Blog | Slightly Foxed

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Hazel, Jennie and host Philippa explore the art of travel writing with the acclaimed author and biographer Sara Wheeler and Barnaby Rogerson of the well-loved independent publisher Eland Books. Buckle-up and join us on an audio adventure that takes in a coach trip around England, an Arctic sojourn, a hairy incident involving a Victorian lady and her trusty tweed skirt and a journey across Russia in the footprints of its literary greats, with nods to Bruce Chatwin, Isabella Bird, Norman Lewis, Martha Gellhorn and Patrick Leigh Fermor along the way. And to bring us back down to earth, there’s the usual round-up of news from back home in Hoxton Square and plenty of recommendations for reading off the beaten track.

Getting to Know the Colonel

Paul Cheeseright on André Maurois, Les Silences du Colonel Bramble

Maurois was a literary celebrity of the 1920s and 1930s who became one of the French great and good after his election in 1938 to the Académie française. He had wanted to write from an early age but, for a man who worked in his family’s textile mill, it could only be a matter of scribbling in his spare time. Still, he learned and became fluent in English, and not long after the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent by the French authorities to a British unit as an interpreter. From this experience Maurois wove the collection of sketches that made his name: Les Silences du Colonel Bramble (1918).

1 Sep 2017

The Big-hearted Little Duke

Linda Kelly on Charlotte M. Yonge, The Little Duke

Richard of Normandy, the hero of Charlotte Mary Yonge’s The Little Duke, is only 8 when the story begins. I must have been about the same age when I first read it and some of its scenes, with their rugged Norman settings, have remained with me ever since. My children loved it too, but when I came across it again the other day I wondered if I dared reread it. Would it be too moralistic, too old-fashioned? Why disturb my childhood memories? I soon found I needn’t have worried. The Little Duke is as exciting and moving as ever. And it is amazing how much historical knowledge the simply told story conveys.

May Roses in Winter

William Palmer on Italo Svevo, Zeno’s Conscience

The preface is in the form of a rather tetchy report by a psychoanalyst who has been consulted by Zeno Corsini. The analyst says that he must apologize for having suggested that ‘my patient write his autobiography, students of psychology will frown on this new departure. But he was an old man . . . he seemed so curious about himself.’ His patient has terminated the analysis, so the analyst is publishing his patient’s notes ‘in revenge, and I hope he is displeased’.

Keeping It Real

Maggie Fergusson interviews the novelist Ali Smith

Reading her books, and meeting her in person, you can’t but feel warmed by her generosity, her bursting desire to share her enthusiasms and insights, and her appetite for life. But at the same time she’s ambivalent about the public personae writers these days are obliged to adopt. ‘You have to develop a means of surviving it,’ she says, ‘and either that becomes a performative self or for me it’s meant devising a self who can still be the real self talking about real things, like I am now to you.’

1 Jun 2017

The Medlar Tree

Howard Phipps

‘Cowper kept the forces of darkness at bay by constant occupation. At first this took the form of gardening and caring for a menagerie of pets, including his tame hares Bess, Puss and Tiny. Cecil is at his most vivid…

Inspired by Kipling

David Gilmour on the Indian stories and poems of Rudyard Kipling

When recently I began to write a social history of British India, I realized I would have to keep Rudyard Kipling under control. I could not endlessly compare people to characters in a Kipling story or make points and then back them up with ‘As Kipling once wrote . . .’ Nor could I write about scandals in Simla and describe them as Kiplingesque scenarios.

Life on the Fringe

Jeremy Lewis on George Moore, Esther Waters

I first read Esther Waters more than fifty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin. As a young man I enjoyed reading tales of unmitigated woe, in which one disaster succeeds another, and the novel’s eponymous heroine suffers more than most at the hands of assorted drunkards, snobs, gamblers and predatory employers. And, as an Englishman in Ireland, I was fascinated by the complexity and ambiguity of relations between the two countries, and by Irish views of England ‒ of which Esther Waters is a remarkable and unusual example.

Up on the Down

Collin Williams on Richard Adams, Watership Down

Six years ago when we moved into our neglected nineteenth-century house on the edge of Hampshire’s chalk downs it was a move into two worlds. One was of damp walls, dangerously amateur wiring, a wheezing boiler and icy, see-your-own-breath bedrooms. The other was of the world that lay beyond the streaming window-panes, the sea of rolling green turf that filled the view on two sides from our position in the valley – Watership Down.

Not So Cosy After All?

Andy Merrills on Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce novels

On the face of it, crimes don’t get much cosier than those which appear in the first six novels of the Flavia sequence. The convention of Slightly Foxed dictates that titles are normally tucked away in a footnote, but I think it is worth savouring the delightful cadence of all six here: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie; The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag; A Red Herring without Mustard; I Am Half-Sick of Shadows; Speaking from among the Bones and The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches. To me, each of these seems to have exactly the right balance of whimsy and menace, and these are promises that are admirably fulfilled in the books that follow.

Once a Catholic . . .

Melissa Harrison on Antonia White, Frost in May

There it is on my shelf, that familiar bottle-green spine – the first in a quartet by the same author. This quartet has shadowed me for twenty-two years now: to various sets of university lodgings and back; to three dark rooms above a car dealership in Dalston, my first ever London flat; to two house-shares and then a bedsit in Clapham Junction; and now to Streatham, my home for the last dozen years. In all that time, though, I haven’t opened any of them; in fact, all four spines remain uncracked.

1 Jun 2017

Trouble at the Convent

Kate Tyte on Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun

Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun (1952) – a book that could easily be subtitled ‘politically motivated witch-hunts and how to avoid them’ – feels horribly relevant. The Devils is about the supposed possession of a convent of nuns, thanks to the alleged witchcraft of a Catholic priest with a sex life that reads like Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It includes exorcisms, torture and Byzantine political manoeuvrings by an untouchable elite.

1 Sep 2017

Strunking It

Nigel Jarrett on Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

The problem for a writer like White when stepping into the stylist’s domain is the need to obey the rules he’s about to consider. He confined his revision of Strunk’s manual to the addition of a chapter that included his own ‘notions of error’, perhaps realizing that Strunk’s unequivocal commands – Do this, Don’t do that – did not reflect the idea of language, any language, as something evolving.

An Unlikely Duo

Ysenda Maxtone Graham on Peter Fleming, News from Tartary & Ella Maillart, Forbidden Journey

Is it acceptable to be both happily married to a living man and physically attracted to a long-dead author? I know I’m not the only one. I have one friend who goes weak at the knees when she shows me photos of the late Patrick Leigh Fermor, and another who has a lasting physical pash for Joseph Banks (1743‒1820). Mine is for Peter Fleming (1907‒71), older brother of Ian.

‘What an eclectic delight. . .’

B. Jefferson, Somerset

‘Hopefully you never tire of accolades from first time readers of SF quarterly? What an eclectic delight, even for those of us with a limited literary background. The review of In Hazard was bursting with insight, a compelling enthusiasm and written by a ‘non-professional’ – I hesitate to use ‘amateur’ – was the contributor ever a teacher/lecturer of English? As a runner- up I can only assume the competition winner was particularly outstanding? The illustrations are a delightful ‘bonus’, looking at the covers of back editions they are an excellent showcase of often overlooked artists’ work. By coincidence the July 2018 cover reflected my own garden at that time, for the first time, drifts of Myosotis arvensis injected a flush of hazy blue with a rash of random, rogue Digitalis. If you had not already found a mischievous, vulpine icon (an escapee from Richard Hughes attic perhaps) that image may have been a charming alternative; as it would have reflected at least part of a SF mission statement? Posy Fallowfield’s final assurance echoing the same sentiment. Your online newsletters and podcasts are greatly appreciated, keep up the good work – a world without real publications ‘to have and to hold’ will be immeasurably poorer!’

‘I love your magazine. . .’

B. Wintringham, Brisbane, Australia

‘I love your magazine and settle down for a good read when it arrives. The June edition was full of interesting and amusing essays which my friends and I love. Sorry I forgot the time difference between Brisbane Australia and London, so I sent off my subscription while our morning sun is shining into my sitting room on a cold and windy day. Hope you are all fast asleep and have a very good day when you wake up. All the very best and you are keeping up a wonderful standard of writing for us to read.’

‘Chuffed. . .’

P. Cohen, Paris

‘Chuffed. I believe that’s the word. Entirely, wall-to-wall chuffed. The books arrived yesterday, and they are lovely. Thanks very much for this. I’m off to read.’

‘My wife has been a subscriber for a while. . .’

B. & T. Brightman, Edinburgh

‘My wife has been a subscriber for a while and she loves it! We have just arranged an annual subscription for old friends as we are sure they will love it too. But my message is this. Your website is one of the best, if not ‘the’ best website I have used! It is very user friendly and entertaining to boot. Thank you; wish all websites were as good!’

‘I received my order today. . .’

J. Connell, New Zealand

‘I received my order today; I did not realize the books would be so beautifully presented. Very happy! In fact, now I am seriously considering buying more, even though I now have all this particular series.’

‘I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your recent podcast. . .’

T. Tulloch, Nova Scotia, Canada

‘I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your recent podcast on travel writing. I was particularly taken with the recommendation for Patrick Leigh Fermor’s work, and so I tracked down a copy of his A Time of Gifts. I’m finding it a wonderful read – thank you so much.’

‘Just to tell you that I so enjoyed the latest podcast. . .’

M. Moody, London

‘Just to tell you that I so enjoyed the latest podcast on travel writing. Hearing you talk about Patrick Leigh Fermor and Eric Newby was so delightful as they’ve been favourites of mine for a while and I now think them as old friends. Your themes are always fresh and interesting and make me want to read more and discover new literary gems. I like the length of your podcasts too – about 30 mins is just right; not so long that you get bored and tap pause (and never return) but long enough to be really interesting and I always listen to it all and look forward to the next one. The dogs must have a very nice life too in their literary haven.’

‘A treasure box of books came yesterday. . .’

K. Petersen, Boston, United States

‘A treasure box of books came yesterday and I’m in heaven. O. Douglas is by my bed and I started the day with Hitler. Maybe not such a good idea – it reminds me too much of today’s politics. Thank you thank you thank you all at SF for a place to go and feel as though there is are folks out there like me. I also love the way the books were packed; years ago (before any of you were born) I worked for a little book service in South Kensington – and we shipped books everywhere, always packed in cut-down corrugated boxes and with lashings of tape. My mother sent care packages that way too, and so do I . . . It’s terribly hot and humid here and I’m off to buy another bookcase.’

‘Lovely article on Durrell. . .’

D. Matheney, California, United States

‘Lovely article on Durrell. I recently read My Family and Other Animals. My husband found this vaguely disturbing as I often laughed out loud uproariously for no apparent reason. It is a charming and delightful read. Thanks for reminding me of the fun of reading.’

Well-Salted

Ysenda Maxtone Graham on the Oxford Junior Encyclopedia

Did we all have someone in our childhood who was The Best Giver of Presents? In my case, it was a family friend called Vere Guilford. She entered deeply enough into the person you were to get presents right. At the perfect moment she gave me a lockable cassette box. When my soul was starting to ache she gave me a double-cassette pack of Beethoven symphonies. At Christmas 1974 (I remember the mild disappointment on unwrapping it) she gave me Volume I of the twelve-volume Oxford Junior Encyclopedia.

1 Dec 2017

An Extraordinary Ordinary Bloke

Brandon Robshaw on the essays of George Orwell

The Orwell of the essays has a pungent literary personality. He’s dauntingly knowledgeable, decided in his views and trenchant in their expression, a non-sufferer of fools, an enemy of pretension and hypocrisy; yet withal humane, reasonable, decent. He writes as if he’s just an ordinary bloke – yet not an ordinary ordinary bloke, but an exceptionally well-read, politically aware, sensitive and intelligent ordinary bloke with wide-ranging interests and a view on everything.

Packing a Punch

Morag Macinnes on the cartoons of Frank Reynolds

Pictures came before words. And as soon as there were pictures, there were funny pictures. I’ve always felt sanguine about the future of funny pictures, partly because they’re also up-to-the-minute social comment, available to all, whether you’re literate or not, in a war zone or a suburb . . .

