Look and Learn

About Look and Learn

Look and Learn is a London-based picture library specialising in historical and vintage imagery, a member of the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) whose collection is one of the great visual archives of British publishing. The core of the library derives from its ownership of the copyright of some 30,000 outstanding illustrations that appeared in sixteen classic children's illustrated magazines, including the celebrated weekly Look and Learn, published from 1962 to 1982. That material is complemented by hundreds of thousands of illustrations drawn from books, magazines, prints, photographs, posters, trade cards and ephemera of all types, making the library a first port of call for publishers, broadcasters and media producers seeking historical and educational imagery with clear provenance and copyright.

The Look and Learn name is famous twice over: once as the magazine that was a kind of literary Blue Peter for a generation of British children, boasting a million readers around the Commonwealth at its peak, and once as the picture library that rescued its artwork and built one of Britain's most distinctive image collections around it. This profile traces both stories — the magazine and the library — and explains how 30,000 magazine illustrations became a working archive for the world's media.

The Magazine: An Instant Hit

Look and Learn magazine was an instant hit when it was launched in 1962. It was bigger than its rivals and contained far more colour pages than the black-and-white comic strip magazines of the time, standing out on news-stands crowded with Fleetway's comic papers. The new 24-page weekly, measuring 10 inches by 13 inches, carried half its pages in full colour — a lavish proposition for a children's paper — and quickly built an audience that once boasted one million child readers around the Commonwealth. With its wholesome, educational image, it became a kind of literary Blue Peter, the respectable alternative to comics full of escapist strip cartoons.

The first issue, dated 20 January 1962, lived up to its editor's claim that it was "a treasure house of exciting articles, stories and pictures". A photograph of the young Prince of Wales, Charles, dominated the first cover, alongside a painting of the first Charles, Prince of Wales, from 300 years earlier — a juxtaposition of past and present that set the tone for everything that followed. The magazine would always dedicate its front cover to a single painted illustration on a variety of subjects, from famous characters in books to famous dogs from history.

Len Matthews and Fleetway

The original Look and Learn was the brainchild of Len Matthews, who in the early 1960s was juvenile publications director at Fleetway Publications. Matthews saw a gap in the market for a children's paper that was educational without being dull, and he assembled a formula of commissioned paintings, illustrated articles and serialised stories that treated young readers as intelligent. Fleetway, one of the great British publishing houses, backed the launch, and the magazine's success vindicated the investment: at a time when television was beginning to compete for children's attention, Look and Learn proved there was still a mass market for a quality printed weekly.

The magazine ran from 1962 to 1982, a twenty-year span that took it through the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s while holding to its core identity. It featured articles on art, history, nature, literature and astronomy, illustrated by some of the finest commercial artists working in Britain. For a generation of readers, the painted illustrations — historical reconstructions, natural history plates, portraits of explorers and inventors — were a visual education in themselves.

From Magazine to Picture Library

When the magazine ceased publication, its archive of original artwork represented an extraordinary asset: thousands of commissioned illustrations covering the whole span of human history and natural science, all created for publication and therefore documented, captioned and ready for reuse. The picture library that became Look and Learn was built on this foundation, acquiring the copyright of some 30,000 illustrations from sixteen classic children's illustrated magazines, with the Look and Learn weekly at the centre of the collection.

The library's holdings extend far beyond the magazine material. Hundreds of thousands of further illustrations have been added from books, magazines, prints, photographs, posters, trade cards and ephemera of all types, creating a collection that spans centuries of visual culture. The result is a specialist library in historical pictures and vintage imagery, distinct from the news and stock agencies and closer in spirit to a museum picture library — but with the commercial licensing operation that working publishers require.

The Collection

The heart of the collection is the magazine illustration archive: 30,000 images commissioned for sixteen children's titles, representing the work of Britain's post-war commercial illustrators at their peak. Historical scenes dominate — battles, coronations, explorers, inventors, ancient civilisations — alongside natural history, science, literature and portraiture. Because the illustrations were created to educate children, they are clear, accurate and narrative: a quality that makes them ideal for modern educational publishing, documentary television and museum interpretation.

