Back in 2003, Al, Timmy and I sat in The Grosvenor pub on Mansfield Road with an idea. We wanted to create a magazine that covered the things in Nottingham we loved. Other local media existed back then, the Post and BBC Nottingham have basically been around forever, but none of it was covering the musicians and promoters we liked, the films being made here or the exhibitions by Notts artists. We felt all those things needed representation.
So we started something and named it after the city’s well known meeting point; the left lion. It started as a website and a year on we began publishing a printed magazine. This led us to work with some of the great illustrators, photographers and designers whose work you can see here. Some of them have gone on to big things in the art world, others have followed different paths. But we chose them all because we love what they do. If you’re interested in being proper geeky, everything inside each magazine is available through our website as pdfs too.
I was twenty-four when this started. I’m forty next year and the years have flown by. The city has changed; we’ve got trams, music festivals, a new Market Square, a relatively low rate of gun crime and an awesome gallery in Nottingham Contemporary. The publishing landscape has changed too; LeftLion started out before Facebook, Twitter and Instagram took over media as we know it. The NME and the Independent even had printed editions back then.
We really hope LeftLion will be here and in print in another fifteen years. Although if we do release a book of covers 101-200 then it will probably come out in late 2026, rather than in another 15 years. Why? Well, although we’re now a monthly magazine, it wasn’t always like that. We actually published our first printed issue in October 2004 and for the next decade we published every other month. It was only from October 2014 we went monthly and, even then, we avoided doing a January issue until 2018.
So basically, the maths are complicated but you’re definitely all getting more LeftLion than ever before, despite the decline in print media. That has to be a good thing, right?
Jared Wilson Editor in Chief 2003-2018
1. October 2004 (David Bowen)
Our first ever cover. Shane Meadows fronting it just as Dead Man’s Shoes was being released. It’s still our favourite of his films. Photo taken on a street corner in Sneinton.
2. January 2005 (David Bowen)
It’s not clear from the photo, but this was Whycliffe walking through the Forest Rec. We’ve got a lot of room in our hearts for that man. In the issue we ran an interview with him, where we found out how he ended up going from MTV, to singing for change on the streets.
3. March 2005 (Dilk and Small Kid)
Our first ever colour cover. We worked with the local graffiti shop Coverage (now Montana) to get loads of local artists to contribute, including the awesome rapper Scorzayzee.
4. May 2005 (David Kingsbury)
This issue was a special on the Notts music scene and our designer mocked up a Notts version of Now That’s What I Call Music. The photo was shot in Rob’s Record Mart on Hurts Yard.
5. June 2005 (Rikki Marr)
Skegness is the ultimate Notts holiday destination. This was the first cover of many by Rikki Marr. He always sneaks something in there. Look in the right-hand corner to see what our former Editor Al Needham is doing to Su Pollard. Eek!
6. August 2005 (David Bowen)
Back then Carl Froch wasn’t that well-known. His days of major boxing titles were still a few years away. We did a nice interview at his family-owned pub in Carlton and took this photo outside.
7. October 2005 (The LeftLion Forum, 2004-2013)
Like Nottstradamus, we designed a logo and branding for Notts TV nine years before it existed. This was our “Notts on the Box” special and the images were sourced from members of our online forum.
8. December 2005 (Seismik)
9. February 2006 (David
This
The artist Seismik (Simon Dunn) was doing these really cool flyers for Spectrum club nights. We told him who was going to be in that issue, including Liam from The Prodigy and Dizzee Rascal, and he went off on one with them, George Akins and Santa Claus.
Kingsbury)
issue contained a history of radio in Nottingham. Did you know that Dale Winton started out broadcasting in Nottingham? Neither did we before we put this issue together.
10. April 2006 (Rob White)
This was a dedicated “Art” issue and we got Jennie Syson, later of Syson Gallery, to guest edit with us. The cover was the first of many by Rob White, who also does the Arthole cartoon for us.
11. June 2006
The 2006 World Cup was kicking off in Germany and Al Needham had this idea of doing an England badge with three left lions. Our designer bought it to life. The Navigation Brewery made us a beer too, and this was on the pump clips in bars across the city.
