Continuity and Change
		New Contributors
		The Red and the Black: political coverage
		From Ovid to Pooh Bear: literary coverage
		Depopularisation? A new look and a new editor

Depopularisation? A new look and a new editor

In 1935, in anticipation of Bruce Richmond’s retirement, the TLS was given a face-lift. The normal number of pages – eight in the paper’s earliest days, sixteen in the early 1920s – rose dramatically: forty-page issues became quite common. Illustrations appeared regularly for the first time and were used with increasing boldness. Some were even allowed to break into columns of type, rather than fitting tidily into the grid. The typography was generally more open: no rules between columns; fewer rules between items; headings and book titles a point or two bigger; section titles like ‘Other New Books’ centred on the page with space around them, rather than squeezed into the top of a single column. For the first time, too, many articles were treated as blocks of type, instead of running on in strips. Soon, the front page was composed of three wide columns instead of four narrow ones. These changes were not universally welcomed, and further would-be popularising efforts by D. L. Murray in his first months as editor brought, or at least coincided with, a new drop in sales. For a while, it looked as though having escaped being killed off in the early 1920s, the TLS was about to commit suicide in the late 30s. What saved it was the Second World War.