and Castle Cary are filling up, while I’m hearing about the rise and rise of Bristol everyday. Yet Somerset still seems to me a place of discovery – slightly veiled, just a little mysterious. The SOME SUCH cover image (by Oxana Mazur) sets the tone perfectly.
'... a well judged mix of the experiential, the informative and the artisanal.'
SOME SUCH in fact pushes beyond the county borders in to Wiltshire and Dorset because these crossover places help to make this area of the South West so fascinating. The magazine casts a very wide net, taking in digital sound artists, alternative theatre and performance, breathtaking towns and villages, hidden or remarkable collections, unique museums and odd retail ventures – a well judged mix of the experiential, the informative and the artisanal.
Sure, there’s plenty here that revolves around stuff that you can buy (antiques, B&Bs, bicycles and, yes, magazines) but there’s no empty puffery. Personalities are always in the foreground, doing or providing or producing something away from the everyday. It’s miles away from advertising-driven business and community magazines, and it’s nothing like a tourist brochure.
Robin sees his new quarterly as a coffee table magazine for people who love Somerset. I would think SOME SUCH is also a good starting place for those who really have no idea about the place.
Daniel McCabe
http://www.somesuchmagazine.co.uk/