• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 12, 2016

“When I stand under the English flag, I am not a stranger, I am not an alien, but at home.” Thus, Mark Twain, the most American of figures, summed up the long-running strain of Anglophilia in American life.

It's a quirky legacy of colonization, Revolution, a comic opera war, alliance in two very real wars, not to mention two centuries of transatlantic canoodling between the countries’ respective elites.

Nowadays, you can capture the whole phenomenon in two words: “Downton Abbey.”

With millions of Americans newly introduced to, or rediscovering, England’s “green and pleasant land,” Jack Kliger, the former CEO of Hachette Filipacchi from 1999 to 2008 and a top exec at Condé Nast before that, has big ambitions for a small publication he bought in 2014, British Heritage.

For starters, he is renaming and relaunching the 35-year-old publication as British Heritage Travel; the new name debuts with the January-February issue. A bigger trim size and editorial makeover to follow with the May-June issue.

According to Kliger, the new name and editorial approach are a natural progression.

“British Heritage is clearly a magazine that encourages experiential travel to Britain to great historical places, for people who are interested in living the history… Now I’d like to build out the touch points to include more ways that we can help our customer understand travel, experience it, plan and execute their travel,” he says.

On the editorial side, the revamped magazine will feature columns with a tighter focus.

The front-of-book column, “Dateline,” will cover people, places, and things of interest to travelers visiting Britain, while the back column, “AngloFile,” will cover British-oriented events and products available in the U.S.

Other columns will now feature service sidebars, for example highlighting restaurants or hotels. In graphic terms the mag will feature more photography, including photos submitted by readers. The Web site is also getting a comprehensive redesign.

Looking ahead, Kliger said he hopes to build out an ecommerce business in the not-too-distant future: “We would like to start doing branded travel experiences some time in the next year, where we can create products that we will sell to our consumers that have a unique and authentic flavor for experiencing all things British, whether there or here [in the U.S].  We would definitely like to become more transactional.”