Flicking through the latest issue of The Lady magazine is not an invigorating experience. The cover is a grainy stock image model shot, and the opening advertisement urges readers to pledge a gift in their will to the Stroke Association. It’s not a bouncy start to what looks likely to be the final edition of the venerable publication after 140 years. Even so, I’m sad to see The Lady is going out with a whimper, reportedly going into liquidation.
Launched in 1885 and focused on the art of keeping house in style, featuring etiquette guides, needlework patterns, recipes, gardening and classified ads for domestic staff, The Lady was the OG of home magazines.
Today, at a time when culturally we are fetishising aspects of domestic life, from flower arranging to tablescaping to cooking, surely The Lady should be the bible on these fashionable, familiar themes?
Nostalgia is a growth market; the trad wife algorithm is scurrying around the internet with unbecoming gusto. So the real question is not why has The Lady failed, but why has it failed now? Its brand of cosy, domestic, slightly out of touch and quite boring content reminds me most of another example of cosy, domestic, slightly out of touch and quite boring content, now streaming to global audiences on Netflix and presented by a duchess . . .
My own experience at The Lady in 2011 was, in contrast to its current state, exciting. As an unknown writer, I pitched a column to then editor Rachel Johnson (sister of Boris), who subsequently gave me a page for A Month In The Country, which documented my varied and frequent failures as I attempted to run a large country house with no experience, no driving licence and a newborn baby. I thought of it as a modern version of EM Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady and I had a rollicking good time writing it. I enjoyed seeing what I could get away with. So, as well as the home, I wrote about raucous parties, breastfeeding and Rihanna. The subeditors took out all my swearing.
I didn’t shock. Instead, I received fan mail from charming elderly readers. They collectively bullied me into booking driving lessons and one lady even learnt to drive along with me, having tried previously “at the cost of 17s 6d per hour”. Other letters teased and encouraged me, and it was clear that the magazine was held in great affection by its readers.
The weekly appearance of The Lady, with its puzzles, short stories and book reviews, felt as much about comfort, companionship and reassurance as anything else and letters were full of reminiscences prompted by the domestic antics I’d dramatised in my column. The Letters page remains lively, although it’s also a reminder that nostalgia isn’t always harmless. In the most recent issue, a reader writes in recommending (in jest? who knows) drinking Guinness in pregnancy (because after all, it worked a treat for her).
Livelier still are the Classifieds. In 2009, before Johnson became editor, she confessed that “all I knew about The Lady was what all middle-class mothers of a certain age and income bracket knew about The Lady . . . It was where you got a nanny from.” The Appointments section has iconic cultural status in Britain; historically it was the best place to advertise for domestic staff, and it’s reassuring (and frankly, weird) that these ads remain as entertaining and intriguing in 2025 as ever.
It’s like eavesdropping on another era and a higher social echelon. There are still plenty of situations vacant for Nannies, Housekeepers, Head Gardeners and Travelling Private Chefs. There’s even a Live-out Butler role in Mayfair that I’d consider applying for (no cooking required, just serving drinks to guests and laying the table — two of my greatest talents).
These are by far the most glamorous pages, offering a glimpse into wealthy households so nuanced that the job descriptions specify intriguing details, including “happy to poo pick two donkeys” (I’m assuming this isn’t in Mayfair). As an archive, these pages constitute an important social record, charting the changes in domestic arrangements for a large sphere of society over the decades.
Judging by the jet-set lifestyles hinted at in the current issue, the Classifieds have evolved where the rest of the magazine has stagnated. Discretion is still important, with the Daily Mail branding the personal ads “Tinder for Toffs” but in the editorial content the emphasis is faithful to the original 1885 preoccupations: manners, etiquette and traditional values.
You might be fooled into thinking that such a lady’s life is pretty dull. When The Diary of a Provincial Lady was published in 1930, The Times noted that Delafield “had an almost uncanny gift for converting the small and familiar dullnesses of everyday life into laughter”. Much of the humour centres around the daily wranglings with Ethel, the house-parlourmaid, and Cook, who is always on the brink of resignation.
As I discovered for myself in the same tradition 80 years later, you don’t have to leave the house to get comedy content. The book brilliantly characterises the challenges of hiring (and retaining) good “Help” at a time when “the servant problem” was felt by many middle-class and upper-middle-class families in Britain between the wars. Placing an ad in The Lady was often the answer, so the magazine was essential reading for anyone running a house or anyone navigating a career in service.
Today, while wealthy households continue to hire staff, print classifieds struggle to cut through in the ruthless global recruitment market. But the art of running a home (or multiple homes) is more complex, demanding — and idealised than ever. For the first time in a long time, The Lady is bang on trend.
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