With contributions by Nick Knight and Anton Corbijn, and designed by Neville Brody, raconteur Kez Glozier releases the much-anticipated digital version of his publishing project The New British.
When the The New British first appeared back in 2012, it instantly had an air of myth about it. You would hear from a friend of a friend that this was a magazine that felt genuinely original, and that its originality wasn’t just in theme or presentation or editorial direction, but in the ethos of the entire project, in its aspiration. Not that it was necessarily easy to test this out: copies of issue zero disappeared as soon as they were released. If you weren’t at the launch then you were unlikely to have got hold of one. Founded and edited by illustrator and raconteur Kez Glozier and art directed by none other than Neville Brody, the magazine clearly had some creative heft behind it. The subject felt timely too; given the forces of patriotism and civil unrest, austerity and altruism that were contorting the country into a renewed state of self-examination during the start of the millennium’s second decade, we were all aware that the old notions of Britishness no longer tallied with most of the public’s perspectives or experiences. Interested in what had replaced those outdated assumptions about places and peoples, The New British presented itself as a multi-platform documentary magazine, celebrating modern British life and exploring underground counter-cultures. An extremely worthwhile enterprise, but if only more people could see it?