Welcome to the not very special, special issue

Sporting Gun magazine has had a makeover, its August issue boasting a redesigned front cover and layout along with a host of new writers signed up. In the past the timing of this change would have been significant insofar as the revamp is appearing ahead of the opening of the Game Fair which in the past always presaged the publication of bumper issues of the shooting titles; indeed there on the front cover of the magazine is a strap line exclaiming: “Game Fair Special. See you there”. Well, further examination of the magazine might lead readers to question this claim, because inside this particular “Game Fair special”, coverage of the fieldsports’ community’s most important annual event by far is confined to one page or more precisely two columns of one page. As for the “See you there” well, given that the magazine offers no indication of where exactly they might be found at the show, perhaps the editor should have found room to add the word “maybe”.