No Coward Soul

Christopher Rush on Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë is the greatest woman novelist of all time. That is my personal opinion, though it is one which happens to be shared by many others, including highly respected scholars. That in itself is a compelling reason for reading the one and only novel she ever completed. How far her second novel had progressed will never be known, for her sister Charlotte, who often took it upon herself to act for her sisters in the way she thought fit, probably destroyed the manuscript after Emily’s death . . .

1 Dec 2017

Ridiculously Rich

Patrick Welland on Felix Youssoupoff, Lost Splendour

It is a wonderfully self-serving record of an almost wholly unproductive life of enthusiastic indulgence. Felix’s world was so far removed from normal human experience that it seems, says Nicolai Tolstoy in his introduction, ‘almost to belong to a land of faerie’.

Her Own Mistress

Victoria Neumark on Margaret Irwin’s Tudor novels

Like many another bookish teenager, I spent the years between 12 and 17 in a fog of romance, my nose buried in a book. Quite often that book was by Margaret Irwin, whose Tudor trilogy, Young Bess (1944), Elizabeth, Captive Princess (1948) and Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain (1953), tells the story of the early life and early reign of Elizabeth I.

1 Sep 2017

Episode 9: Well-Cultivated Words

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel and host Philippa dig into the subject of garden writing with the journalist and social historian Ursula Buchan and Matt Collins, nature writer and Head Gardener at London’s Garden Museum. The conversation meanders convivially in the usual Slightly Foxed manner, via daredevil plant-hunters, early wild gardening advocates such as Gertrude Jekyll, William Robinson and Vita Sackville-West, and the passing passions and fashions of garden design, with a peek over the hedge at Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter along the way. And there’s the usual round-up of the latest bookish harvest from the Slightly Foxed office and plenty of recommendations for reading off the beaten track too.

Scandalous Tales from the Hills

David Gilmour on the Indian stories and poems of Rudyard Kipling

Kipling was thorough and blatant in his search for characters and ‘copy’ when he was in Simla. Soon after arriving in the hills he would spend an afternoon loping alongside his mother’s rickshaw, ‘learning most of the scandal’ in the town. Then he would spend his time talking ‒ and above all listening ‒ to anyone from whom he could acquire ‘goodish material’ and any ‘curious yarns’.

Labourers in Fetters

Roger Jones on George Gissing, New Grub Street

Like Dickens, Gissing shows us the Victorian city seen from below – grimy, fog-bound and peopled by creatures to whom life has not been kind. But unlike Dickens he speaks from lived experience of the urban underworld that Dickens (despite his brief but traumatic period of servitude in the famous blacking factory) knew essentially as a tourist, if an uncommonly sharp-sighted one.

Beside the Folly Brook

Helena Drysdale on BB, The Little Grey Men & Down the Bright Stream

In 1970 I told BB how much I loved his books. I wrote the letter sitting at the window in a house tucked into a Devon cliff, with pine woods behind and the sea in front. I’m sitting there now. It’s the sort of place BB would have adored, the recesses of undergrowth and exposed headlands teeming with wildlife. This, I imagined, was the setting for The Little Grey Men (1942). Here were all the ingredients, including wood dogs (foxes), fernbears (badgers) and above all a winding stream. In my mind this was the Folly Brook, up which the last gnomes in England travel on their heroic quest to find their missing brother, and down which they flee in their boat the Jeanie Deans, in the 1948 sequel, Down the Bright Stream.

Seeing Differently

Adam Foulds on the Collected Poems of Geoffrey Hill

On the cover was Gauguin’s rendition of Jacob wrestling with the angel from his Vision after the Sermon. On the back, Hill himself scowled out from under a supremely confident comb-over in an author photograph with no hint of warmth or welcome. Licence was granted for this attitude by the words of praise around it, the first of which, from Michael Longley, declared, ‘He is a profound genius, the best poet writing in English.’ Other encomia came from the likes of George Steiner and Christopher Ricks. This was ideal.

Paradise Regained | From the Slightly Foxed archives: Simon Barnes on My Family and Other Animals

Let’s sit back with a long cool drink in hand to be spirited away from the hustle and bustle of Hoxton to the island paradise of Corfu with Gerald Durrell and family. This lovely piece by Simon Barnes was commissioned as the preface to our limited hardback edition of My Family and Other Animals . . .

A Writer in Hiding

Kate Jones on the novels of A. L. Barker

I first saw A. L. Barker’s books lined up in a row on a shelf in the University of East Anglia library, their dust covers removed, their red, blue and green cloth bindings faded, their pages clean and unmarked – it seemed as if they’d never been read. I borrowed the books and read them one after another. Here was a writer who clearly deserved attention. Her fiction seemed so contemporary, not in terms of style but because of the ideas with which it grappled: the strangeness of so-called ordinary life; the dangers of ignorance or innocence; the consequences of taking, and not taking, action . . .

1 Dec 2017

Sixty Years On

Michael Barber on The Dragon Book of Verse

Nestling in a box full of bric-à-brac was her father’s copy of The Dragon Book of Verse, a book I had last opened about sixty years ago at my prep-school, where it was used for a weekly exercise called ‘Rep’. He had bought it second-hand for 2/6d during the year he spent at Oxford before being called up. Before that it had belonged to a boy at St Edward’s, Oxford, who had coloured in many of the quaint illustrations.

Billiards, Tobacco and Wine

Anthony Longden on Cuthbert Bede, The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green

I first happened across him while mining the rewarding and delightfully chaotic depths of a West Country bookshop. He has been out of fashion for a considerable time, always a recommendation as far as I’m concerned, but I think his series beginning with The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green deserves to be regarded as a mid-Victorian comedy classic.

Aerobatics

Matt Huber on the aviation thrillers of Gavin Lyall

Gavin Lyall was not the first pilot to take to fiction – Nevil Shute, Ernest K. Gann and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry navigated the skies creatively before him – but Lyall’s thrillers of the 1960s and ’70s set a standard of aerial pace and style that has not been bettered. When his first novel, The Wrong Side of the Sky, was published in 1961 P. G. Wodehouse was prompted to write: ‘Terrific! When better novels of suspense than this are written, lead me to them.’

Secrets of the Hive

Nicholas Asprey on Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee

The Life of the Bee is not a scientific study or a treatise on practical beekeeping but a study of the bees and their culture written by a man who had observed them during twenty years of beekeeping. ‘The reader of this book’, he says, ‘will not gather therefrom how to manage a hive; but he will know more or less all that can with any certainty be known of the curious, profound and intimate side of its inhabitants’; and he writes ‘as one speaks of a subject one knows and loves to those who know it not’.

Decoration for ‘The London Bookbinders’ (1950)

Gwen Raverat

In Issue 60 Alan Bradley explored ‘literary criticism, character sketches and the byways of reading’ in Virginia Woolf’s The Common Reader. His article was illustrated with this fine bookish fellow by Gwen Raverat, which was originally produced as a decoration…

Backwater

Ian Corfe Stephens

Ian Corfe-Stephens is an illustrator, graphic designer and printmaker whose woodcuts have featured in several issues of Slightly Foxed. Ian has been engraving since 1961 mainly concentrating on fine art prints of his home territory of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire. ‘My…

Introducing M. Swann

Anthony Wells on Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

The first time my wife-to-be invited me round for a meal, and sat me down in her book-lined dining-room, my eye was caught by three thick volumes in a slipcase, in decorative blue, white and red dust- wrappers, bearing the name ‘Marcel Proust’ in large black letters at the top of each spine. ‘You’ve read Proust!’ I burst out, thrilled to be able to add to the array of charms with which she had already dazzled me that of having read the incomparable Remembrance of Things Past.

48 Königsbrücker Strasse

Sue Gee on Erich Kästner, When I Was a Little Boy

Erich Kästner was born in Dresden on a snow-filled February day in 1899, the adored only child of Emil and Ida Kästner: he a master saddler fallen on pinched times, she – eventually – a hairdresser. Each had begun life in small-town Saxony, Emil coming from a line of joiners and blacksmiths, Ida with a background in bread, beer, butchery and horses. ‘And out of all the butchers, blacksmiths and horse dealers, one solitary member of the family, little Erich, only son of little Ida, has become – of all things – a writer!’

‘I saw an elderly gentleman reading it on the train. . .’

J. Hughes, Surrey

‘I saw an elderly gentleman reading it on the train, it looked so enticing. He has been reading since the first edition and was full of praise. I had to subscribe and see for myself!’

‘Thank you very much for the beautiful Slightly Foxed edition of BB’s Brendon Chase. . .’

M.H. Phillips, Aberyswyth

‘Thank you very much for the beautiful Slightly Foxed edition of BB’s Brendon Chase, which arrived safely last Saturday. It is a wonderful book – certainly ‘a very good read’. Thank you and all at Slightly Foxed for the marvelous periodical and other publications published and sold by you – I enjoy them.’

‘I am very impressed by the speedy delivery of my order. . .’

M. Bennett, Pembrokeshire

‘I am very impressed by the speedy delivery of my order. I bought myself The Young Ardizzone from The Book Room at Wyken Vineyards, which I love to visit when I stay with my daughter in Suffolk. The look and feel of the edition was so special that I ordered it to send to my son. Thank you for producing such beautiful books.’

‘Greetings all the way from Victoria, British Columbia. . .’

R. Barlow, Victoria, Canada

‘Greetings all the way from Victoria, British Columbia! I’m a new subscriber and received my second volume in the mail yesterday (great excitement!). Thanks to a book blog I follow, your quarterly has been on my radar for a couple of years. Last November, while wading through a particularly stressful time, I decided to treat myself to a subscription and a pair of Danish slippers. I’m happy to say neither has disappointed! Your approach to life, reading and books has been a soothing balm and feeds my soul. Thank you! I also ordered a calendar which I hung in my office. Its whimsy and elegance propel me through my days of paperwork and problem-solving. I’m also delighting in your podcasts. As it happens, I discovered podcasts last fall and was thrilled that your first episode coincided with my subscription order. The stars were aligned! It’s life-affirming to hear you discuss your focus on quality over bling (while in the background dogs bark and builders build). The most recent one about reprints is my favourite so far. So, I write to say thank you to all of you for producing a wonderful publication and keeping me sane during the tempests of life. Best wishes from a smiling Canadian!’

‘I felt I had to get in touch to thank you. . .’

J. Wensley Essex

‘I felt I had to get in touch to thank you, not just for the prompt dispatch of books I ordered, but for your kindness and thoughtfulness in sending the lovely Slightly Foxed cards along with the two volumes of E.H. Shepard’s memoirs. My friend Christine loves reading and drawing so it goes without saying that she was absolutely delighted with her 70th birthday gift!’

‘Slightly Foxed has a mysterious quality. . .’

R. Susan, India

‘Slightly Foxed has a mysterious quality of lifting spirits, making you read with bizarre faces (mouth open/chuckling/eyebrows doing a thing) because you are always lost in the essays and of course, it makes you feel as satisfied as a scrumptious five course meal.’

‘Thank you for finding the second-hand copy of The Spoken Word. . .’

B. Baldwin, Cardiff

‘Thank you for finding the second-hand copy of The Spoken Word and sending it to me. It arrived this morning and acted as a 57th wedding anniversary gift for my husband, who had shown great interest in it when I showed him the relevant article in Slightly Foxed. He has read through it already and I’ve had a glance, and I’m sure it will provide much discussion and some hilarity between us. (He is a confirmed pedant.)’

‘My books arrived safely and well-packed as usual. . .’

C. Shepherd, Devon

‘My books arrived safely and well-packed as usual. I love both of them. I always have collected your Slightly Foxed editions. The BB series are excellent, I had the originals to read to my little brother when we were small, so they are great favourites. Thank you for providing such riches and for your magazine, which, in my opinion, is the best literary magazine on the market.’

Giving up the Ghost in The New York Times | 50 Best Memoirs

Mantel … writes … with a fine ear and a furious intelligence, as she resurrects phantoms who “shiver between the lines.”

From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves || The Flame Trees of Thika

Our handsome edition of Elspeth Huxley’s much-loved memoir of her childhood in Kenya will soon go out of print and we won’t be reissuing it so, if you’ve been thinking about adding this delightful book (bound in burnt orange cloth with jungle green endpapers) to your collection, now’s the time . . .

