And so to my top magazine of the year (hey, it’s still 2010 over here). The winner is… Fire & Knives.
If I didn’t already know the resume of F&K‘s publisher and editor, Tim Hayward, I could probably have guessed it. Having graduated as a photographer, he became an advertising copywriter, and then an award-winning journalist and blogger with an ear for language as refined as his palette. A witty and memorable title, an eye for a great image, the confidence of a marketeer who knows the power of the understated, and above all a compilation of fantastic food writing in each quarterly issue. It’s the magazine he was made to make, and doesn’t he just do it well.
It went from crazy idea to marvellous example of the resurgence of print thanks to Cathy and Rob from Present Joys and Anorak. And so Fire & Knives, which first appeared in November 2009, is now put together by Tim, Rob and a very small team of others, working without a fixed office. The cover price is a very reasonable eight pounds, which is intended to cover printing and other basic costs. Tim offers his writers no payment but a light, skillful edit and the promise of being published in a beautiful, well-respected magazine.
While not frivolous, it also doesn’t take itself too seriously – as befits a magazine published by a company called Funistrada. The format is a pleasant-to-hold 167mm x 201mm (about 6.5inx8.25in), while the fantastically versatile Rob Lowe’s design is understated, easy to read, and very British (Keep Gill Sans and Carry On). Traditional food shots are discarded in favour of illustration and archive material. It carries no ads.
Above all, Fire and Knives prioritises its writing – which is of almost universally excellent quality, featuring many of the UK’s best food writers, who pen well-researched stories about personal experience or culinary history rather than celebrity and cliché.
It reads like the perfectionists’ labour of love that it is, and I’m very happy that it exists.
In the next few months, they’re branching out into one-day events. (For a sneak preview of what they won’t be showcasing, take a look at the amusing talk titles on the site in progress – quick, before they take it down)
I could keep on, but I have some champagne to open. So it is, Fire & Knives is officially the entirely-subjective, non-scientific, cos-I-say-so, first-ever Magtastic Blogsplosion Magazine of the Year. Yum.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Read Tim’s story of how he made Fire & Knives happen here.
Part Two of the tale here.
Subscribe to Fire & Knives here.
