Glamour magazine is a glossy monthly women's magazine which touts itself as being 'Britain's No1.' Its selling point when it was first sold a few years ago was that it was the first to be sold in smaller - travel-size format. It costs £2 and the magazine also has a website at www.glamour.com.

Typically coming in at just over 300 pages, the magazine features the full gamut that you would expect a typical young woman's magazine to cover. It does have a particular onus on beauty and fashion which is not surprising given its title. It is also particularly celebrity focussed - choosing to exhibit new fashions and styles to be displayed on famous preopl rather than models. A large part of the fashion section at the front of the magazine takes the view of displaying its information as a bunch of dos and donts. That said a lot of the fashion featured is affordable or from the high streets, although there are some designer pieces thrown in.

Other sections include sex, reality (ie true life stories), men (?!), ethical campaigns about issues that directly effect women, self discovery, love, hair and makeup, health and travel.

Amongst other features which are to be expected and which you will find regulars such as a readers page, quizzes, starsignes, competitions, promotional features.

I think that it is fair to say that this is not really a heavy read by any stretch of the imagination. The size of the pages mean that the features and celebrity interviews do not have any real space to get that involved and detailed. Aside from the fact that there is also quite a bit of advertising (for products of a generally mainstream price range), there are also a lot of 'advertising promotion features', perhaps more so than I would typically expect.

It almost sounds silly to say this, but this is a really female-friendly magazine - it really does wear its heart on its sleeves with its campaigns and also it runs a very high profile 'Women of The Year' awards ceremony where it celebrates a number of successful women from a number of fields which are not exclusively kept to showbiz types but entrepreneurs and sportswomen as well.

It is fair to say that for the most part this is not a magazine which takes itself too seriously. A lot of the articles are written in good humour. Yet when it needs to adopt a more appropriate tone it succeeds also. For example, in the July 2010 edition, several pages are given over to an article giving information about skin cancer which provided me with some very good information as well as photographs of various mole abnormalities which I am planning to keep hold of for my own reference.

Despite its low price, it is one of the best if not the best for the quality of freebies it give away. At several points that I have known of it has given away full size brands of a well-known cosmetic. For example I have picked up Nails Inc nail polish and just last month there was a give away of any one of three different Benefit products which were each worth £14 in their own right. Be warned, however, that when these giveways happen they tend to get sold out in stores pretty quickly!

In conclusion, this is a satisfactory read, but generally something I only tend to buy when they are giving away really good freebies!