GBS and Me

Michael Leapman on watching the plays of George Bernard Shaw

My enthusiasm for George Bernard Shaw dates from 1950, when I was 12. On my way home from school it was my habit to buy a copy of the Star, one of London’s three evening papers, principally to check the cricket scores. One afternoon the front-page splash carried the bold headline: BERNARD SHAW DEAD. At the age of 94 he had fallen off a ladder while pruning his cherry tree, and he did not recover. I reasoned that a man who warranted front-page treatment must be a writer of consequence, so I resolved to discover more.

1 Mar 2018

The Cut Out Girl: Bart van Es in conversation with The Biographers’ Club & Slightly Foxed at Hatchards

Wednesday 3 July 2019

Hatchards Booksellers on Piccadilly were delighted to host Bart van Es in the first of an event series with Slightly Foxed and The Biographers’ Club. Bart was interviewed by journalist and writer Rachel Cooke.

A Boy in a Tattered Coat

Ann Wroe on Henry Williamson, The Star-Born

The book was called The Star-Born. Its first chapters were about owls, especially one called Eldrich, which sounded to me like the shriek of doom heard before a death. The owls were frightening: hunting, nipping on the neck, tearing open and gobbling down a succession of soft small rodents whose long tails dangled from their beaks, and whose tiny bones made an ossuary of the ruins where they nested. The next chapters were filled with creatures who were nebulous and filmy: Leaf Spirit, Air Spirit, Water Spirit and Quill Spirit, who lived among the dripping ferns and sunbows of the gorge of the River Lyd.

The Man Who Enjoyed Everything

Derek Parker on Edward Marsh, A Number of People

If Sir Edward Marsh appears in a few literary reference books, it is as the editor of five anthologies of Georgian poetry published between 1911 and 1922, the idea for which came from Rupert Brooke. As Brooke said, they ‘went up like a rocket’; ‘Yes, and came down like a stick,’ Marsh ruefully recalled. But his name pops up unexpectedly – usually just as ‘Eddie’ – in many memoirs and biographies of twentieth-century figures from Henry James to Ivor Novello, Somerset Maugham to David Cecil, D. H. to T. E. Lawrence. And he was for a quarter of a century the close friend and assistant of Winston Churchill.

84, Charing Cross Road revisited | The Telegraph

The self-effacing Helene would doubtless be astounded that her little 84 is now considered a classic. I can just picture that look of incredulity, and hear that throaty laugh.

Journey to the Interior

Ken Haigh on Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

The Japanese poet Matsuo Basho (1644–94) is renowned in the West as a master of haiku, but less well known is the fact that he was also a superb travel writer. He wrote five travel diaries, of which the last, Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1702), is considered his masterpiece.

High Society, Low Life

Anthony Wells on Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Marcel Proust’s novel Remembrance of Things Past begins, as I discussed in an earlier piece (SF no. 56), with the narrator recalling the times he spent as a boy in his great-aunt’s house in the village of Combray. There were two walks the family regularly took from the house, one in the direction of a property owned by a family friend, M. Swann, and the other in the direction of an estate owned by a very grand aristocratic family with local connections, the Guermantes. The Way by Swann’s, the first walk, is the name of the first book of Proust’s novel. The Guermantes Way, the second walk, is the name of the third, and with it the narrator and reader enter a new world, of dukes and duchesses, princes and princesses, and all the high society of Paris’s fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain.

A Tasmanian Tragedy

Penelope Lively on Matthew Kneale, English Passengers

English Passengers is a masterpiece, an achievement of such complexity, ingenuity and sheer narrative power that each time I reread it I am newly surprised: how can a writer have thus conjured up the wildly conflicting attitudes of another time, another place, with such persuasive force?

1 Mar 2018

Dere Diary . . .

Peter Parker on David Rogers (ed.), A Victorian Schoolboy in London

What I want from a diary is not necessarily remarkable events, but a vivid sense of the author’s character and of the times in which he or she lived. Though it covers a mere four months, Ernest Baker’s diary more than satisfies this requirement, providing a marvellous picture of everyday life in Shoreditch in the early 1880s filtered through the consciousness of a lively and irreverent adolescent.

Making Manifest

Richard Holloway on André Schwarz-Bart, The Last of the Just

Reading it changed how I thought about suffering. Not because it solved the dilemma I was wrestling with, but because it expressed it to an unbearable degree. It proved to me that the work of the preacher, like the work of the artist, was not to explain but to reveal. Not to tell but to show.

1 Mar 2018

A Queer Parish

Anthony Longden on Ruth Adam, A House in the Country

I was on a much-rehearsed trawl of the labyrinthine bookshop when I spotted it. A neat green-cloth country volume of the type churned out in their thousands in the 1940s and ’50s – years of hardship but also ones of optimism and dreams of a better future. I read the faded spine. A House in the Country by Ruth Adam, published by the Country Book Club, 1957. Now this is the kind of thing I like. My bookshelves sag under the collective weight of H. J. Massingham, Adrian Bell, Ronald Blythe and Cecil Torr, but Ruth Adam was new to me. ‘This is a cautionary tale, and true,’ the book begins . . .

Wit and Truth

Roger Hudson on the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

I first delved into Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s astringent and witty letters about fifteen years ago when compiling a Book of Days for the Folio Society. I had to find extracts for each day of the year, written on that day – so nearly all from diaries and letters. Towards the end of my search I was left with several stubbornly blank dates, and was even thinking I might have to write bogus entries, but she, along with Pepys, as it were saved the days.

Hair Today and Gone Tomorrow

Andy Merrills on Reginald Ryenolds, Beards: An Omnium Gatherum

Five or six summers ago, I was browsing in a shabbily genteel second-hand bookstore in a university town somewhere in the middle of the United States. The shop had a substantial stock of fiction, a generous and eclectic supply of non-fiction and the sort of haphazard shelving policy which actively demands exploration. I cannot now remember which section I was in when I discovered Reginald Reynolds’s extraordinary Beards: An Omnium Gatherum (1949). I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in fiction, but beyond that it could have been anywhere . . .

Small Player in the Great Game

Amanda Theunissen on Rudyard Kipling, Kim & Peter Hopkirk, Quest for Kim

Kim is the eponymous hero of Rudyard Kipling’s masterpiece, for many one of the best books about India ever written. It’s a strange, oddly constructed book intended for children, with no proper villain, that even its author said was ‘plotless’ but which I have always found mesmerizing.

Out of the Celtic Twilight

Anthony Gardner on Lord Dunsany, The Curse of the Wise Woman

A teenage boy is talking to his father in the library of their rambling Irish house. His father tells him to look at a particular picture; the moment he obeys, four armed men enter the room. But when he turns round, his father has vanished – apparently into thin air. So, in brilliantly dramatic fashion, begins Lord Dunsany’s The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933). As a novel it defies categorization, but if you imagine a John Buchan thriller with an overlay of the Celtic Twilight and Rachel Carson-style eco-prophecy you will be almost there.

1 Mar 2018

The Slightly Foxed Podcast | All Episodes

Catch up with all available episodes of the Slightly Foxed Podcast.

Let’s Bofe

Laura Freeman on A. A. Milne, It’s Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer

What we expect from Milne is lightness. Pooh carried up by his balloon. Piglet blowing dandelion seeds. Bounding Tigger. The depth of missing, of emptiness when Ken is gone from It’s Too Late Now, comes as a shock. Deeper than the Very Deep Pit that Pooh and Piglet dig to catch a Heffalump. More desolate than Eeyore without his tail.

1 Mar 2018

Dying for a Dream

Romesh Gunesekera on José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere

Many writers have places, real or imagined, linked with their names – Joyce’s Dublin, Hardy’s Wessex, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha – but I don’t know of any who have a province named after them, other than José Rizal, the Filipino author of Noli Me Tangere. The province of Rizal was created in 1901 (two years after the country was ceded to America by Spain), to honour the best-known martyr of Philippine nationalism.

‘I feel like I’m at the kitchen table. . .’

A. A., Jaipur, India

‘Why haven’t I tuned in to the Slightly Foxed podcast until this afternoon?! I feel like I’m at the kitchen table, drinking tea. Love the conversation and the dogs! Sending love from Jaipur, India.’

Misadventures in the Rag Trade

Ariane Bankes on Eric Newby, Something Wholesale

It remains one of the more surprising facts of life that the intrepid traveller Eric Newby, who by the time I knew him had the weatherbeaten cragginess of a man only happy when halfway up the Hindu Kush, should have carved out an earlier career astride the lower slopes of haute couture. Everyone has to start somewhere, however, and he put his first reluctant footprint on the fashion world as hapless gofer in the family firm of Lane & Newby, ‘Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers’ . . .

A Crowning Achievement

Jane Ridley on Ben Pimlott, The Queen

Like so many Slightly Foxed readers, I was hooked by Netflix’s first series of The Crown. The lavish production, rumoured to have cost £100 million, the understated acting, the meticulous detail and the cut-glass accents – all gave each episode a sense of stunning authenticity. Claire Foy, in the role of the Queen, was immaculate and as compelling as anyone can be driving a Land Rover in twinset and pearls, and the series as a whole introduced us to a world of privilege and glamour at the very heart of the British establishment which is usually shrouded in secrecy . . .

Episode 8: Leaving that Place called Home

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Hazel, Jennie and host Philippa explore the art of travel writing with the acclaimed author and biographer Sara Wheeler and Barnaby Rogerson of the well-loved independent publisher Eland Books. Buckle-up and join us on an audio adventure that takes in a coach trip around England, an Arctic sojourn, a hairy incident involving a Victorian lady and her trusty tweed skirt and a journey across Russia in the footprints of its literary greats, with nods to Bruce Chatwin, Isabella Bird, Norman Lewis, Martha Gellhorn and Patrick Leigh Fermor along the way. And to bring us back down to earth, there’s the usual round-up of news from back home in Hoxton Square and plenty of recommendations for reading off the beaten track.

The Purveyor of Popular Fiction

Derek Parker on Norman Flower (ed.), The Journals of Arnold Bennett

Virginia Woolf unkindly called Bennett ‘a tradesman’ – and up to a point one sees what she meant. He did not thrive on the rarefied air of Bloomsbury: he was Enoch Arnold Bennett, late of Burslem and the Six Towns, Purveyor of Popular Fiction to the General Reader. He knew it, and it satisfied him – as well it might, for at one time he earned more than any other contemporary writer. He took all his work – novels, stories, journalism, plays and the journal – seriously, and the latter contains very little scrappy or careless writing.

1 Sep 2014

From Cheltenham to Lochiel

Ursula Buchan on the novels of D. K. Broster

Rereading The Flight of the Heron, I recaptured something of the uncomplicated delight and excitement that I had felt first timeround. The story of Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, a minor chieftain of the Cameron clan, his part in the ill-fated campaign to put Charles Edward Stuart on the throne, and his difficult but growing friendship with an English redcoat officer, Keith Windham, had not lost its power to stir.

Auburn in Wartime

Ursula Buchan on Margery Allingham, The Oaken Heart

I had heard of Margery Allingham, of course, and had read The Tiger in the Smoke as a teenager, but I had no idea that she had written an account of her life in the Essex village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy between July 1938 and May 1941. This was a stroke of luck: to find a proper writer (with a large garden and a gardener) who could honestly and clear-sightedly anatomize her feelings and sensations, and quote those of her neighbours, during the Munich crisis, the great evacuation of children and mothers to the country when war broke out, the retreat from Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz.

1 Dec 2013

Melancholy but Marvellous

Ariane Bankes on Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

The capital of nowhere – could anywhere be more tantalizing? For those of us increasingly blasé or wary about visiting ‘somewheres’ the world over, many of them the target of hordes of other tourists hellbent on pleasure (and often compromising the particular qualities of their destination in the process), nowhere sounds the ultimate place to go. And, as it turns out, this place does have its own geographical co-ordinates, and is even accessible by public transport. It’s just that on arrival you may experience a sudden sense of dislocation, an overwhelming wistfulness for an elusive past, and a present that feels curiously like limbo. For in the words of its chronicler, Jan Morris, in Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001), the Mediterranean port ‘stands above economics, or tourism, or science, or even the passage of ships, or if not above them, apart from them’.

