Field covers new ground

aimed at boosting its flagging circulation.

Whereas it was selling 68,000 copies per month in the early 1960s, the

circulation today is nearer the 10,000 mark.

''The plain fact is that it has become rather dull and doesn't

stimulate enough people to pick it up and read it,'' says 41-year-old

Welshman Peter

Evans, the magazine's new editor. ''It has tended to be static, with a

slightly dated feel about it.

''Currently the age profile of the readers is in the 50-plus range,

people with a high level of disposable income but not really

representative of the Scottish population.

''To be successful, Scottish Field has to broaden its appeal to take

in those who are perhaps professional family people in the 30-plus

category.''

In that pursuit, Mr Evans brings out the September issue with a

greatly jazzed-up front cover and an emphasis on features which are

news-based.

There is a look at Dundee after the Timex dispute and a feature on the

super-quarries which are sparking off controversy in Scotland.

Gavin Docherty writes about the forthcoming television drama involving

Billy Connolly and rock singer Maggie Bell.

Indeed Docherty, the former Evening Times journalist who is Scotland's

reigning Arts and Entertainment Writer of the Year, is a key contributor

and valuable asset to Scottish Field in its drive for broader appeal.

While casting the net for younger people, Peter Evans is well aware of

the danger of alienating his existing core of loyal readers. Many an

enterprise has come unstuck by falling between two stools.

So there will still be familiar reference points such as food,

motoring, collecting and interiors.

''Within two years I would hope to get the circulation back to

15,000,'' says Evans, who came to Scotland 10 years ago as deputy editor

of The Great Outdoors, a sister publication in the George Outram group.

As an outdoor and hillwalking enthusiast himself, he was later editor of

Climber and Hillwalker, another of the Outram magazines, before moving

to his present post.

When Scottish Field, the flagship of the group, was founded in 1903 it

carried a poignant royal picture taken at Braemar, showing the kilted

figures of King Edward VII, his son, the future King George V, and his

grandsons, Edward, who should have been King Edward VIII, and George who

took his place as King George VI.

Reflecting the age, there were pictures of six-times Open Golf

Champion Harry Vardon and later shots of a Bleriot monoplane at Lanark

in 1910, a Glasgow bus being overturned in the General Strike of 1926

and the Queen Mary stuck on a bend in the Clyde in 1936.

The great grocer himself, Sir Thomas Lipton, was shown outside his

very first shop, which he opened in Anderston, Glasgow, in 1871.

From the days of its founder-editor, a Mr Robinson, Scottish Field

came into the hands of the enterprising Henry Munro, a former Aberdeen

railwayman who moved into the travel and publishing world and owned the

glossy weekly paper, the Aberdeen Bon Accord.

He then acquired the Perthshire Advertiser before his business became

part of the George Outram group, which owned the then Glasgow Herald.

So it was not surprising that Herald journalists began to figure in

the editorship, men like James Paton, Willie Adair, this paper's

agricultural man who edited Scottish Field during the war, and Willie

Ballantine, who edited the Weekly Herald (yes, we had a weekly in those

days) and was later the public relations man at the Scottish Office.

Scottish Field reached its circulation peak of 68,000 under another

Herald man, the dapper Sydney Harrison, who was editor from 1946 till

1963 and is still a lively octogenarian living in Brookfield, near

Paisley.

He was followed by yet another Herald journalist, Comyn Webster, and

in more recent times the Field has been edited by people like Roddy

Martine and Joe Stirling.

Though Mr Stirling left Scottish Field feeling not quite in tune with

its intended direction, he nevertheless speaks of his editorship as

being ''not so much a job as a privilege. There was not a door in

Scotland that was closed to the editor of Scottish Field, from the

humblest house to the greatest castle.''

Now, from the heights of the Plaza Tower in East Kilbride, Peter Evans

prepares to take the magazine towards its centenary, with Cate Devine as

his assistant and Geoff Elliott as the designer.

As a sign of changing times in the publishing world, the preparation

of colour pictures in Scottish Field now takes place in both Hong Kong

and Dubai, the round trip taking up to ten days.

Picture techniques today are marvellous of course. But what surprises

me is the superb quality of photography to be found in those journals at

the turn of the century.