Matthews wanted to emulate Hulton Press' Eagle and Girl by aiming firmly at the middle class with high production values and educational content, in contrast to AP's 1950s ethos of making cheap comics that undercut rivals.

The first issue covered Isabella of Valois; later subjects included the likes of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie Mancini, Catherine the Great and Elizabeth I.

[5] The comic strip content consisted of "Circus Ballerina" (written by Ron "Nobby" Clark and drawn by Bill Lacey), orphan saga "Pam and Peter", "Tess of the Texas Moon" and "The Happy Days".

[6] In autumn the title was joined by the hardback Princess Gift Book for Girls - the name annual being eschewed in line with the publication's posher target market.

[4] Further new strips arrived, including "Lucia and the Golden Mermaid" (illustrated by Italian artist Guido Buzzelli) and "Nurse Angela" (drawn by Mike Hubbard), the first of several nursing-themed stories.

November 1961 also saw the comic achieve the coup of a series of columns by Godfrey Winn, then one of the country's most popular writers, while David Attenborough posted travelogue pieces.

[4] The following year saw an adaptation of "The Children of the New Forest", lavishly illustrated in painted colour by Ron Embleton, though the long-running Sally Doyle hung up her ballet shoes as "Circus Ballerina" finished.

[7] The Mirror Group had also taken over Odhams Press, causing the unusual situation of one of Fleetway's main competitors simultaneously being a sister company under the same owners.

), as well as the Lewis Carroll-inspired text comic "Alice in Spaceland", written by Australian children's novelist Mary Elwyn Patchett,[10] entertainment page "Moira's Notice Board", a column written by legendary dancer Martha Graham, an adaptation of Mary Poppins (at a time the film version was in British cinemas) and "My Magazine", a new section where readers were encouraged to submit "stories, articles, sketches, photographs, poems or paintings"; the section would join the banner of the comic from November, when reader submissions - typically of exotic overseas holidays and occasionally parades - began to appear.

The new style was naturally pitched as a boon for readers but the previous high-quality works by the likes of Coryn and Thorpe were replaced with the rote-written "Famous Romances", the celebrity columns vanished and photographs were reduced to the occasional agency ballet shots or the 'Princess Star Gallery'.