Greetings from Hoxton Square where, with the latest Summer issue and our new edition of Toast safely in the hands of our domestic readers (and well on their way to those in far-flung places), we’re firmly planting ourselves in to summer.
With our latest issue hot off the press, keen-eyed readers will have noticed the release of our latest addition to the Plain Foxed Editions list:
Michael Jenkins | A HOUSE IN FLANDERS
In 1951, a shy and solitary 14-year-old boy was sent by his parents to spend the summer with ‘the aunts in Flanders’. So began for Michael Jenkins a formative experience which, when he came to write about it half a century later, reappeared to him ‘as in a dream, complete but surreal’.
A House in Flanders, his account of those summer months spent on the edge of the Flanders Plain, does indeed have a hypnotic and dreamlike quality. The dignified old French country house with its unvarying routines; the extended family of elderly aunts, uncles and grown-up cousins (with one of whom he fell boyishly in love); the summer warmth and wide Flemish skies were like an awakening to a young boy whose home in England was a ‘cold and empty place’ and whose parents, he felt, ‘preferred frigid intellectual exchanges to the more complicated and demanding world of personal relationships’.
Yet all was not as golden as at first seemed. The German occupation had left its mark, and in 1951 memories of it were still raw and painful. Gradually, through his vivid portraits of the various members – in particular of the firm but kindly matriarch Tante Yvonne – Michael Jenkins teases out the history of the family and of the surrounding area and uncovers the secret at the heart of the book – the reason he has been sent there.
As Dirk Bogarde wrote in the Daily Telegraph when A House in Flanders was first published, this is ‘a radiant book, a whole spectrum of colours and lights, of delights and elegances, of wistfulness and love’.
First published by Slightly Foxed as our 10th cloth-bound limited edition back in the summer of 2010, this new Plain Edition makes for the perfect summer reading. A House in Flanders is published on 1 June, but we’re pleased to report that it’s available to order now, with pre-ordered copies already on their way.
Read on below for an extract of P. D. James’s article about the book, as featured in Issue 26 of Slightly Foxed, together with a link to read the full piece on our website.
With best wishes, as ever, from the SF staff
Izzy, Isabel, Rebecca, Edie & Jennie
P. S. As we mentioned in last week’s news, despite our best efforts, from 1 June 2025 the cost of our Slightly Foxed Editions, Plain Foxed Editions and Foxed Cubs will be rising by £2 per book. We will be updating the website to bring it in line with the catalogue in due course so, if you’ve been thinking of stocking up, now’s your last chance to do so at the soon-to-be-old prices.
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