May I introduce myself as a keen new reader of the excellent Guardian Weekly. I have been a newspaper reader for the last 60 years. I could read my father’s copy of the Star in Johannesburg, South Africa, after I got back from school but before he came home from work, provided it was left neatly folded.
At the University of the Witwatersrand, where I studied mechanical engineering, we read the brave anti-apartheid Rand Daily Mail. Once I married I subscribed to the Star and trained my boxer dog to fetch it from the gate. After a career in heavy engineering in Johannesburg, we moved to Cape Town, where we subscribed to the Cape Times. It was sold in 2013, whereafter it became a purveyor of ANC-supporting fake news.
I was bereft of my daily fix for a couple of years until my wife and I moved to a small village in Surrey. After sampling some of the more rightwing press, the Guardian was the only choice and I now read much of it online. However, the new Guardian Weekly provides a great supplement of thoughtful background and analysis, even if the crossword often defeats me.
