About Choice Magazine

Choice Magazine has been the UK’s leading independent monthly for men and women over 50 for more than 50 years. Now the print magazine has been transformed into this website, still helping defend the assets of health, family, relationships and experience we have built up in our early and mid-lives.

It will also entertain and inspire you to make the most of life with superbly photographed articles and posts on travel, food, wine, home and garden, wildlife, pets.

Choice is all about life today but it also enjoys a little look back at the way we used to live and some of the significant moments in our recent history.

It has a thoroughly modern approach written by experts and people who understand what is needed by this “golden generation” because they are part of it themselves.

It isn’t beholden to any owner who is selling other products. It is independently owned and can always tell it the way it is.

Whether you are working towards retirement or already there, Choice will help you enjoy life.

History

The magazine was launched as Retirement Choice by the Pre-Retirement Association (known as the PRA) in October 1972.

By the early seventies Britain’s social and economic structure was changing rapidly. Two world wars interspersed with world economic depression had given way to growing prosperity and determination on the part of employees, who had paid the main price of war and recession, to have a much better share of the good life.

Work was already becoming more white collar and better health meant longer retirement. The post war baby boom meant pressure on the job market was often solved by retiring staff earlier. But to be able to meet such aspirations during a longer retirement employees needed to be better prepared financially, psychologically and physically.

After a couple of years the PRA brought in professional publishers to take over.

In the early 1980s, however the magazine was sold to a mainstream publisher Emap, reputedly for over £1m. Meanwhile in France the Catholic publisher Bayard Presse having launched their flagship retirement magazine Notre Temps (Our Time) in 1968 had made a stunning success of it, selling well over a million copies a month. They had expanded the concept into many parts of western Europe and into Canada and the USA.

Both Emap and Bayard Presse saw the potential for a joint venture in Choice and it subsequently led to joint ventures in French magazines and markets, too.

Eventually the joint venture was dissolved and Bayard Presse owned Choice wholly for a while before the magazine was acquired by its management over 20 years ago maintaining its independence and ensuring its control by editorial rather than commercial.

Sharply rising costs of print, paper and distribution meant that we had to reluctantly close the print edition in December 2022 concentrating on this and other websites. In different format but with the same independent principals Choice continues to ride online.