21 JUNE 1946, Page 4

There is a lot to be said for regional publications.

I mean, not daily or weekly papers devoted to current news, but magazines dealing with local folklore, local history, local arts and the like ; Sussex, I fancy, has for some time been doing this kind of thing well. I welcome particularly the latest edition to regional journalism, the West Country Magazine, the first issue of which has just reached me. It is a quarterly, costing half-a-crown, and looks like being. worth the money. It would be against my principles to admit that anything except Devon and Cornwall were genuinely West Country, and in fact, though the net here is thrown a little wider, those two delectable counties do predominate, as they should. Henry Williamson is there to represent them ; Plymouth and Morwenstow (both of which are almost common to both) are the subjects of admirable articles ; two more deal respectively with a Cornish artist, Edward Calvert, and pack-horse travelling in Cornwall, while an incursion into Dorset brings in T. F. Powys and the late Llewelyn Powys. All this promises extremely well.

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