Man on the Run

Derek Collett on John Mair, Never Come Back

In 1990, I watched a drama series on the BBC called Never Come Back. It was a superb Second World War thriller with a fine cast including James Fox, Nathaniel Parker and Martin Clunes. Then about a year later, while browsing in my local bookshop, I pulled a volume entitled Never Come Back by John Mair off the shelf and realized that the television series must have been an adaptation of it. The book had obviously been on display in the shop window for a long time because its front cover was badly faded. I almost put it back on the shelf. Thank goodness I didn’t, because Never Come Back (1941) has since become one of my favourite novels.

1 Jun 2018

Holding a Mirror

John Conyngham on William Plomer, Turbott Wolfe

Early in 1925 there arrived at the Hogarth Press in London’s Tavistock Square a parcel, sent from Zululand, containing the manuscript of Turbott Wolfe, the first novel of an unknown writer named William Plomer. Leonard Woolf wrote back promptly, saying it looked ‘very interesting’ and that once Virginia, who was ill, had read it, he would write again. Plomer, living at a trading store in Entumeni, outside the forested hilltop town of Eshowe (named onomatopoeically in Zulu after the sound of wind in trees), was overjoyed. Two months later, Leonard wrote again, making an offer of publication, and weeks afterwards followed up with the news that Harcourt Brace & Co. in New York wanted to publish it too.

Spiritual Reading

Robin Blake on H. F. M. Prescott, The Man on a Donkey

Hilda Prescott was a professional historian, and a biographer of Queen Mary Tudor, who knew the sixteenth century like the back of her falconer’s glove. She was also a natural novelist who carried out her method of immersing the reader, many pages before the plot takes hold, in the daily life of a long-gone England with astonishing attention to detail. She is careful to count the lapse of time as a Tudor would (‘the nearest of the plough teams passed and repassed twice before Julian moved’), she understands the people’s daily obsession with fabrics and needlecraft, she tracks and describes the changes in season, weather and land work, she knows that a postern is a side gate, and a sparver is a bed canopy, and much other evocative terminology.

1 Jun 2018

Prayers before Plenty

Ann Kennedy Smith on E. M. Forster, Marianne Thornton, 1797–1887

In 1953 the writer E. M. Forster, then aged 74, was sorting through old family papers and thinking about the past. He had recently moved back to King’s College, Cambridge, and the high-ceilinged spacious room where he sat was filled with treasured objects from his previous homes: shelves overflowing with books, framed family portraits on the walls and blue china plates neatly arranged on the mantelpiece. Letters gathered in a drift around his shabby William Morris armchair as he pored over his great-aunt Marianne Thornton’s diaries and recollections.

Streams of Consciousness

Richard Platt on Henry Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Life had been kind to the Thoreau brothers. They were fit, healthy, enjoyed nothing so much as their time together in the open air, and having successfully taken over the Concord Academy, the local private school where they themselves had been educated, they had cause for optimism. They were finding their place in the world. It was a time to breathe deeply and venture forth with confidence. These would be among the happiest days of Henry Thoreau’s all-too-brief life, and would inspire A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849).

The Sensation of Crossing the Street

Sue Gee on Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

I remember thinking clearly: what a momentous day this is, and here I am, reading a novel set in London on a single day. What a chime, what an echo! These were not the words I used to myself, as I walked in the dazzling sun, but I now think they should have been, resonating as they do with the famous opening lines of Virginia Woolf ’s novel, when Clarissa Dalloway sets forth on a perfect June morning to buy the flowers for her party: ‘What a lark! What a plunge!’

1 Jun 2008

‘My order of a set of Ronald Welch novels arrived safely. . .’

P. Grant, Texas, United States

‘My order of a set of Ronald Welch novels arrived safely. Thank you for bringing them back into print, for the outstanding quality of your books, and the prompt handling and careful packaging of my order. You have a very satisfied customer, and I’ll be back for more!’

‘Thrilled to receive the Summer issue. . .’

M. Metcalfe

‘Thrilled to receive the Summer issue – the picture on the front conjures up everything that’s special about summer and summer reading – and the contents don’t disappoint, either! I’m saving my copy for our annual retreat to Grasmere next month – sadly no foxes in the garden of our rented cottage near the Lake, but there are red squirrels! I’m also looking forward to Love and War in the Apennines, having spent a walking holiday in that area some years ago. There always seems to be at least one piece with personal resonance, not to mention ideas for gifts and future reading.’

‘I’ve been a subscriber for a few years. . .’

J. Moore, Southampton

‘I’ve been a subscriber for a few years and enjoy each edition of the quarterly: many articles remind me of my past reading, while others encourage me to search out something I may have missed when it first appeared. I also love the whole physical feel and appearance of the journal; it is a pleasure to read.’

‘I listened to the podcast last night. . .’

A. Merrills, Sheffield

‘I listened to the podcast last night on my evening stroll and enjoyed it enormously. As ever, it gave me plenty of inspiration for further reading too: I’ve been a fan of Norman Lewis for a long time, but hadn’t come across A Dragon Apparent, which I’ll now add to the list of books to look out for! The podcast really is a delight; I hope it is as much fun to record as it sounds!’

‘Well Issue 62 is another triumph. . .’

J. Woolcott, Dorset

‘Well Issue 62 is another triumph. I’m always rather surprised at how well the editors and contributors know what I’m currently enjoying, or about to read, or how much they remind me of old classics. Especially the piece on Jonathan Meades – he’s a slightly unlikely hero of mine, and Andrew Nixon has captured his writing perfectly. I occasionally disagree with Meades, on television or on the page, but I always enjoy being provoked by him. This might be something to do with the unusual fact that his mother taught me for a year at primary school. She was fearsome and impressive and always wore a pair of furry boots, as if she had recently murdered a womble and then skinned it. She would refer to Jonathan on occasion – he was yet to make his name. I therefore also really loved An Encyclopaedia of Myself, and especially the way he conjured the part of Salisbury we lived in.’

‘I just finished reading the summer issue. . .’

A. Stockstill, Texas, United States

‘I just finished reading the summer issue of Slightly Foxed, which I thoroughly enjoyed curled up on the sofa with my dog while a summer storm raged outside here in Texas. Thanks for making such a lovely publication that gives this reader new books to add to my list!’

‘I just love your podcasts. . .’

P. Oley, South Shields, Tyne & Wear

‘I just love your podcasts and all the lovely information about books. I always feel as if I am sitting round the table with you all and the dogs and even the background noises, builders and sometimes other things. So glad you sent photos of the dogs. Now I can put faces to the sounds. I’ve been a subscriber to Slightly Foxed for several years now and read it avidly when it comes. You are so generous with all your newsletters etc. I only wish I could manage to find time to read more! You are all very much appreciated. Thank you.’

In Search of Home

Sue Gee on Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation (1989) could not be more specific to time and place – lost and longed-for postwar Cracow, ‘a city of shimmering light and shadow’, of ‘narrow byways . . . echoing courtyards . . . medieval church spires, and low, Baroque arcades’, whose very streets were impregnated with Hoffman’s sense of her developing self; and suburban ’60s Vancouver, with its improbably smooth and velvety lawns, enormous picture windows, ‘disingenuous’ furniture, all of it whitish with gold trimmings.

1 Sep 2017

‘I’m a bit behind on the podcasts . . .’

L. Reader, Kincardineshire

‘I’m a bit behind on the podcasts, which I love, and have just listened to No 5. The years rolled back for me when the topic turned to Virago books. I well remember hearing a radio discussion in the 1970s, (maybe on Woman’s Hour?) about this new publishing company and thinking to myself that it sounded new and exciting. I still have my first Virago purchase, Precious Bane by Mary Webb. I don’t understand how Virago can be more than forty years old when I’m sure I’m scarcely older now than I was then!’

Heroes and Haberdashers || Present ideas for Father’s Day and other occasions

With Father’s Day approaching we thought some of you may appreciate a few present ideas for the father figures in your lives. All presents can be wrapped in handsome brown paper and tied up with a suave and understated cream ribbon and sent off to the recipient, or to you to hand over in person, in good time for Sunday 16 June. Gifts may be sent all over the world and should arrive at far-flung destinations in good time but if you’re worried about delivery times, you can always request an e-mailable or printable gift card during the checkout process to tide you over.

‘I have so enjoyed your podcast . . .’

S. Kjær Nielsen, Denmark

‘I have so enjoyed your podcast, it is like being in the room with you, and it is a very nice room – and good company to be in.’

‘I feel I’m getting to know you all quite well . . .’

V. Sellars, Nottingham

‘My husband bought me a subscription to Slightly Foxed for Christmas. I absolutely love everything about it. How could I not, when my first issue included three (three!) of my favourite books? The Quincunx, The Uncommon Reader, and the under-rated Barnaby Rudge. I’m not sure whether the thing I enjoy most is finding new titles or discovering that some of your contributors are fans of my own discoveries. Due to the podcasts I feel I’m getting to know you all quite well. I particularly liked the feature recently on independent bookshops. As a retired librarian from the humanities department of a major city library, I always valued the opportunities I had to provide a specialist service to readers. Over the past decade the profession has almost disappeared. Your feature gave me hope that just as bookshops are rediscovering their true role, so one day libraries might do the same.’

‘I was first given a subscription as a present . . .’

T. Walker, Worcestershire

‘I was first given a subscription as a present from my son and enjoyed it so much that I extended it to September 2020. I look forward to the magazine which makes me reread old friends. I really enjoy your podcasts (and appreciate the dogs’ interventions as I have two dogs myself, one of whom barked angrily back to the podcast I listened to earlier!) which make me feel I know you personally. I have read and given away several of your beautiful books. They are such lovely things in themselves and I do appreciate having a bookmark built in as postcards and other bookmarks fall out so easily.’

‘I would love to pop into Hoxton Square . . .’

A. Axelrod, Colorado, United States

‘I would love to pop into Hoxton Square, sit at your kitchen table, and talk about books. Unfortunately, that is difficult because I live in Colorado. However, your monthly podcasts are the next best thing. I enjoy them so much and feel like all of you are becoming good friends. I look forward to your ‘visit’ in June.’

Sprouts and Parsnip Wine

Sarah Perry on John Moore, The Blue Field

Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle. There amid the customary colours of furze and wheat was a seven-acre field that ‘had suddenly become tinctured with the colour of Mediterranean skies’. Nothing like it had ever happened before, so that the villagers caught their breath at the sight of this miracle: a great, vivid patch of cerulean ‘so clear and pure that it made one think of eyes or skies’ . . .

The Price of Power

Patrick Welland on John Williams, Augustus

Octavian laid down the ideological and institutional framework which would sustain that empire for the next 400 years. He died aged 76 in AD 14 having been granted the honorific title of Augustus (‘one to be revered’) and worshipped in his lifetime as a living god, an elevation by the credulous that he considered absurd.

A Snatch of Morning

Helen MacEwan on David Cecil, The Stricken Deer

I bought David Cecil’s Life of William Cowper, The Stricken Deer, at a time, in my early twenties, when I was starting to devour literary biography, my preferred reading ever since. I was by then familiar not just with Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre and David Copperfield but with Jane Austen, the Brontës and Charles Dickens. Most of my literary friends were in the nineteenth century: the eighteenth was largely unfamiliar territory. All I knew about William Cowper was that he had been a favourite poet of Jane Austen’s.

Travelling Fearlessly

Maggie Fergusson on the travel writing of Colin Thubron

For great tracts of time he was away, leaving his ‘old self behind’, exploring places most of us would neither dare nor desire to visit, but which we love to read about with a vicarious sense of fearlessness and endurance. In the golden generation that produced Jonathan Raban, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux and Redmond O’Hanlon, Thubron is now the Grand Old Man, bringing to journeys that are physically and psychologically testing a fine, romantic sensibility.

An Epic Achievement

Christopher Rush on John Milton, Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost was first published 350 years ago in 1667, and was still being hailed and even enjoyed as an epic achievement (literally) into the early twentieth century. Now it’s almost unread, except by the chosen academic few. Why? The real problem, says John Carey in his recent abridgement, is not its world picture but quite simply its length. Milton had just turned 20 when he first announced his epic intention, to compose a poem that would encompass all space and time: an ambitious aim, and, as it took another thirty years to accomplish, the resulting work was never going to be short.

