Best of British is the UK’s premier nostalgia magazine covering every aspect of life from the 1930’s to today.

Each issue encourages you to:

• Explore readers’ own recollections and memories in our Yesterday Remembered section
• Discover more about days gone past with stories on everything from vintage transport to great Britons and from Christmas traditions to great days out
• Enjoy regular reader favourites such as Treasures in the Attic, 1940’s Post, Postcard from… and of course our Puzzle Page and Crossword

We hope you like reading our magazine as much as we love compiling it. In the meantime here is this month’s letter from our Editor, Simon Stabler

Running a Marathon
Of all the tasks associated with putting this magazine together, the most difficult has to be choosing a front cover. It has to catch the eye of regular and casual readers alike, offer an indication of what’s inside and hopefully bring on a sense of nostalgia.

I hope we’ve met that aim with this month’s cover and I’m sure that you have a fondness for at least five of the products featured on it, not to mention the brands whose history we delve into for the feature it supports. It’s surprising that, in this world of disposable convenience, many of those brands remain firm favourites, albeit in different packaging, occasionally with different names.

Maybe, like me, you still refer to Starburst as Opal Fruits, insist on using Jif not Cif, and feel frustrated that you can no longer use an off-colour joke about Marathons without having to explain to the Snickers’ generation what a Marathon was.

When Marathon changed its name in the early 1990s, I kept an old bar in a futile attempt to show future generations that there was life before Snickers. A few years later, I checked on my confectionary relic, only to find something had eaten the bar and wrapper with exception of a small piece of the letter “M”. Could it be the cat? Rats? Or just someone who liked old chocolate, “packed with peanuts”?

I’m happy to say our cover star, Robert Opie, has been much more successful in retaining packets from the past. If you ever find yourself close to Ladbroke Grove Underground (another well-loved brand), I fully recommend you pay a visit to his Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising (020 7243 9611, www.museumofbrands.com). It really does offer a blast from the past, and you never know, there may even be a preserved Marathon wrapper in there.