I am so pleased that Sally Brampton’s column for Psychologies has been shortlisted in the British Society of Magazine Editors’ awards this week. It was one of the first things I commissioned when I took over editing the magazine nearly two years ago. The BSME’s nod has made me think about what a long time – over what seems like many different lifetimes – we have known each other. I thought her many fans might appreciate if I shared a little of what I know of her.
Sally started out steeped in the world of fashion, first at Vogue, then as The Observer’s fashion editor. I met her when she launched Elle in the UK, 25 years ago. She was losing her deputy to another magazine, and I was thrilled to get the job.
These were the halcyon days of Eighties media, and Sally – kitted out in Alaia or Joseph – was at the forefront. We were in and out of Soho’s watering holes like jack-in-the-boxes, but Sally also wanted to create a magazine of substance. We commissioned incredibly broadly – from Tony Parsons and Paula Yates to Germaine Greer and Jeanette Winterson.
But after five years, Sally had had enough. She had done what she had set out to; it would have been boring to just do the same. ‘Life is too short for perfume launches,’ I remember her saying as she bravely opted to be a freelance writer and novelist instead.
Soon after, she married and had her daughter, to whom she is devoted. Her novels had her wry sense of humour and tender heart, but eventually she was drawn back to journalism. In her mid-forties Sally had a breakdown, which involved some time as a hospital in-patient. Many people, when they recover from depression, don’t want to talk about it, but she has written about it in her best-selling memoir ‘Shoot The Damned Dog’ and refers to it often in her Psychologies columns. I think it was this openness about her frailty – and strength in dealing with it – that made me want to have her in the magazine, every month. She has a no-nonsense style that has made her the writer about whom I get more emails and letters than any other contributor.
Until recently she was also a neighbour of mine in north-west London. We would have tea or a meal together in a local restaurant or each other’s kitchens. I miss her now that she has moved to the seaside, but I believe that she is making a new, enriching life for herself that will keep the ‘damned dog’ at bay, and have her writing for my magazine for a long time to come.
We’re going to be publishing one of Sally’s columns online each week, starting with her first, ‘Love Is Giving, Not Saying’.
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