As a young man, magazines were my window to the world. That wonder will be lost when all the shops have gone | John Harris

The closure of former WH Smith stores across the UK is a somber reminder of many things. The magazines they once sold were meant to be read and appreciated, offering a wider perspective on the world. In the late 1970s, the short but intense career of the Sex Pistols was followed by a sensational drama-documentary titled The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle.

This film portrayed their rise and fall as a grand fraud, encapsulated by a T-shirt slogan worn by their former manager Malcolm McLaren: "Cash from Chaos". That phrase epitomised his approach to cultural mischief, but things often take surprising turns - and 50 years later, a strikingly similar motto seems to be shaping the future of a growing portion of the British retail sector.

While Andy Burnham aims to revitalize town centres, a private equity firm is buying up national retail chains and shutting down numerous stores, all within the guidelines of its founder's famous words: "Where there's chaos, there's opportunity." These words came from Jamie Constable, the owner of a company that includes Modella Capital, which specializes in distressed investing and aggressive restructuring.

In 2024, Modella acquired Hobbycraft, insisting on their commitment to brick-and-mortar retail but subsequently closed 18 shops, resulting in 600 job losses, while shifting the responsibility of redundancy costs to the public purse.

Months later, Modella acquired The Original Factory Shop, only for the entire chain to disappear. Their most ambitious move was the recent purchase of the 480 high-street shops that previously traded as WH Smith, rebranded as TG Jones (a fabricated name that would maintain a familial business image), and the abrupt announcement of up to 150 closures.

In September, 19 branches were among the last to close, located in Bath, Southend, Cardigan, Redhill, and Basildon in Essex. This month, 23 more stores will permanently shutter their doors.

The short-sighted decision to fold into previous WH Smith premises will inevitably lead to the loss of many local post offices: by early 2027, 70 will have disappeared. It will also speed up the decline of printed newspapers. For the reporter and many others, the main heartbreak in this tale is centered around magazines, those delightful, tactile publications that played a vital role in shaping many individuals.

As someone who fell in love with magazines as a child, through a weekly educational publication called Look and Learn, with its comic-strip adaptations of Dickens stories and space exploration facts. By my early teens, I was an avid reader of music-focused magazines like Sounds, the Melody Maker, and NME - the weekly music publications that were essentially magazines whose ink would run off your fingers.

Working for these titles during my 19th to 26th birthdays, I gained invaluable experience, ultimately joining Emap Metro, a company that placed great emphasis on glossy weeklies and monthlies.

While some names may not mean much to younger readers, they evoke a sense of nostalgia for older ones: Q, Smash Hits, Select (which I edited for three years), Sky, Kerrang!, Big, Neon, FHM. Most have since closed, but three of the original stable are still operational, under different ownership: Kerrang! (primarily online), Empire (the film bible), and Mojo, the music magazine for which I am privileged to still contribute.

Thirty years ago, we were all aware that magazines provided the best platform for in-depth interviews and high-quality photography. The management always asked us who our target audience was, and what the future held. Even minor coverlines were scrutinized, as if a mention of Placebo or DJ Shadow could attract countless new readers.

Although many of us didn't listen, we were instructed not to place magazines in sealed plastic bags (which, in line with tradition, would contain "free gifts") to avoid losing the kind of customer who enjoyed browsing before purchasing. This is where the TG Jones story takes a tragic turn. The business has understandably acquired a grim reputation, but it was once a dependable place to find shelves filled with printed content worthy of endless curiosity.

Now, however, the culturally diverse 20-something in Rickmansworth will no longer come across the latest edition of the cutting-edge music monthly the Wire, and thus won't be introduced to the world of esoteric electronica and contemporary avant-garde jazz. The student-age customer in Ormskirk, tired of formulaic pop, might not be aware of the more substantial music covered by Mojo's excellent rival, Uncut.

Aspiring radicals will miss out on browsing the printed version of Tribune; film enthusiasts may be completely unaware of the in-depth, art-house offerings of Sight and Sound.

Publishers will scramble to alert us to subscription offers, but for many, they will be prohibitively expensive. As George Orwell once wrote, the UK is "a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans". Products reflecting this enduring aspect of our national character are still central to magazine publishing, explaining why certain titles still sell impressively: for instance, BBC Gardeners' World sells an average of 164,807 copies monthly, while Country Living shifts 107,596.

The broad women's and fashion sector remains strong. However, one can easily envision a Mark Zuckerberg-like voice dismissing all of this as outdated nonsense, claiming that printed magazines can easily be replicated or replaced.