(David Kingsbury and Al Needham)
12. August 2006 (David Kingsbury)
This was one of a few collage-y covers we did back in the day. It’s a funny juxtaposition seeing Johnny Rotten share a space with Jeannie Packer, the Sheriff of Nottingham.
13.
October 2006 (Rob White)
We asked Rob White to do something with Goose Fair and he came back with this. It’s quite jolly, aside from the blood dripping from the goose’s mouth.
We’d love to do a proper LeftLion advent calendar with opening doors, but printing something like that 10,000 times is out of our budget. Instead we asked Rikki to draw this. True to form, he sneaked his future wife Natalie as the angel on the top.
15.
We were dead excited when we got the opportunity to interview fashion guru Sir Paul Smith. We’d like to pretend he drew this cover especially for us, but his company emailed us over a stripe pattern. Think they might use it on carrier bags too.
14. December 2006 (Rikki Marr)
February 2007 (Sir Paul Smith)
16. April 2007 (Dom Henry)
The Market Square had just been redone and we wanted to get a proper photo. Dom Henry had to beg the people in the Pearl Assurance offices opposite to climb out of their window to take this.
17. June 2007 (Si Mitchell)
The artist who did this went on to draw for Green Day, Channel 4, McFly and more. He tried to convince me it was a “colour me in” cover, but we suspect he just ran out of time to finish it.
20.
December 2007 (Si Mitchell)
The ice rink had come to Nottingham city centre for the first time ever and we thought it would be funny to have loads of people falling over on it. Then the Sheriff of Nottingham did just that at the opening and broke her arm. Oops!
18. August 2007 (Lewis Heriz)
Another cover with illustrations of the people in it. We interviewed actor Paul Kaye, then famous for Dennis Pennis, and film director Jonathan Glazer in the cemetery off Waverley street near Trent Uni.
19. October 2007 (Chris Summerlin)
The Xylophone Man is basically the patron saint of LeftLion. We love this illustration (based on a photo taken at his interview with us, the only one he ever did). We didn’t even cover him in this issue, we just wanted him on there.
22. April 2008 (Rikki Marr
Another killer idea dreamed up by Al Needham and executed by Rikki Marr. Where else would you get Chuck D from Public Enemy in the same issue as a man who sells fish from a basket in pubs?
21. February 2008 (Alex
The artist who drew this had a really lovely style we wanted to explore. So we got her to draw a version of our cityscape, complete with cranes to signify the redevelopment of the time.
ANOTHER SHOOTING IN NOTTINGHAM
23. June 2008 (David Kingsbury)
Gun crime... yadda yadda. We were sick of reading the news about Nottingham by this stage and more excited by our growing film scene.
24.
He’s one of the city’s greatest ever authors so it was a rare pleasure for us to interview Alan Sillitoe and devote a whole issue to his work. He hand wrote the letter on the cover as an ode to Nottingham.
Inspired
PARENTAL GUIDANCE #23 our style is legendary June July 2008 BADWORDS INSIDE
Nottingham Event Listings Guide
August 2008 (Team effort)
25. October 2008 (Craig Humpston)
by the artwork of Grand Theft Auto, this was our way of welcoming new students to Notts. We love the blackbird selling the Evening Post, but perhaps it should have been a pigeon.
Godwin)
26.
It
29.
Twenty20
27. February 2009 (David
“Credit crunch” was a major buzzword back then, so we thought we’d plagiarise Tesco’s budget branding. Thankfully they didn’t sue.
30. August 2009 (Various)
It was our fifth birthday and some of our regular artists designed us birthday cards. We couldn’t decide which to use, so we stuck them all on the cover instead.
December 2009 (Chris Summerlin)
was christmas and who doesn’t love the idea of the actual left lion in a santa outfit?
Kingsbury)
June 2009 (David Kingsbury)
Cricket was increasing in popularity, partly due to a TV deal, and we’d never done a photoshoot at Nottingham’s iconic Trent Bridge. Nice of them to let us set up camp.
28. April 2009 (Rikki Marr)
Selectadisc was a Nottingham institution and we were understandably gutted when it closed. This issue was a tribute to them. We still miss them to this day.
31. October 2009 (Rob White)
Another Rob White illustration, with stormy clouds above Nottingham and just that little dash of colour to liven it up.
