Nothing brings home the shock of The Beatles' arrival, and all that followed, so much as reading mags aimed at teenagers from the early 60s. I just acquired this run of 'Elizabethan' from 1961 & it's very rarely aimed at any definition of teenager we might recognise. (1)

I do absolutely love this George Adamson cover to the May 61 edition of Elizabethan, but I've struggled to twig why it was supposed to appeal to the mag's stated target audience of 10-17 year olds. (2)

But what I love is the rare moments when pop culture, & even the nascent counter-culture, appears. A reader is quoted in the Aug 1961 issue as writing "If you don't support the campaign for Nuclear disarmament, then you're a square". & there's a (very polite) debate later on (3)

Sometimes there's figures who would be culturally important in just a few years, such as Jane Asher. And there's glimpses of angry young men, as of Albert Finney with, gasp - a pint and a fag in hand! - talking about telling theatre-going audiences to, gosh, belt up. (4)

There's a sprinkling, and only that, of pop stars, who would soon be competing in a very different marketplace: Elvis, Cliff & Adam ... (5)

Perhaps most interestingly, there's a 2-page article on Jazz & Poetry by Jeremy Robson, discussing a coming June 1961 poetry gathering at the Royal Albert Hall & pointing forward, in a polite way, to the counter-culture.

"The H-bomb is a favourite subject of the younger writers"

It's amazing how, even in this remarkably conservative mag, you can see the high 60s bubbling up, just beginning to make inroads into the culture. Even among the articles of secretarial college, traction engines, Wellington, Australian sheep farming & famous hermits of history.