Perhaps it's the recent visit that our head of state made to these shores, maybe there's something about the Commonwealth Games that stirs our allegiance to the crumbling British Empire. Whatever it is, our motherland counterpart, simply called The Observer Magazine has caused us to come over all monarchist this month.

Appearing as a monthly magazine that comes with The Observer, a London based Sunday newspaper (from the publishers of The Guardian), The Observer Magazine finds the right balance of light-hearted musings and in-depth stories that makes a magazine worth squabbling over with your family to decide who gets to read the magazine first while everyone else has to flick through the sport pages patiently.

Take for example last month's edition of The Observer Magazine. On one page you have a detailed and emotive investigation into the long-term psychological effects that the Iraq war is having on British soldiers, while elsewhere a journalist delves into a musing on whether he is one of the only people in London who doesn't, or hasn't tried cocaine.

A candid interview with theatre stalwart Vanessa Redgrave proves that an artist profile can go to great depths without resorting to contrived postulating on the author's part.

If that's not your cup of tea you can read the ethical debate of the lesser of two evils, in this case the quandary of whether take away or pre packaged meals pose more of a threat to the environment (take-away wins, by the wrapper of a cheeseburger).

Culture, gardening, interior design, relationships, cars, celebrity columns, restaurants and comedy, The Observer Magazine almost epitomises everything that London has to offer. Until someone figures out what the prose equivalents of pea soup fogs, over-priced property and traffic jams are, then you're not going to get a more quintessentially London magazine.