Around this core sits the wider collection of vintage imagery: book illustrations from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, prints and engravings, early photographs, posters, trade cards and ephemera. The library's website organises this material into searchable historical categories, and its images appear in books, magazines, newspapers, television programmes and digital media worldwide. The Bridgeman Images platform hosts the "Look and Learn (Peter Jackson Collection)", extending the library's reach through one of the world's largest art and archive licensing networks.

Clients and Licensing

Look and Learn licenses its images to publishers, broadcasters, producers and designers who need historical and educational imagery with reliable rights clearance. Educational publishing is a natural market: the illustrations were made for exactly that purpose, and textbook and children's book publishers draw on the collection for material that is both authentic and cleared for use. Television documentary makers use the historical reconstructions and portraits to illustrate programmes about history, science and biography, while newspapers and magazines license images for features and supplements.

The library's BAPLA membership signals its adherence to the professional standards of the picture library industry — proper rights management, accurate cataloguing and fair dealing with both contributors and clients. For image buyers, the value of a specialist library lies in curation: rather than searching millions of undifferentiated stock images, a researcher can work with a collection that has been assembled, captioned and rights-cleared around a coherent historical and educational brief.

The Relaunch of the Magazine

The Look and Learn name proved durable enough to support a revival. A new company, Look and Learn Ltd, was formed and bought the publishing rights of the more than 1,000 previous magazine issues, with plans to reprint many of the old articles and comic strips. The relaunch was conceived as a direct challenge to modern children's magazines full of soap opera news, reviews of violent video games, sex advice and the antics of pop stars — a deliberate return to the wholesome, educational formula of the 1962 original.

The new company planned a limited run of 48 issues on a subscription-only basis, with editions also downloadable via the internet, bringing the well-loved stories of titles like Ben-Hur and Britain's epic wartime battles to a new generation of readers. The relaunch demonstrated the enduring affection for the brand: decades after the last original issue, there remained an audience — now largely of nostalgic parents and grandparents — willing to pay for the magazine's distinctive blend of learning and illustration.

The Illustrators' Legacy

One of the library's most important functions is as a memorial to the commercial illustrators of post-war Britain. The artists who painted for Look and Learn and its sister magazines worked in a demanding tradition: historically accurate, dramatically composed, technically superb, and produced to weekly deadlines. Many were among the finest figurative painters of their generation, yet their names were known mainly within the trade. The library's preservation and licensing of their work has kept it in circulation long after the magazines closed.

This legacy has found new audiences. Original Look and Learn artwork is collected, exhibitions of magazine illustration draw crowds, and the images circulate on social media to audiences who never saw the magazine. The library's role in this afterlife is practical as well as cultural: by maintaining the copyright and the archive, it ensures the work remains available for legitimate use rather than disappearing into attics and skips.

Industry Role

Within the picture library industry, Look and Learn occupies a specialist niche. The big general stock agencies compete on volume; Look and Learn competes on distinctiveness. Its collection cannot be replicated — the 30,000 magazine illustrations are a finite, copyrighted archive of a particular moment in British visual culture — and that uniqueness is its commercial moat. Alongside fellow specialists in natural history, science and art imagery, it serves the segment of the market where provenance and subject expertise matter more than sheer numbers.

The library also represents a model of archive rescue that has become increasingly important. As print publishing contracted, vast quantities of commissioned artwork risked being lost; Look and Learn's business is built on the proposition that such archives have lasting commercial and cultural value if they are preserved, catalogued and made searchable. In an era of generative imagery, the demand for authentic historical illustration — real paintings of real historical subjects, made by real artists — has arguably never been higher.

Recent Developments

The library continues to operate from London as a working picture library, licensing its historical and educational imagery to clients worldwide through its website at lookandlearn.com. Its collection remains one of the largest single archives of British magazine illustration, and its partnership with platforms such as Bridgeman Images has extended its distribution into the art and museum licensing world. The historical categories on its site — from ancient history to the 20th century — reflect the breadth of material available to researchers and picture buyers.

More than sixty years after the first issue hit the news-stands, the Look and Learn name still means what Len Matthews intended: pictures that teach. The magazine educated a generation of children; the library now supplies the images with which publishers, broadcasters and educators teach the next ones. It is a rare example of a publishing brand whose second life has been as significant as its first.

Official website: lookandlearn.com