EMAP
The Clerkenwell publisher behind most of the magazines
EMAP published Computer and Video Games from its first issue in 1981, Sinclair User from 1982, Commodore User and its successor CU Amiga from 1983, and later ACE and The One. Five of this Vault's magazine entries are the same company, and it had none of its own.
EMAP — East Midland Allied Press, trading in this period as EMAP Business and Computer Publications Ltd — published a remarkable proportion of the British computer press from a single postcode in Clerkenwell.
What it published
| Magazine | From |
|---|---|
| Computer and Video Games | 1981 ⚠ see below |
| Sinclair User | acquired; ECC Publications launched it in 1982 |
| Commodore User, later CU Amiga | 1983 |
| ACE | 1987 |
| The One | 1988 |
| Mean Machines | 1990 |
That list is five of this Vault’s magazine entries plus a sixth, and until now none of them said whose they were.
What EMAP started and what it bought
⚠ EMAP did not launch all of these, and this entry originally said it did.
Sinclair User’s own colophon in its first issue, April 1982, names someone else outright: “Sinclair User is published monthly by ECC Publications Ltd. It is not in any way connected with Sinclair Research Ltd.” EMAP appears in the magazine from 1983 onward and ECC drops away after 1984, so what the pages record is an acquisition, not a launch.
Computer and Video Games is genuinely unsettled here. Its first issue, November 1981, excludes “anyone except EMAP employees and their relatives” from its competitions and carries an EMAP address at Durrant House, Herbal Hill — but neither is a colophon. Against that, an ECC advertisement in Sinclair User five months later calls ECC “the pioneers of Practical Computing, WHICH COMPUTER?, and Computer & Video Games”. Two sources, two companies, one magazine. This library does not resolve it, and the table above says so rather than picking.
One building, several rivalries
By 1984 the small print gives the address: Priory Court, 30-32 Farringdon Lane, London EC1R 3AU, with the earlier C&VG contact a few streets away at Durrant House, Herbal Hill, in the same EC1R postcode.
So Sinclair User and Commodore User — magazines for two machines whose owners spent the decade arguing about which was better — were produced by one company in one building in Clerkenwell. So, at the top of the market, was C&VG, which reviewed both.
⚠ Sharing a publisher is not sharing an editorial line, and nothing here suggests the titles were run as one. The point is narrower: the rivalry the readers felt was, at the corporate level, a portfolio.
What this entry does not cover
EMAP was a large general publisher long before and long after it sold computer magazines, and this library holds its computing titles rather than its history. founded: 1981 above is the year it enters this Vault’s story, not the year the company was formed.
See also
- Computer and Video Games, Sinclair User, CU Amiga, ACE, The One, Mean Machines — the titles
- Newsfield, Europress, Future Publishing — the other publishing houses