Pony-mad

Julie Welch on Ruby Ferguson’s ‘Jill’ books

Ruby Ferguson wrote nine ‘Jill’ books, of which Jill’s Gymkhana is the first. Originally published in 1949 by Hodder & Stoughton, it was beautifully illustrated by ‘Caney’, and priced at 7s 6d. A review by Frances Vivien in the Observer of 9 May that year declared it ‘a perfect pony story for girls’.

Hands across the Tea-shop Table

Sue Gee on Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek

The novel is set in the 1920s and 1940s. Both world wars are elided, the one before it opens, the other between one chapter and the next, but in the background is the fierce struggle of the suffragettes, when Lilian, Harriet’s mother, had been sent to prison. A clever, principled woman, widowed young, she despairs of her daughter, who has left school without an exam or an ambition, and sends her to help look after the two children of Caroline Macmillan, one-time fellow suffragette, still dearest friend. It is in this worthy, book-lined, vegetarian household that Harriet falls for Vesey, nephew of Caroline’s husband.

Tiger the Literary Lion

Hazel Wood on Jennie Erdal, Ghosting

One day in 1981 a young woman found herself travelling from her Scottish home to London to meet a publisher. So far so predictable perhaps. She had read Russian at university and had recently translated the memoirs of the painter Leonid Pasternak, father of the more famous Boris. There was nothing predictable about this meeting, however, and the man waiting for her at the door of his Mayfair flat was no ordinary publisher. This is how she describes him.

Forest School

Helena Drysdale on BB, Brendon Chase

It’s the end of the Easter holidays, and Robin, John and Harold Hensman can’t face returning to their boarding-school. Their ‘people’ are in India, and for years they’ve been entrusted to the care of their fussy maiden aunt, assisted by the vicar. Banchester isn’t bad as English public schools go, but they are country boys who dread being trapped in a classroom when summer approaches and the great outdoors calls. They hatch a plan. They will escape and hide out like Robin Hood and his merry men in the eleven-thousand-acre forest of Brendon Chase . . .

Manhattan Moments

Kristian Doyle on Maeve Brennan, The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker

In January 1954, a vignette appeared in the New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ section, introduced only vaguely as a missive from ‘a rather long-winded lady’. The piece – like all ‘Talk’ stories then, unsigned – was a lightly sardonic first-person account of a woman’s disastrous experience in a dress shop. It might not have been world-changing, but it did stand out from the usual ‘Talk’ pieces, which were often impersonal, mannered little things, written in the royal ‘we’. The Long-Winded Lady, though, idiosyncratic from the beginning, spoke only for herself. ‘Well, there you are,’ she signed off, ‘in case you’ve paid any attention.’

A Peak Experience

Richard Crockatt on Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

If literary critics are to be believed, understanding literature requires an analytical approach. We all know, however, that our experience of a particular book or author is often bound up with where we happen to be in life. In that sense, reading is as much about self-discovery as discovery of what the author meant. Perhaps the great books are those which can accommodate the widest possible range of reader experiences of whatever time and place. Certainly the circumstances in which I read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1924) bore little relation to those of its first German readers in the era of the Weimar Republic. Yet connections emerged in the most surprising ways.

Growing up Edwardian

Anthony Gardner on Osbert Lancaster, All Done From Memory & With an Eye to the Future

I wonder if I have ever stayed in an English house that didn’t contain a creased and dog-eared book by Osbert Lancaster. In my childhood his collections of pocket cartoons were always a disappointment: the comic sketches on their covers promised hilarity, but the jokes inside – no doubt wonderfully topical in their day – meant little to me. His architectural books, which I noticed as I grew older, seemed forbiddingly esoteric. Not until I acquired parents-in-law who owned almost his entire oeuvre did I discover the memoirs that convinced me of his brilliance: All Done from Memory (1953) and With an Eye to the Future (1967) are remarkable not just for their wit and powers of observation, but for their highly individual take on Britain’s path to two world wars.

Trollope’s Ireland

Margaret Drabble on the Irish novels of Anthony Trollope

I have been reading Trollope’s fiction over several decades, but it was not until this year that I embarked upon his three principal Irish novels. They have not been his most popular works, and I, like many others, was deterred by the heavy use of dialect which slows the reader down and makes the page look unwelcoming. But when I decided to overcome this prejudice, I was rewarded.

Mr Polly Walks to Freedom

Ken Haigh on H. G. Wells, The History of Mr Polly

Part of the attraction lies in its hero, Alfred Polly. He is a small, inconsequential man, the sort who drifts through life as if in a dream. ‘I’ve never really planned my life, or set out to live,’ Polly admits. ‘I happened; things happened to me. It’s so with everyone.’ But Polly is graced with a warm heart and a real need for affection. He has a romantic streak fuelled by a voracious and indiscriminate love of reading. He also has a knack for comic neologism that makes up for his lack of formal education. Pushy youngsters are referred to as a ‘Shoveacious Cult’, full of ‘Smart Juniosity’. A man with a prominent Adam’s apple is the ‘Soulful Owner’ of an ‘Exorbiant Largenial Development’.

Cogs in a Fighting Machine

Henry Jeffreys on Len Deighton, Bomber

While reading Len Deighton’s Bomber (1970), I was reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s line – ‘To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.’ Bomber is a novel about the area bombing of Germany during the Second World War. Targeting German cities and civilians is a part of Britain’s war that is still extremely controversial. It doesn’t fit into the heroic narrative of the Battle of Britain, the Blitz or D-Day. Almost alone among British forces, bomber crews were not issued with a campaign medal when the war ended. The debate as to whether the bombing was a necessary evil or simply just evil continues to exercise historians and writers to this day.

Grinning at the Devil

Kate Tyte on Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

Seven Gothic Tales is an apt title. All tales must have a teller, and Dinesen’s seven separate tales – all long, some long enough to be novellas – have multiple storytellers. There are tales within tales within tales, each opening on to the next like a series of Russian dolls. The themes are Gothic: doomed love affairs; the inevitability of fate; super natural forces. There are gloomy monasteries, ghosts, violent murders and bizarre plot twists including a nun who transforms into a monkey.

1 Sep 2018

Father Figures

Martin Sorrell on Albert Camus, The Plague

Three-quarters of the way through the novel I’ve always thought is Camus’ finest, its two main protagonists go for a swim after dark in the waters beyond the harbour of their coastal city, which is in the grip of bubonic plague. The city is Oran, in north-west Algeria; the date is sometime in the 1940s. The plague, which gives the novel its name, has sealed Oran off from the outside world. The Mediterranean water into which the men plunge breathes like a fur-covered animal, Camus tells us.

1 Sep 2018

A Well-tempered Gardener

Michael Leapman on the garden writings of Christopher Lloyd

There is no good reason why an expert and dedicated gardener should be able to write elegant prose – and a survey of the gardening shelves of bookshops, along with the many magazines devoted to horticulture, will confirm that the two skills rarely converge. One glittering exception was Christopher Lloyd, known familiarly as Christo, who died in 2006 havebaying spent almost his entire adult life developing the five-acre garden at Great Dixter, his family home in East Sussex, where he was born in 1921. He wrote columns about it for Country Life and other journals, and produced seventeen books.

1 Sep 2018

In a Class of Their Own

Patrick Welland on Graham Greene (ed.), The Old School

The Old School is made up of seventeen essays by writers who achieved literary distinction later in life, though some are all but forgotten today. Apart from Auden, still familiar names include Harold Nicolson, H. E. Bates, Anthony Powell, Elizabeth Bowen and Stephen Spender. Less well remembered are the South African novelist and poet William Plomer and the novelist and film critic E. Arnot Robertson.

Front Lines

Sue Gaisford on H. H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley & Raymond Asquith, Life and Letters

The Prime Minister was blazingly indiscreet, prefacing the most vital secrets of military strategy with such remarks as ‘this is rather private’ and reminding her not to leave the letter lying on the hall table. And his thumbnail sketches of his colleagues are wickedly enjoyable: arguing with Churchill, he wrote, was like arguing with a brass band, but even that was preferable to listening to his eloquence. But Asquith did not write to his son.

A Great Adventure

Andy Merrills on Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts; Between the Woods and the Water

In late December 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on foot for Constantinople (as he anachronistically termed it). Recently expelled from school for the unpardonable crime of holding hands with a local girl, and insufficiently inspired by the prospect of Sandhurst and a career of peacetime soldiering, the 19-year-old decided to head east on foot. His backpack was evidently stuffed to the brim, with a greatcoat, jerseys, shirts (including white linen ones for dressy occasions), puttees, nailed boots, a selection of stationery, a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse and the first volume of the Loeb Horace.

1 Jun 2013

A Romantic Escape

Patrick French on Eric Newby, Love and War in the Apennines

Love and War in the Apennines is a book of romantic escape, overseen by the suffering of war, which shows how it ripples out across society and into fragile human lives.

One Man and His Pigs

Laurie Graham on Lord Emsworth’s Annotated Whiffle

Many of you will already be acquainted with Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth. You will know that in a life buffeted by bossy and opinionated women the Earl’s greatest consolation is his prizewinning Berkshire sow, the Empress of Blandings. P. G. Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth is a connoisseur of pigs and his favourite book, possibly the only one he ever reads, is The Care of the Pig by Augustus Whiffle.

Mood Music

Rebecca Willis on Rebecca West’s ‘Saga of the Century’

Until I read the bit in Rebecca West’s This Real Night where one of the main characters dies, I’d never cried properly on a plane. I’ll admit to a bit of panicky sobbing during a bout of bad turbulence, but never before had I abandoned myself to full-on, uncontrollable weeping at 33,000 feet. I won’t tell you which of the characters dies, because that would be a cruel spoiler, and I am hoping to persuade you to spend time with this strange, wonderful trilogy and the eccentric Aubrey family who live in its pages. But I’m getting ahead of myself, because This Real Night is the second book in the series and – like the unfinished third, Cousin Rosamund – was published posthumously (1984 and 1985 respectively).

Haikus among the Pears

Olivia Potts on Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book

A Jane Grigson quotation sits on my desk. It’s written on a scrappy Post-it note; the glue on the back has picked up dust and a stray piece of cotton. It wasn’t meant to become a permanent feature, rather a scribble to remind myself to write the line somewhere more lasting, but I can’t quite bring myself to throw it away. It reads: ‘Anyone who likes to eat, can soon learn to cook well.’

Hoofing It

Richard Conyngham on Dervla Murphy, Eight Feet in the Andes

Unable to pedal but still able to walk, I had found inspiration in a battered copy of Eight Feet in the Andes wedged between the clothes and the spare tubes in my pannier. In the early 1980s, its author Dervla Murphy flew to Cajamarca in Peru with her 9-year-old daughter Rachel. Already a veteran of odysseys on foot, mule, donkey and bicycle, the Irish travel writer needed no justification for what came next. Putting the local grapevine to good use, she and Rachel purchased a lively young mule named Juana . . .

1 Jun 2019

Small Is Beautiful

Matt Collins on H. E. Bates, Through the Woods

Among the books I’d assembled to help steer me through the boundless subject of trees and woodlands for a recent commission, H. E. Bates’s Through the Woods – a month-by-month account of a small copse in Kent – looked unassuming. Recommended via some unnerving algorithm of online commerce, it sat for many weeks among the accumulating pile beneath my desk. When at last I glanced through it, however, one passage brought it suddenly alive. . .

A Burning Issue

Piers Plowright on Cesare Pavese, The Moon and the Bonfires

This is the tale of a baby, a book and a candle. The setting is the Sudan, the baby is our first-born, two-month-old Natasha, and the book is a great twentieth-century Italian novel. As for the candle . . . One may as well begin with the baby. Natasha Su-ming Sakina Plowright was born on 22 February 1966 in Omdurman, a stone’s throw from the Mahdi’s tomb, to my wife Poh Sim and me. She weighed 8lbs 6oz and was bright blue. Her nearest neighbour in the nun-run hospital was a Greek grocer’s baby weighing in at over 10lbs. We carried ours home in triumph and a Moses basket to our eccentric, edge-of-desert house, set in a garden full of mongooses.

