Dating of Royale/Hussar Picture Sets

Knowing the dates when Royale photo sets were published and their sequence is of interest in tracking the evolution of their work and putting it alongside the social atmosphere at a key period for gay liberation in the UK. 

Royale sets that appear in the 1960 Royale Catalogue can be dated fairly precisely. Some of the 6 lists that make up the catalogue are explicitly dated and the dates of the others can be deduced knowing that Royale issued them at quarterly intervals. 

View the Table of List Dates 

This table dates the publication of sets within Lists VI to X (i.e. 6-10) to the nearest quarter. Those in List A can only be dated as in the range Oct 57 to Oct 58 by this method but other sources can refine this, see below.

I don't have a later catalogue

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The second source of dates is the beefcake magazines of the era which published Royale pictures. These are a more approximate guide but finding the earliest published example of a picture from a given set gives us a 'not later than' date. They seem quite close to the dates we know from the 1960 catalogue.

Pictures from Royale storyettes were rarely printed in the body of beefcake mags, probably due to their controversial nature -  they didn't really fit into the permitted categories of Health, Bodybuilding, Fashion or Art. However in some cases Royale mentioned the sets in their ads, sometimes with a thumbnail.

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Magazines themselves were not always dated, many started off with publication dates on the cover or contents page but stopped providing them in later years. Dates of later issues can sometimes be deduced from the publication intervals (e.g. monthly, bi-monthly) but it was not uncommon for there to be long breaks in publication due to technical issues or other mishaps. 

Those that carried adverts for other magazines can sometimes be approximately dated by finding the cover illustrated in the ad. 

Rarely, the text in a magazine will give a precise datable reference e.g. Reg Gutteridge winning  Mr Britain. 

Sometimes the editorial mentions a year explicitly. 

A Christmas issue or reference to summer also helps narrow ranges of uncertainty.