Meet the Masthead

Every magazine has a masthead, the short list of people who keep it running. Ours is small. Four writers share the work, each with a patch they look after and a habit of poking their nose into everyone else's drafts. We use pen names, partly for privacy and partly because the articles matter more than the bylines.

None of us holds professional credentials in the subjects we cover. We are enthusiasts who read carefully, try things when it is safe to do so and check our work against reliable sources before it goes out.

The four of us

Isidore — films and screens

Isidore watches documentaries with a notebook open and has strong opinions about interview lighting. He looks after the film pieces, from how small productions come together to practical questions about watching at home. His favourite article to write so far was the guide on making a documentary on a small budget, because it gathered years of half-finished projects into one useful list.

Marigold — home and hobbies

Marigold rents, renovates within the rules of a tenancy and collects hobbies at an alarming rate. Sewing, journaling and small home improvements are her territory. She tests the step-by-step parts of a guide whenever she can, and she is the reason many of our home articles mention what to ask a landlord first.

Solveig — travel and languages

Solveig plans trips with spreadsheets and then happily abandons them on day two. She writes the travel and tourism pieces and keeps an eye on anything to do with learning languages, a subject she approaches as a permanent, cheerful beginner.

Ottoline — learning and the final read

Ottoline edits. She reads every draft as if she knew nothing about the topic, cuts jargon, asks awkward questions about sources and writes the occasional piece about study habits and ideas. If an article says "we are not sure", it was probably her insistence.

How we share the work

Ideas go onto a shared list that anyone can add to. Once a week we pick a few, decide who writes each one and who reads it second. No piece goes out with only one pair of eyes on it. When a reader points out a mistake, whoever wrote the article fixes it, and the second reader checks the fix.

The longer description of that routine lives on How We Put Articles Together, and the short version of who we are and what we publish is on our About page.

Getting in touch with one of us

We share a single inbox, so there is no need to know whose article you are writing about. Mention the page, and the right person will pick it up. The Write to Us page has everything you need.