The Summer issue has now arrived, its cover bearing wanderlust-inducing artwork by George Devlin (an internationally renowned Glasgow-based artist who very sadly died last month). This evocative oil on canvas, ‘Searing Heat: Baumes de Venise’, with its brilliant colour makes us long for an afternoon ’neath the vines with a good book and glass of something cold. But travels to sunnier climes will have to wait, for summer at Slightly Foxed is a very English affair.
Our new Slightly Foxed Edition, John Moore’s Portrait of Elmbury – the first volume in a trilogy based on the author’s home of Tewkesbury – is born of an England now long vanished. As Moore’s friend and editor, Richard Church, wrote ‘not since Richard Jefferies died have we had a spokesman of the English country life, the very spirit of place, who can conjure the smells, sights and sounds as well as the mysteries, silences and portents of night and day down on the farm, along the winding lanes, and through the lush woodland as John Moore does’. It’s an enchanting book and, with its summery green cloth and pearl grey endpapers, a suitably handsome addition to our growing list of memoirs.
Once the hustle and bustle that heralds the turn of the quarter has subsided, we’ll be off on a few literary jaunts around the country. On Saturday 5 July we’re heading north to the charming market town of Hexham for a Slightly Foxed talk with tea and cake at Cogito Books, and the following weekend we’re southbound to the picturesque Hampshire countryside for an appearance at the West Meon Literary Festival with Ysenda Maxtone Graham. In the autumn we’ll be popping up at various London locations and in November we’ll be back at the Art Workers’ Guild for our annual Readers’ Day. Speakers include the distinguished biographer Michael Holroyd, Lucy Lethbridge, Justin Marozzi and Daisy Hay and tickets are now on sale. You’ll find details of all events further down the page.
Now, before we leap too far forward to upcoming events and dates for diaries, let us go back to a magical vanished world, to ‘the rich seething hotchpotch of a thousand ingredients’, to Elmbury with John Moore.