32. December 2009 (David Kingsbury)
We were about to exit the ‘noughties’ and what better way to celebrate than a pastiche of the seminal Sgt. Pepper's record cover, featuring notable figures from the decade such as The Fish Man, Usain Bolt and Crazy Frog.
Juxtaposition has always been a strength of LeftLion and having a softly covered maths-esque illustration like this with “Cagefighting special” written on it tickles us still.
33. February 2009 (Jeffrey Bowman)
35. June 2009 (Simon Dunn and Jason Holroyd)
World Cup time again; this time in South Africa. We thought we’d recreate England’s iconic 1966 pose with some Nottingham footballing heroes. Can you name them all?
34. April 2009 (Dom Henry)
Every decade they release a new Robin Hood film and this time it was Russell Crowe’s turn to pollute our local legend. The photo was shot in Jared’s living room, with various team members on it and our old friend Ade Andrews as the main man.
36. August 2009 (Rikki Marr)
Old Big ‘Ead made it onto two covers in a row, mainly because Rikki Marr decided to forsake his usual graffiti style and do this lovely oil painting of ‘Byron Clough’ (a pastiche of Clough and Lord Byron). Years later, the character was brought back to life as part of James Walker’s Dawn of the Unread digital comic series.
37. October 2010 (Rob Antill)
This photographer sent us loads of panoramic shots of the market square and we loved the way he made Notts look like a planet. It also reminded us of the Ministry of Sound logo.
38.
December 2010 (Video Mat)
Video Mat brings this amazing grungey style to his photography and we loved what he did to the left lion. As you can see in the corner, this issue also featured a Rock City magazine we made too.
39. February 2011 (Trish Evans)
The photographer had been doing all this work with lights and long exposures. She showed us some of her work and it looked awesome. Plus we love the Sky Mirror and it hadn’t been on our cover before.
40. April 2011
(Rikki Marr)
When HRH Wills announced he was getting married we made a joke in the office that his stag do would be in Notts. We never realised that his brother (also featured) would become a regular visitor to the city.
41.
We met Marcus, this
who worked on Little Shop of Horrors, and he had loads of fun ideas. So many that, for a while, we gave him his own slot inside puppetising Notts buildings. The photo was taken by his friend David (son of Alan) Sillitoe.
June 2011 (Marcus Clarke and David Sillitoe)
puppeteer
42. Aug 2011 (James Huyton)
Another collage, inspired by those old Beano illustrations with loads of characters on the beach. The Roxy Rob interview in this issue was a bit special.
43. October 2011 (Nick Chaffe)
The (actual) left lion obviously holds a special place in our hearts. But who knew he looked great in a hoodie too?
45. Feb 2012 (Cameron Bain)
The artist had been doing these great club flyers for Rubberdub Soundsystem. Our ‘Midlands Madonna’ Ronika was interviewed in this issue and became only the second person to feature on two covers in a row (the first being Cloughie on 35 and 36).
44. December 2011 (David Baird)
This was probably the hardest cover to organise ever. All of those people are real as we took a big “school” photo of about 400 members of the Nottingham music scene in Rock City. Jared organised it, so why is he one of the few not looking at the camera? The photographer David had just won NME’s Photographer of the Year.
46.
April 2012 (Dilk and Debbie Davies)
Notts graffiti legend Dilk has featured in our magazine more than most, and it’s because he’s been running our street art scene for years. He found a wall and sprayed LeftLion on it in his awesome lettering style. Debbie took the photo.
47. June 2012 (Paul Fillingham)
Old and new Nottingham splurged together when we came across this photograph of the Council House under construction and decided we had to do something with it.
48.
Aug 2012 (Scott
Scott had taken so many amazing photos of and around Nottinghamshire and, to be honest, they were dead useful when something fell through or we hadn’t got anything else lined up for the cover.
50: Dec 2012 (Rikki Marr)
Our fiftieth issue! If you’re wondering why it took us so long, we were still bi-monthly at this stage. Clumber Street meets Quality Street in this Christmas special.
Wilson)
49. Oct 2012 (Rob White)
Another Rob White cover. This time based on those holiday postcards you’d get from seaside resorts. There’s a touch of Grant Wood’s American Gothic in there too.