1 Jun 2019

An Incurable Topophilia

Andrew Nixon on the writings of Jonathan Meades

For Meades is not a ‘television presenter’ at all, but rather an author who occasionally makes television programmes. His considerable written oeuvre includes fiction, memoir, reportage, cultural history, literary criticism and even a highly idiosyncratic cookbook. His specialist subject, however, is place.

Not Your Average Englishwoman

Justin Marozzi on Rosita Forbes, The Secret of the Sahara

I first encountered Rosita Forbes atop a camel in the middle of the Rabiana Sand Sea in southern Libya. There was probably no finer way of making this unusual writer’s acquaintance. Here, deep in the Sahara, she was in her element, disguised as an Arab woman and with only a few camels and human companions between her and a nasty, lingering death. In fact it was worse than that. Apart from the natural dangers of the desert, she was passing through the territory of tribesmen who regarded this motley expedition of an Englishwoman and the Egyptian Olympic-fencer-cum-spy-cum-explorer Ahmed Hassanein Bey with profound suspicion, if not downright hostility.

1 Jun 2019

Uncle Vanya Drops In

William Palmer on Roy Lewis, The Evolution Man

I should read The Evolution Man, he said. He would lend it to me. I had never heard of its author, Roy Lewis, but pieced together some information about him. Born in 1913, educated at King Edward’s School in Birmingham and University College, Oxford, Lewis spent much of his adult life as a journalist working for, among others, the Economist and The Times.

1 Jun 2019

Antipodean Alcatraz

Charles Elliott on Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore

Australia was born as a jail. Not until well into the eighteenth century was Europe aware of the place, and even then nobody could see much use for it. But the British, who claimed it, had serious problems at home, principal among them being an apparent crime wave that had generated an unmanageable volume of convicts.

Extremely Likable People

Ursula Buchan on the novels of O. Douglas

In the kind of house where books are handed down the generations, the chances are that on a spare bedroom bookshelf, squeezed between Guy Mannering and Roses, Their Culture and Management, you will find a copy of one of the eleven novels written by O. Douglas. Take it to bed to read and you will quickly become immersed in the cultured, if circumscribed, Scottish middle-class life of three generations ago. Whether that appeals to you will probably depend both on your attitude to Scotland and Scottishness and on whether you enjoy a well-told if old-fashioned story where only rarely does anything very startling happen.

1 Jun 2019

An Olympian Effort

Peter Radford on E. McDonald Bailey, If It’s Speed You’re After

When I was a young man I was an international runner who held world sprint records and won medals in the European Championships, the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games. You would be right in thinking that training, allied with natural ability, had something to do with this, but it was a book, bought when I was 13, that made it all possible. That book changed my life.

Scoops of the Century

Anthony Wells on Clare Hollingworth, There’s a German Just Behind Me

Clare Hollingworth lived to the high old age of 105, spending much of her last years in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in her adopted home of Hong Kong. Even at the age of 92 she was said to be prepared to head out to whatever hot-spot her editor might want to send her to. After reading There’s a German Just Behind Me, you’ll rather wish her editor had given her the call.

Energetic Idleness

Adam Foulds on Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift

In Nabokov’s novel The Gift (1938) the young poet Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev is solitary and gifted. A virtuoso of perception, he sees around him many small, delightful details – a shopkeeper’s pumpkincoloured bald spot; an iridescent oil slick on a road with a plume-like twist, asphalt’s parakeet – that others around him miss.

31 May 2019

Ire and Irritability

Pauline Melville on Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

I am having another stab at Jane Austen. Friends beg me to keep trying, anxious for me not to miss what they tell me is an unrivalled view of a luminous literary landscape. I have made efforts on and off over the years and never found her to my taste. Somewhere along the line at school I passed through Northanger Abbey without retaining much impression of it. But now I have made a pledge with a friend who works at the Royal Society of Literature. I must endeavour to read some Austen and my friend will attempt to read Wuthering Heights, a book she has heretofore avoided. She suggested I start with Sense and Sensibility, so I did.

New this Summer from Slightly Foxed

We’re delighted to let you know that the Summer issue of Slightly Foxed (No. 62) left the printing press at Smith Settle yesterday and will start to arrive with readers in the UK from today and elsewhere over the next few weeks. It ranges far and wide in the usual eclectic manner. With it, as usual, you’ll find a copy of our latest Readers’ Catalogue, detailing new books, our backlist, books featured in the latest issue of the quarterly, recommended seasonal reading and other offers and bundles. We do hope you’ll enjoy the new issue of the quarterly, wherever in the world you are. If you are on a repeat order to receive each limited-edition memoir each quarter, your usual hand-numbered copy of Love and War in the Apennines will be with you very soon. We shall look forward to the usual flurry of emails, letters, postcards, telephone calls and visits that the turn of the new quarter brings – hearing from you all is one of the nicest parts of the job.

‘I have been listening to your podcast with delight . . .’

S. Forrest, Toronto, Canada

‘I have been listening to your podcast with delight. It has been an entertaining change from the usual sensationalism. It’s great fun, like sitting with an erudite friend but not needing to contribute yourself. What could be better?’

Episode 7: A Window on the World

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Steph and Anna go behind the scenes with booksellers Brett Wolstencroft of Daunt Books and Kathleen Smith of Topping & Co. Bath to talk about the reality and romance of life running two of the country’s finest bookshops. Andrew Hawkins recounts the tale of a London publisher who tried his hand at repping and ended up in a spot of bother with a drunken poet in Fife, and there’s the usual round-up of recommended reading and news from Hoxton Square.

‘I’m so enjoying the SF podcasts . . .’

A. Mosley, Devon

‘I’m so enjoying the SF podcasts. As someone living on their own there is something very comforting about pouring a glass of wine and listening to sparkling people eclectically wandering through their collective experiences, memories and literary wisdom. A brilliant idea.’

‘I wish you were all sitting round my table . . .’

M. Allison, Kent

‘I wish you were all sitting round my table! I am sure you would be the best sort of visitors, and far and away the most interesting. Thank you for another super podcast, looking forward to the next one.’

From the Slightly Foxed archives || Not Swinging, Just Dancing

As regular readers know, each issue of the magazine itself ranges far and wide across all sorts of books and subjects – from non-fiction, fiction, poetry, biography, memoir, guides and even, once, a manual for operating a British Seagull Co. outboard motor but as our newsletters have been rather more non-fiction focused of late, we thought it was high time we shared a recommendation for fiction. So, in this selected article from the archives, we’re dancing back to Issue 35 (Autumn 2012) with Linda Leatherbarrow on the novels of Edna O’Brien.

Up There on a Visit

Mike Petty on visiting a poet

It was the custom then, in the late ’70s, and still is for all I know, for editors to saunter forth from their ivory towers and visit bookshops with the reps, experience life at the sharp end of the book trade and so on. It was called being ‘on the road’ but tended to concentrate on large centres of population easily reached from London. Nothing could disguise the jittery bonhomie of the unfortunate rep chosen for this honour, or the loathing in the eyes of the bookseller forced to undergo ordeal by young puppy on top of the usual ordeal by rep.

1 Dec 2005

O’Brian’s World

Grant McIntyre on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels

O’Brian’s mastery of language is most wonderful of all. He manages to capture that mixture of toughness and grace which, for me at least, makes formal eighteenth-century English so attractive. Also the verbal violence that makes demotic eighteenth-century English so vivid. He catches Stephen’s subtle Irishness, or the slightly unidiomatic English of highly educated South Americans, or the competitiveness of children, or the way one wife can make her opinion of another very clear without expressing it, or Jack can make his authority absolute without disrespect – and he does it all in the language of the time.

1 Dec 2014

Oh Nancy, Nancy!

Sam Leith on the Nancy Drew mysteries

The Nancy Drew mysteries (I didn’t know, then, that ‘mystery’ is what Americans call a detective story) were the first series of books to which I became completely addicted. And, since there were dozens of them, it seemed as if I could never run out – useful, for a child who weekly exhausted his borrowing limit at Dorking Library. My grandfather got into the habit, for a bit, of buying me one a week. Whenever I had a book token, it was into the bookshop at the top of the main street (I can’t for the life of me remember its name) that I would go. Oh! the anticipation of a fresh one, a fresh mystery, smelling of new paperback, picked off the long shelf of Nancy Drew books in the children’s section and taken home in a crisp paper bag.

1 Mar 2019

The House that Jack Built

Grant McIntyre on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels

Most people would agree that Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, set when Britain’s Navy had first Napoleon and then the USA to confront, are among the best historical fiction the twentieth century produced. In fact plenty would drop that word ‘among’, since the books contain so much variety, perceptiveness and subtle comedy, so many wonderful themes and inventions of genius which add to the fun of reading them.

1 Jun 2014

A Friendship of Opposites

Grant McIntyre on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels

Never one for naval yarns I didn’t at first spot Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, which are set in the wars at sea against Napoleon and then the United States. But once I’d tried one I bought them by the handful. It was like that for most of his readers. O’Brian was not successful at first; critics took him for a kind of retread C. S. Forester, and in fact his books did look a bit dated, published next to Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers for instance, or One Hundred Years of Solitude. A surprising few – Iris Murdoch, Charlton Heston, William Waldegrave and David Mamet, for example – were passionate about them from the start, but ten years passed before most of us realized something new and extraordinary had appeared.

1 Dec 2013

‘Thank you for your podcast . . .’

E. Tennessen, Los Alamos, New Mexico

‘Wonderful podcast! I found the bit about Edward Lear very touching and sad. How biographies reveal the hidden lives of others – we often cannot guess the inner battles our fellow humans face. Now off to read the SF essay about Lear… Thank you for your podcast; it’s a real listening pleasure!’

Histories of the Soul

Christian Tyler on the works of Svetlana Alexievich

Alexievich was not interested in conventional responses, the kind of thing people say to journalists when they are shy, afraid of controversy or anxious to please. Since this was Russia, she had also to overcome the inhibitions imposed on her witnesses by a lifetime of subservience to the state, not to mention their deeply felt patriotism. She waited hours, days and weeks until they were ready to open up.

‘My favourite podcasts are the Slightly Foxed podcast . . .’

C. Butler, Utah, United States

‘My favourite podcasts are the Slightly Foxed podcast, Tea or Books?, Tea & Tattle and Hashtag Authentic’

Not Swinging, Just Dancing

Linda Leatherbarrow on the novels of Edna O’Brien

With my first wage, earned by selling toys in a department store, I bought myself a pair of black stockings, a bottle of frosted pink nail varnish, and a copy of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls. My family believed books were ‘good for you’ and I’d gobbled up the classics: Dickens, the Brontës, Thackeray, Gaskell and Defoe, coping happily with long convoluted sentences and dutifully deploying them in my school essays. O’Brien’s brilliantly concise sentences were a revelation, her voice fresh and direct.

The Next Bob Dylan

Laurence Scott on Bert Weedon, Play in a Day

In 1950 guitars were rare in the UK and sales barely touched 5,000, but Elvis, Cliff and British rock ’n’ roll changed all that. In 1957, when Play in a Day was first published, annual UK guitar sales topped a quarter of a million and the number of people wanting to learn the guitar vastly outnumbered those capable of teaching it – a situation well understood by Bert, who wrote in his Introduction that he wanted his book to contain ‘the essential requirements of the lone student without a teacher’. It went straight to the top of the bestseller list and stayed there for several months. With sales to date totalling around 4 million, Play in a Day is the world’s biggest selling guitar tutor and it’s never been out of print.

Kinsey Makes a Difference

Frances Donnelly on Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone Alphabet novels

There are authors’ deaths, announced casually on the radio, that provoke an involuntary cry of loss. The recent death of Sue Grafton, author of the alphabetically themed Kinsey Millhone detective novels, was one such. How could you not mourn a writer with whom you’d kept company – and 25 books – for 36 years? An added sadness was that she would not now complete her task of a book for every letter of the alphabet. We had had Y Is for Yesterday (2017) and awaited, confidently, Z Is for Zero. Except that now it won’t be. ‘In our family’, said one of her daughters, ‘the alphabet now ends with Y.’

