My friend, Jill and I have a reciprocal agreement whereby we exchange magazines each month after we've read them. She gets my Essentials, Style at Home and Gardeners' World and I get her House Beautiful, Choice and BBC Focus magazines. The first two of these magazines are easy reading but I was a bit taken aback by Focus in the beginning as I'm a complete science numpty. However, once I began to read it, this magazine proved to be an absolute revelation and I now look forward to reading it each month. BBC Focus is a month glossy magazine which covers all aspects of science and nature not only on our own planet or even within our solar system but like Buzz ...  Read the complete review

Up until my GCSEs I loved science, even telling one of my primary school teachers I was going to be an inventor! I needed to know how things worked and why. Like Bill Bryson, I was irrationally concerned with the thought that when a plug is removed from a socket, what stops the electricity leaking out? GCSEs have a habit of killing enthusiasm and inspiration - not the teachers' fault, just the tune they have to dance to. With an inability to understand molecular equations, I lost interest in Chemistry, and the only thing I accomplished in Physics was making a pair of roller-skates out of wires from the electronics kit and wooden trucks used to measure ...  Read the complete review

Focus is the magazine that allows you to discover the world around you – lots of science, technology and discovery articles. I have been reading this magazine for several years now, having become a subscriber, and I must say it is one of the most interesting magazines around. You don’t just need to be interested in science, as it is far more than that. It is all about the world today and is the magazine equivalent of a few hours on the Discovery Channel. Basically, the magazine splits its articles into five themes: science, technology, nature, adventure and culture, and within each theme each issue will have several articles of a very ...  Read the complete review

Focus is written with the intelligent general reader in mind. Less dense than, say, the New Scientist but far from lowbrow, I`ve been reading this magazine for some years now. If anything Focus is a bit of a misnomer. It covers science and technology as well as history, geography, psychology, and anything else they feel like throwing in. What it doesn`t do is remain focused on any one subject. Unfocus would have been more accurate, although a title like that probably wouldn`t have sold as many copies. At around 120 pages with few adverts it always takes me a few days to get through. The articles are usually well written and bring up vital ...  Read the complete review

I've been interested in science since I was a young kid harping at my mum and dad to buy me a microscope and a telescope. I never got the microscope or the telescope but I did get treated to the odd copy of Focus and it is a magazine that I still have a special place in my heart for. It currently retails for around £4, if I remember correctly, but as I have a subscription, I save a fortune on the cover price. Subscription prices vary depending on current promotions and on which subscription website you buy it from, but expect to pay about £16 for a 6 month subscription or £30 for a year. There are quite often special deals on where you receive a free gift with ...  Read the complete review