51. Feb 2013 (Small Kid)
Small Kid is one of the most influential street artists Notts has seen in our lifetime. When we asked him to come up with a concept he did this pastiche of the MGM lions you see at the start of a movie.
52. April 2013 (Scott Wilson)
53. June 2013 (Jon
Another brilliant photo from Scott of daisies growing in a Nottinghamshire field. Another one that saved our bacon when we’d run out of time to do something more relevant to the content inside.
Burgerman)
Mr Burgerman sells prints from his base in Brooklyn, New York for hundreds and thousands of pounds these days. He gave this one away to the Nottingham masses for nowt.
55. October 2013 (John Blanche) Games Workshop are a global brand who have their headquarters in Lenton. We decided to feature them and their seminal artist John Blanche offered to do us a cover. He reckons this was the first piece of artistic work he’d done outside the company for thirty years.
54. August 2013 (Video Mat)
It was our tenth birthday and we pulled out all the stops with the interviewees like Su Pollard, Sam Morton, Dale Winton and Ray Gosling. But we decided to put our staff on the cover for once and got Video Mat to make us look like a gangster family.
56.
December 2013 (Eleanor Burke and Jessica Hallford)
We’d been looking at knitting patterns and got Eleanor from Knit Nottingham to make us a Christmas jumper with the left lion and deers, from Wollaton Park, shagging on it. Saint Raymond and our friend Cheryl were the models and Jessica took the photo.
57. February 2014
(Simba Muganiri)
Remember that bubble writing you used to do on your textbooks at school? Well, Simba is significantly better at that than all of us, and he did a grand job heading up our hip hop special.
58. April 2014 (Rob White)
You ask Rob White to come up with an Easter-y cover and he comes back with a massive space robot egg, pooing out fried eggs onto a small race of people. That’s how his mind works.
60. August 2014 (Relick)
A new football season began, so we put out a nice subtle infographic style cover that hints to our two local clubs, but thankfully doesn’t look like a cover of Shoot or Match.
59. June 2014 (Video Mat)
It’s fair to say we were deliberately provocative here, but what are you supposed to do if you grow up with people from Yorkshire shouting “scabs” at you every time you play them at football? The article inside by Harry Patterson hopefully helped to unpack some of the miners’ strike myths about our town.
61. October 2014 (Hedboy)
A classic design commissioned to celebrate GameCity and the news that the National Videogame Arcade was set to launch in the city. Who doesn’t love Mario as Robin Hood?
62.
November 2014 (Rikki Marr)
This cover celebrated our first crowdfunding campaign to help us go monthly. If Rikki drew you on there, it’s because you chipped in to help us fund that. Either that, or you’re a massive lion or gorilla.
64.
The city had just been awarded the title of ‘City of Football’ and to celebrate we did a triptych of three illustrations by our designer Raphael. That was the first time we started playing with multiple covers. Check towards the back for the full trio.
65.
If the pins on Google maps looked like this normally, then we’d be using that app all the time, not just when we’re lost in a city that isn’t Nottingham. Nice work Ian.
63. December 2014 (Shaun Gordon) Frank Shelton and his owl, Kim, are regular faces around Notting ham. He’s a bloody lovely bloke too. There’s a great interview by our future editor Bridie Squires inside.
February 2015 (Raphael Achache)
March 2015 (Ian Stewart)
67. May 2015 (Lamar Francois)
Another classic, which was done by Lamar using a long exposure and lots of fire dancing around the Robin Hood statue. Who doesn’t love fire and Robin Hood?
66.
April 2015 (Martin Ross Butler)
It was April and so Martin came out with this lovely steampunky piece where it is actually raining cats and dogs. See what we did there?
68.
June 2015 (Gary Erskine)
The Nottingham Writers Studio had just opened up and our Literature Editor James Walker was commissioning all kinds of artwork for his excellent comic book Dawn of the Unread, including this by an artist famous for drawing Judge Dredd and Hellblazer.
70. August 2015 (Ali Emm and Raphael
See that screamy face? That’s our former editor Ali Emm. She and our designer Raphael came up with the concept of tracing over a photo of hers with censored text from 1984, which was on at the Playhouse.
69. July 2015 (James Walker and Paul Fillingham)
The Creative Quarter meets the Salvation Army in this pastiche of an old propaganda poster by our literature editor James and his artistic sidekick Paul. We love the slanty N floating in the water.