1 Dec 2018

Grave Expectations

Richard Platt on Charles Palliser, The Quincunx

The leitmotiv of The Quincunx is the interplay of Chance and Design – do we perceive Design in our lives, or merely impose it? – underscored by the recurrence of those Dickensian coincidences that Dickens’s detractors so often deride as ‘contrived’, yet which occur in real life every day, but the foundational theme is greed: how it twists, degrades and ultimately destroys everything it touches, even the innocent, and how it so clouds the minds of men that they come to see their most heinous acts through an indestructible rose-coloured glass of self-justification. Like so much of Dickens, it is a cautionary tale.

3 May 2019

In Search of Unicorns

Victoria Neumark on Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse & Linnets & Valerians

Like Traherne Goudge was an ardent Anglican. But although religion can be an oppressive presence in her adult novels, in her children’s books it manifests itself merely as a sense of embracing safety. One of her obituaries quoted Jane Austen’s famous line from Mansfield Park, ‘Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.’ Her fictional world is devoid of malice, which is why it was such balm to our childish spirits. Loyalty, kindness, affection, the wonder of nature, the smells of good, plain English cooking, a hot bath and clean clothes, the appealing personalities of pets: these are the things she celebrates. In Goudge’s children’s books, to use Louis MacNeice’s phrase, there is ‘sunlight on the garden’ and the equation always comes out.

A Modern Pied Piper

Maggie Fergusson interviews Michael Morpurgo

For generations of children, Michael Morpurgo has been a kind of Pied Piper. No one is sure exactly how many books he’s written, but there are over 150 of them, and they are said to have sold, in total, more than 35 million copies. Many have become classics – Private Peaceful, which follows a First World War soldier through the last night of his life before he is executed for cowardice; Kensuke’s Kingdom, the story of a small boy washed up on an island in the Pacific; Why the Whales Came, set in the Scilly Isles in 1914.

1 Dec 2018

Incorrigible and Irresistible

Sue Gaisford on the letters of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

On our course we were studying Rochester, as published in the Muses Library edition, and while we were certainly impressed by the rage and ingenuity of his satires, most of us had fallen slightly in love with the limpid beauty of his lyrics – especially ‘Absent from thee I languish still’ and ‘All my past life is mine no more’. It was a little mysterious that this early collection should be kept under lock and key but, as I was briskly informed, this was an unexpurgated and obscene book, definitely not suitable for impressionable undergraduates. And, actually, would I go away now and only come back with written permission from my tutor? That is, if I really needed to return.

Russian Roulette

Anne Boston on Lionel Davidson, Kolymsky Heights

I met Davidson in 1994 when Kolymsky Heights, his last and arguably his finest, was published. He was slight and unassuming, with expressive dark eyes that widened when I showed him my early proof copy and said how much I’d enjoyed it. How did he come to be familiar with the ‘howling wastes’ of Siberia, virtually closed to outsiders for decades, so chillingly evoked in the book? It was all based on factual research, he said simply; he had never set foot there.

1 Dec 2018

Keeping Ahead of the Game

Christopher Rush on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

How many know the story already? The question takes me back to my last year in primary school, when I was awarded the only literary prize I have ever won. It was for an essay ‘On the Evils of Alcohol’, set by the village Ladies’ Temperance Association – a misnomer, as abstinence, not temperance, was their aim. The prize was Stories of King Arthur and His Knights, retold for youngsters by Barbara Leonie Picard. I devoured this book and was gladdened by the far-away world it created . . .

Rock, Root and Bird

Justin Marozzi on Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

The Living Mountain, thankfully, is a treasure that, rather like the Cairngorms it describes so wondrously, stands alone in space and time. Happening on it at any point in one’s reading life brings unexpected pleasure. It is thanks to Robert Macfarlane, who has written a typically penetrating introduction to a new edition, that the book, first published in 1977 after lying orphaned in a drawer for four decades, is now enjoying a second wind. So much so that the recent, universally glowing accolades even include the claim that this is ‘the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain’. For Macfarlane it is ‘one of the two most remarkable twentieth-century British studies of a landscape that I know’. So we are in serious territory here.

. . . to Buckingham Palace

Hazel Wood on Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

How Bennett must have enjoyed writing this book. The Palace setting, with its hierarchies and snobberies and constipated bureaucracy, and the shrewd no-nonsense voice of his central character, allow him to take pot-shots at all his favourite targets: official jargon, literary pretension, slippery politicians, trendy attitudes – and ultimately, perhaps, the infantilizing effects of Monarchy itself, with its suburban lifestyle hidden behind the glittering façade.

From Bloomsbury . . .

Alan Bradley on Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

Notoriously, Woolf doesn’t write about the women on whom she herself depended for home comforts but, mostly, about those who were educated and wealthy enough to write diaries or letters. But she was very aware of the limitations society forced upon all women, both socially and physically. And how much can be gleaned from letters that will never be written, let alone preserved, in our modern, high-speed age. She was writing at a time when letters were still the main method of communication.

1 Dec 2018

A Dickens of a Riot

Daisy Hay on Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

Last year I decided that I felt like reading Dickens at Christmas. Resisting the temptation to turn to old and reliable fireside favourites, I alighted instead on Barnaby Rudge. It seemed a choice that would fulfil two purposes: quenching my thirst for some Dickensian delights while teaching me something of an episode about which I wanted to know more. Barnaby Rudge is a historical novel, one of only two such novels Dickens wrote. It was published in 1841 and was the work he planned the longest and most carefully. Yet it is rarely read today and wasn’t very popular when it was published either. One contemporary critic apparently dismissed it as ‘Barnaby Rubbish’.

Striking Sparks

Derek Parker on editing the Poetry Review

As Muriel Spark had done before me I insisted that ‘if you’re a driver, you drive’ – that I would publish what I liked, and that the lady who wrote from the South of France complaining that the contents of the magazine were ‘sheer drivel that is an insult to the intelligence’ must simply be ignored. I clung on for five years, introducing a number of then young poets now celebrated. I can scarcely believe that I did all that work without a salary – editors of the magazine had never been paid, and I didn’t learn until years later that on my appointment the Arts Council had a grant of £500 a year for the Editor, linked to £1,000 for the General Secretary – conditional on the secretary not being Robert Armstrong. The offer was naturally refused. I was awarded a small ‘honorarium’ for the last two years – less than I could have earned by writing one sixty-minute radio feature.

1 Mar 2019

‘Really enjoyed your sixth podcast. . .’

P. Morrall, Pembrokeshire

‘Really enjoyed your sixth podcast and delighted that Gail’s recommendation is yet another of my favourites! I think she recommended A Gentleman in Moscow last month, which I was riveted by as an audio book on a long drive – just loved it! And I’ve been raving about Tim Pears’ trilogy ever since I read The Horseman a year or so ago. Three of the most beautifully written books I’ve read in ages. The trouble with Slightly Foxed is that it brings up so many titles which appeal to me that I shall now have to live until I’m about 120 just to fit in all this reading! Keep them coming, though. Such treats in store.’

Love and Loss in Brussels

Helen MacEwan on Charlotte Brontë's Villette

In 2016, in a debate organized by the Brontë Society, a panel of four writers discussed the relative merits of Jane Eyre (see SF no. 40) and Charlotte Brontë’s last novel, Villette. When an audience vote was taken, the earlier and better-known book won, but only by a small majority; the two writers defending Villette had been eloquent in its praise. As one of them said, you often come to appreciate it later in life. If Jane Eyre is Pride and Prejudice, Villette is Persuasion.

Murder Most English

Janet Walkinshaw on the Flaxborough novels of Colin Watson

Colin Watson was born in 1920. At the age of 17 he was appointed as a junior reporter on a Boston newspaper, and he spent his working life in Lincolnshire, latterly writing editorials for a chain of news-papers. He was a member of the Detection Club of Great Britain and he won the CWA Silver Dagger twice. In his photos, bespectacled, moustached, he looks like one of his own creations, a quiet, reserved Englishman, and by all accounts that is what he was. Who knew that he could see, under the bland surface of a quiet country town, the joyous anarchy of the ordinary citizen’s life? And if he couldn’t see it, he could invent it, and describe it in what must be some of the most elegant language of any crime novel.

1 Mar 2019

On the Wings of History

Karin Altenberg on Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy

Kristin Lavransdatter is a love story – but a masterly one that begins, in the first book of the trilogy, with Kristin swiftly breaking her society’s norms of patriarchy, duty and honour in order to give herself over to erotic passion. Undset viewed eroticism – a desire so profound that life would be intolerable if it were not satisfied – as part of the spiritual sphere. Kristin falls, in every way, for the handsome but clearly unsuitable Erlend Nikulaussøn, although her father has already pledged her to the thoroughly decent Simon Darre. When the wedding between Kristin and Erlend is finally allowed to happen, at the end of the first book, it is an excruciating affair, the bridal crown weighing so heavily on Kristin’s head that she can hardly sit upright at the banquet.

Man of Many Lives

Michael Holroyd on Hugh Kingsmill's Frank Harris

‘The Connoisseur of Harris’ was Hugh Kingsmill. In 1919 he published a novel called The Will to Love which he had written in a prisoner-of-war camp. Harris appears in it as Ralph Parker, a man whose friendship ‘was a craving for an audience, his love, lust in fancy dress’. Yet ‘in the ruins of his nature, crushed but not extinct, something genuine and noble struggled to express itself ’. Harris was in his seventies when he died in the summer of 1931 and Kingsmill’s biography of him was published the following year. They had known each other for twenty years and the book was one of those Lives that contain two main characters: the subject and the writer.

Just Staying

Jonathan Law on Alistair MacLeod

In forty years MacLeod produced just sixteen short stories, later collected in Island (2002), and one not very long novel, the extraordinary No Great Mischief (1999). Notoriously, he wrote at glacial speed, toiling over each sentence by hand until its shape and heft and tune were exactly so. You could read the life’s work in a weekend, but you mustn’t: the stories demand to be savoured slowly, the way they were written. A MacLeod sentence is a tactile thing, with the hard but polished feel of a pebble in the hand. Yet the prose is not ‘writerly’ in any tiresome way: ‘I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it,’ MacLeod once said, and his work retains a strong sense of the speaking or even singing voice – of folk tales or Gaelic balladry.

An Unusual Lexicographer

Ann Kennedy Smith on Robert Burchfield, The Spoken Word: A BBC Guide

The Spoken Word, published in 1981, was produced in response to a wave of complaints to the British Broadcasting Corporation about falling standards in spoken English. A new era of broadcasting had begun in the 1970s, as the BBC changed from being the Reithian home of ‘received pronunciation’ to something broader, permitting more regional accents and informal language. Many people felt that the move towards linguistic diversity had gone too far, resulting in what the critic Anne Karpf so eloquently described in 1980 as ‘English as she is murdered on radio’.

1 Mar 2019

Springtime Reflections

Chris Saunders on Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring

You can almost smell the sylvan air, and this is one of Thomas’s attractions. Born in the suburbs, his love of nature drove his devout wish to escape the noise and chaos of London. Like him, I have moved to the sticks and I feel he is speaking for me when he writes: Many days in London have no weather. We are aware only that it is hot or cold, dry or wet; that we are in or out of doors; that we are at ease or not. But Thomas’s writing is more than pastoral escapism. He often turns his retreat to the country into an assessment of himself and this is where In Pursuit of Spring becomes spooky, funny and also strangely wise…

A Perfect Electrometer

Roger Hudson on the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth

My Cambridge tutor was bubbling over with pleasure one morning in 1962 after reading Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal, the one she kept between 1800 and 1803 when living with her poet brother William at Dove Cottage in the Lake District. What he had been particularly taken with was something she wrote on 14 May 1802 when the two had been walking in the woods alongside Grasmere: ‘William teased himself with seeking an epithet for the Cuckow.’ I never forgot this slightly comical picture of the creative process, but it was almost thirty years before I came to read her journal myself when doing a book on Coleridge among the lakes and mountains.

‘I discovered your world of Slightly Foxed . . .’

