TABLE-top publishing is alive and well in and around the Herefordshire-Radnorshire border where no fewer than three quarterly journals are providing an antidote to specialist magazines favouring photographs over text.

Latest to hit the road is Classic Motoring Review, a brand new quarterly aimed at enthusiasts with a passion for the heyday of ‘real’ motoring which now joins what has become a local phenomenon for home-produced periodicals.

CMR comes hot off the dining room press from Presteigne journalist Mark Williams, forming a trio of separate journals coming out of this veritable golden triangle of publishing.

Author Sam Llewellyn’s salty Marine Quarterly was launched seven years ago from his home at Lyonshall and writer David Wheeler’s ‘daddy’ of them all, Hortus, has been growing since 1987 from his kitchen table at Bryans Ground in Stapleton with subscribers in 32 countries.

Mark’s first ‘Reading the Road’ journal is his response to what he considers to be motoring magazine ‘porn’.

He explains: “The thinking behind it reflects my increasing frustration with so many car magazines - big photos at the expense of text. Classic car porn has become very formulaic.”

He points out that his review has “great writers and archive material”.

Produced on the kitchen table, the publication’s team includes Mark’s wife, author Deborah Moggach, who is listed as ‘editorial intern’.

Sam Llewellyn’s Marine Quarterly came “second to the party”, he explains.

An “antidote to glossy yachting magazines”, the sea journal comes packed with articles on sailing, adventuring, heritage and naval matters and is eagerly sought by subscribers across the world.

Established for more than 30 years, David Wheeler’s Hortus, heralded as the ‘New Yorker of horticultural reading’, is a winner of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Gold Veitch Memorial Medal.

Strongly rooted, the journal can attract good, unsolicited material.

“People want to join the family,” says David.

However, he prefers to commission writers to give him the right to edit material.

The three men agree their contributors are not paid a fortune.

“Mostly peanuts,” says David. “Sometimes cashews.”

The three editors explain that they feed off each other. And one of Hortus’s subscribers was inspired to launch Slightly Foxed, a quarterly journal for booklovers which has a remarkable 7,500 subscribers.