Achache)
71. September 2015 (Feargus
We’ve always been big fans of Broadway Cinema here at LeftLion. So their 25th birthday gave us the perfect chance to try out the skills of etch-expert Feargus. It must have taken him ages to do that.
72.
Mike
enough
When
Stewart)
October 2015 (Mike Driver)
had been illustrating our Street Tales feature for a while, but he wanted to try out a new geometric style here. If you look at it long
you might spot some bits of the Nottingham skyline in there.
74. December 2015 (Christopher Paul Bradshaw)
The artist who illustrated our cycling column Spoke ‘n’ Words had a blast when we gave him the Christmas cover. We like to imagine this chillin’ Rudolph would get on quite well with the deer down Wollo Park.
75. February 2016 (Dave Parry)
Nottingham Playhouse announced they were premiering Any Means Necessary, a new play about the undercover police antics at Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, we payed homage with a triptych cover. See the full spread at the back of this book.
73. November 2015 (Scott Choucino)
See that Raleigh Burner? Bridie Squires used to bomb that bogger up Fletcher Gate every morning and carry it up the stairs to the office just to write words for your lot. Any road, our Ali Emm thought up this badboy cover. A lot of people say it reminds them of their childhood in Notts.
76. March 2016 (Raphael Achache)
“Right, Easter’s coming up. Let’s get a bleddy bunny on the cover.” Our designer Raphael Achache had a proper blast knocking up this hoppy little futuristic origami matey. The issue saw us chatting to grime emcee Snowy, Nottingham’s Whistling Orchestra and Touretteshero.
77.
April 2016 (Craig Proud)
After heading along to one of Dizzy Ink’s zine-in-a-day workshops, Bridie fell in love with their art, and their hip-hop-riddled studio overlooking Cobden Chambers. Naturally, we asked the city’s risograph specialists to knock us up a cover.
78. May 2016 (John Newling)
As the sun properly started to come out, John Newling went all terracotta on us for the May issue. He was exhibiting at Surface Gallery that month, picking apart our relationship with the environment. Sticking with the theme, we also had a chat with Jack Perks, the bob-on local nature photographer.
79.
June 2016 (Ian Carrington)
Our regular Write Lion illustrator Ian Carrington went all summer for us when he knocked together two reflecting covers (see both on p44). One bore a man’s arse, the other bore a woman’s arse. Some say they look like they’re on a Caribbean island somewhere, but we know they were actually having a dip in the Trent.
80. July 2016 (Mark Leary)
Mark has proper sorted us out with illustrations over the years, and here he utilised his very cute daughter in the most effervescent cover LeftLion ever did see. The issue was equally as joyous, and featured poet and Mud Press founder Georgina Wilding, as well as Michael Holyk; the man behind the lens for Jake Bugg’s music videos.
81. August 2016 (David Baird)
The Sneinton Dragon got her time to shine when David Baird got down and snapped her. Inside we interviewed artist and creator of the ornamental beast Robert Stubley, who revealed that he was inspired by a Gaudi dragon gate in Barcelona.
82. September 2016 (Matt Jorden)
Stuff got seriously weird when back-to-school time came, and Matt Jorden started swotting up on the human physique. We loved the fabulous flamingo and Fabergé egg.
83. October 2016 (Rikki Marr)
“It’s October, let’s get a bleddy octopus on there. Also, the Speigeltent is coming, and Oktoberfest, and Hockley Hustle, so let’s whack them on there too.” Yeah, we might have been a bit excessive with this one, but Rikki indulged our ideas and came up with this acid trip of a cover any road.
85. December 2016 (Tom Camp)
What’s more Christmassy than a depressed pigeon sitting on a spikey ledge? Tom Camp pulled a blinder with this one, and wrapped up an issue that saw us looking at how we can all be a bit kinder to each other during the darker days of the year.
84. November 2016 (Martin Rayment)
Rupert Bear’s ruckus-fuelled cousin Knobbler got well arsey for our November issue. The brainchild of local artist Martin Rayment, Knobbler’s speech-bubble content was debated over briefly, but it was always going to be one thing, really.
86. February 2017 (Tom Quigley)
Longtime contributor and skate-photography don Tom Quigley showed us what he does best with this cover. His work often depicts skaters as little unassuming features on the landscape. That’s just how he rolls.
87. March 2017 (Wayne Burrows)
Advertising Sectioned columnist and longtime art writer Wayne Burrows had us swooning over this for yonks. His collage game was strong indeed, and we particularly liked the hidden sexual references.
89. May 2017 (Jonathan Costall)
Jacket zipped up, earphones in, let’s go. This one marked the end of an era as Ali Emm stepped down and handed the editorial reins over to Bridie. She rose to the challenge by sodding off to Croatia for a festival, leaving our Editorial Assistant extraordinaire Lucy Manning to sort it all out.
90.
June 2017 (Ali Emm)
A proper goodbye from Ali Emm came in the form of a cover created using a photo taken from Homes and Places: A History of Nottingham’s Council Houses. She went proper off-grid and sewed some fine detail into the photo and our logo.
88. April 2017 (Joe Symonds)
We love working with Joe Symonds and we were blown away when he offered this cover up. We especially like the little “0115” emblazoned on the diver’s chest and the fact you think we’ve missed the ‘N’ off and then realise we haven’t.
91. July 2017 (Joe Symonds)
Remember when Wollaton Hall got taken over by all them dinosaur skeletons from China? Well, we celebrated their arrival with another cover from Joe Symonds, who pulled an absolute blinder with this colourful display of historical beasts.
92. August 2017 (Tom Morley)
We took a look at tattoos in Nottingham; from the meaningful ink, to the dodgy Maga tats. We grabbed local poet Deborah Stevenson, the only person we knew with a lion tattoo, and snapped it right up. The writing reads “Mouthy” in Arabic.
94. October 2017 (Natalie Owen)
The
95. November 2017 (Collabor-8)
magazine was draped in AC Milan’s black and red stripes in light of our first feature-length documentary, The Lord of Milan, premiering at Broadway Cinema. Our Georgi, Raph, Nat and Jared had been off in Italy putting together a film that delved into the story of Notts-born Herbert Kilpin; the ‘father of Italian football’.
Nottingham Contemporary’s art collective, Collabor-8, ran by and for the city’s young ‘uns, did a grand job in putting this other-worldly cover together. They used the content for inspiration and then got printing, folding, drawing and photographing before mashing it all together.
93. September 2017 (Mark Leary)
Shortly after Bridie became Editor, she sat down in Sobar with Mark Leary to talk ideas, and soon discovered her dream of a space-cats cover would become reality with the help of Mark’s genius. The issue was filled with similar troll-based feats, including an interview with the free-party school-crashers Tekonta Secta.
96. December 2017 (Wayne Burrows)
Our team went through a bit of a mad period moving offices from The Corner on Stoney Street. After a brief stint in a gaff where the electrics went out every time it rained, we settled into Sneinton Market. Our Wayne celebrated with us by putting this together over the top of a Tom Morley photo.
97.
January 2018 (Natalie Owen)
For the first time ever, we kicked out a January issue. Luckily we had the help of our mate and Guest Editor Sandeep Mahal, and made a UNESCO City of Literature special. Tom Morley sorted this snap of The Park Tunnel steps, and our Nat did a grand job making the “bookstairs to new beginnings” vision a reality.
98. February 2018 (Billy Partridge)
This was the first issue that we stuck a poster in the middle of the magazine. Young Billy Partridge created the marvellous Raggy Joe character for the cover, and brought him to life in the inside pages. The issue was filled with city stickerers, fights, and soundsystems.
99.
March 2018 (Keith Bloody Mary)
The Screen Special saw us interview Charity Shop Sue, and take a look at Nottingham’s most famous YouTubers, including Martyn Poliakoff. Keith Bloody Mary treated us to this mighty fine display of lion-headed figures, and followed it up with a poster inside filled with square-eyed felines.
100. April 2018 (Raphael Achache)
When we broke triple figures, there was only one thing for it; our old designer and mate Raphael knocking up a picture of Xylophone Man. He is LeftLion’s patron saint, after all. The issue takes a look back at some of the most famous faces to have appeared in the mag, and includes interviews with the city’s best buskers. Plus, we included a free xylophone and dinger. You’re welcome, Nottingham.