H. Desai, Bradford

‘I discovered your world of Slightly Foxed at the start of my day today through an Instagram advert about your podcast. I instantly downloaded all six episodes and devoured the first two on my way to work this morning. It was incredibly charming, warm and comforting. I’ve never heard of a bookish podcast quite like this and I was utterly drawn in by the language and the feeling that I too, was sat around the kitchen table surrounded by tombs of musty books. Anyway, I just wanted to say that for an Asian Muslim girl in the Northern town of Bradford, it’s incredible to gain such a wondrous insight into a world I only dream to work in. So thank you! (I’m going to purchase your latest issue so I can properly delve myself in the Slightly Foxed world.)’

‘Congratulations, I think the podcast is fantastic . . .’

B. Rutter, Warwick

‘Congratulations, I think the podcast is fantastic. I can’t wait for the next one. Well done to all at Slightly Foxed.’

From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves || John Moore, Brensham Village

Easter greetings from Hoxton Square where the office foxes are feeling slightly guilty but mostly delighted at the prospect of having four days off, with little to do but lounge around and read, possibly with a glass of something cold in hand if the weather forecast for England is to be believed.

Meantime we’ll leave you to enjoy this suitably seasonal extract from John Moore’s Brensham Village, introduced by Sue Gee . . .

‘I have longed to be a member of Slightly Foxed . . .’

N. Veitch, Ontario, Canada

‘I have longed to be a member of Slightly Foxed but have always been held back by the poor exchange rate of the Canadian Dollar. But, having listened to the podcast episodes repeatedly whenever I am in need of a kitchen table book talk (probably too many times to admit, though I have decided to stop when I know them off by heart) I felt I needed to take the plunge. Thank you again.’

‘Loving the podcasts . . .’

W. Sweeney, London

‘Loving the podcasts. Spent evening alone in kitchen, drinking wine and catching up with them. Bliss.’

‘I could listen to your podcasts all day . . .’

P. Kent, Richmond, Surrey

‘I could listen to your podcasts all day. They are soothing and stimulating at the same time.’

‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the podcast . . .’

N. Davies, Bedfordshire

‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the podcast – full of useful recommendations and links. Beautifully produced – music, readings and literary gossip. I am going to revisit podcasts 1 to 4 now to make sure I have not missed anything. Please continue to make them as well as the quarterlies.’

‘With a good podcast . . .’

M. Gerard, Georgia, United States

‘I listen to so many Podcasts but these I can’t live without: Futility Closet, the Slightly Foxed podcast, Astonishing Legends and Judge John Hodgman. With a good podcast, you begin to feel you really know the hosts. They are friends you have over for dinner and play board games with.’

‘Listening to the first two podcasts saved my sanity . . .’

Julie, United States

‘Listening to the first two podcasts saved my sanity on a very long car trip from Virginia to Texas here in the states. The podcasts made me eagerly anticipate the long winter evenings in the new year with newly discovered books. Wonderful podcasts and I can’t wait to hear more.’

‘I have enjoyed the podcast, episode 2 . . .’

M. Nash, Palmerston, New Zealand

‘I have enjoyed the podcast, episode 2. It was especially interesting to hear from Frances Wood about the missionary accounts of adventures in China in the last century. After listening to the former head of the Chinese collection at the British Library, I might horrify my family by collecting some of these forgotten stories of lives lived on the edge, and adding them to my already extensive book collection.’

‘Thanks for the podcast . . .’

M. Nash, Palmerston, New Zealand

‘Thanks for the podcast. I have even managed to download it (actually as easy as falling off a log). With regard to Georgette Heyer, I find her regency novels full of wit and humour, which when I read them as teenager I missed. Best wishes for future podcasts.’

‘I loved your podcast . . .’

J. Beck, Victoria, Australia

‘I loved your podcast! I am not a listener, much more a reader, but how could I resist. Wonderful listening . . . I look forward to more. Very best wishes & congratulations.’

‘Well done, SF. This is just lovely . . .’

J. McNeil, South Lanarkshire

‘Well done, SF. This is just lovely. Thank you. I feel like I’m sat there with you.’

‘I have just listened to your first podcast . . .’

A. Cooper, Te Kauwhata, New Zealand

‘I have just listened to your first podcast and was delighted to hear that you re-read old favourites. The piece on Anne Fadiman sent me straight to Ex Libris which I re-read (not for the first time!) and I’m happy to say I knew exactly where to find it! Looking forward to December’s podcast.’

‘It was delightful to listen to the lively voices . . .’

M. Ewing, Minnesota, United States

‘Thank you. It was delightful to listen to the lively voices (dogs included) responsible for the wonderful magazine that is Slightly Foxed. It brings me a bit closer to a sense of acquaintance with you all. I know I will enjoy future podcasts. As a reader from the North American Midwest, I was pleased to head Jane Smiley mentioned. Perhaps Gail would also enjoy exploring some of our fine, but lesser-known authors. I would recommend Jon Hassler’s Staggerford or Grand Opening. Small town rather than rural, but still distinctly midwestern. All the best from Minnesota.’

‘I have just listened to your first podcast . . .’

J. Chapell, Ontario, Canada

‘Just wanted to say that I have just listened to your first podcast and loved it! Looking forward to December’s edition. Well done!’

‘I don’t often listen to podcasts . . .’

C. Adams, Essex

‘I don’t often listen to podcasts, as they eat into reading time. However, I had a pile of ironing so thought I would give yours a try and I loved it. I even found myself joining in the conversation occasionally! And being able to put voices to names was also a pleasure. The ironing pile is growing again so please hurry up with the next one!’

‘I just loved this podcast . . .’

D. Nardin, Georgia, United States

‘I just loved this podcast! [episode 2] Maybe as much as the first one. Listened to both while walking my dog and picturing you three at the kitchen table.’

‘Congratulations on the podcast . . .’

L. Baines, Victoria, Australia

‘Congratulations on the podcast. I’ve just listened to the first episode on the way home from work & I’ve already ordered two of the books mentioned (Thousand Acres & Lees-Milne Diaries). I love Riddle of the Sands (the audio book read by Anton Lesser is terrific) & I have Ex Libris on the shelves so it’s time for a reread.’

‘ADORING your début podcast . . .’

J. Marozzi, London

‘ADORING your début podcast in an overheated hotel room in Tunis. Completely wonderful and ridiculously good for morale before I head to beleaguered Tripoli. Jim is a Norfolk friend. Hurrah for you all and many salaams.’

‘Absolutely loving the podcasts . . .’

G. Brown, Scotland

‘Absolutely loving the podcasts. More, more, please!’

‘I have just listened to your podcast . . .’

J. Southworth, Cornwall

‘I have just listened to your podcast! Well done, it’s wonderful.’

‘Thank you so much for podcast episode 3 . . .’

W. Edmond, Leicestershire

‘Thank you so much for podcast episode 3 – your podcasts gather strength with each edition. Love hearing your voices, the sound effects too, and all the booksy news. A great treat and perfect to listen to while doing the physio’s exercises for a bad back – positively curative!’

‘I don’t listen to many podcasts but . . .’

J. Gregson, Quebec, Canada

‘Hi Ladies, I don’t listen to many podcasts but really enjoyed Stet and the books discussed as well as editing of which I do some in a slightly amateurish way. I wonder if you are considering publishing Diana Athill’s Stet – I’d certainly buy it! Thank you for your lovely literary ideas.’

‘Like sitting down with old book-reading friends . . .’

C. Stelzer, Colorado, United States

‘Like sitting down with old book-reading friends. What could be better?’

‘Just a few lines to say how much I enjoyed . . .’

N. Ridley, Essex

‘Just a few lines to say how much I enjoyed the first SF podcast. It immediately reminded me of a Summer’s day about five years ago when I arrived unannounced at your door in Hoxton Square, Gail answered and kindly invited me upstairs to see where it all happens. Hazel wasn’t present that day but I was introduced to other members of staff. I don’t expect any of you there at the time would remember this occasion but as an ex-compositor, once actively engaged in helping to produce the printed word, first by hand setting in the old hot-metal days and then into the era of electronic typesetting. So when I listened to the podcast I pictured you all there talking to me, reviving a precious memory. The Winter edition will complete my ninth year as a subscriber to your, dare I say our, beautifully produced publication and look forward to future podcasts that I am sure will be as popular as the magazine.’

‘Apart from being inspiring it is also . . .’

J. Murray, London

‘I have just listened to your first podcast. It is truly inspiring and makes the listener feel that he/she is sitting round the kitchen table with you. Apart from being inspiring it is also so friendly that one feels that one is being welcomed into the Slightly Foxed family (including the three dogs who performed well in the recording). It also makes it clear that reading can be a real pleasure with the right guidance. If the selling of JM brought about the founding of Slightly Foxed then I made an excellent decision!’

‘To use the common parlance – lush! . . .’

A. Scaramanga, Wiltshire

‘To use the common parlance – lush! I am already devoted.’

‘May I thank the members of staff, and the dogs . . .’

E. Weinberger, Cambridgeshire

‘May I thank the members of staff, and the dogs who support the members of staff, for publishing Slightly Foxed, and for offering a podcast. I know that putting a podcast together is complex, and consumes much time.’

‘I’ve just listened to your first podcast . . . ’

A. Hypher, Uithoorn, Netherlands

‘I’ve just listened to your first podcast and found it very enjoyable and highly informative. Congratulations on hitting upon such a well-produced and wonderful idea! I shall certainly try and find time in my busy teaching schedule to listen regularly to the monthly episodes, here in the Netherlands.’

‘Mention of your second podcast episode has reminded me . . .’

S. Stock, Essex

‘Mention of your second podcast episode has reminded me that I haven’t yet been in touch to say how very much I enjoyed the first. It was so nice to feel that I was seated at the kitchen table, listening to book talk. It inspired me to pull the first Fox down from the shelf, and Ex Libris, too. As someone who tries to avoid technology out of work I was glad that I only needed to click on the website to listen and didn’t need to download and app or register with anything.’

‘This is just to say how much I enjoy the SF podcasts . . .’

U. Buchan, Northamptonshire

‘This is just to say how much I enjoy the SF podcasts. Thank you so much for adding it to my long list of quiet pleasures.’

‘Oh joy, now you are sitting around my kitchen table as well . . .’

L. Tones, County Durham

‘Oh joy, now you are sitting around my kitchen table as well! A masterly development for Slightly Foxed and one that adds another layer of pleasure to your inspirational idea and beautifully produced journals.’

‘I’m a big podcast fan . . .’

D. Mitchell, NSW, Australia

‘Thank you, I got so excited to find you had a podcast. I’m a big podcast fan and often listen while I’m working from my studio in NSW. It’s wonderful to hear the voices behind Slightly Foxed and I loved hearing the dogs in the background too.’

‘Love listening to your first two podcasts . . .’

P. Oley, Tyne & Wear

‘Love listening to your first two podcasts. So lovely to meet you all and I look forward very much to your future podcasts. Thank you.’

‘Well, that was terrific! So interesting . . .’

L. Wicksteed, Surrey

‘Well, that was terrific! So interesting to hear how you work, to get some in-depth chat on a couple of topics and lots of alluring snippets on many others. The podcast web page is beautifully presented as well.’

‘Thoroughly enjoyed your podcast thus far . . .’

K. Stephenson, Suffolk

‘Thoroughly enjoyed your podcast thus far – love the general chat about books and recommendations but gleaned so much more than I expected as the contributors expanded beyond the books to Chinese paper production, writers’ lives, how books affect individuals personally. Have subscribed via Spotify and can’t wait for the 3rd episode. Thank you.’

‘Started listening to your podcast . . .’

D. Drewitt, East Sussex

‘Started listening to your podcast . . . it was great to hear where people listen. I have taken on my son’s rabbit (flat changes) . . . the rabbit seems permanent now! Giving the rabbit a run out /cleaning can be boring. So now I have discovered the podcast I can run round the yard with the rabbit with you in my ear!’

‘I loved listening to this. Interesting reflections on editing . . .’

G. Somerville-Arjat, Edinburgh

‘I loved listening to this. Interesting reflections on editing. Remarkable revelations about Beatrix Potter noir. Who had thought of it before? And some recommendations of books to read. Gerontius was quite new to me.’

‘I wanted to relay to you . . .’

M. Collins, London

‘I wanted to relay to you, and to the rest of the team, how much I enjoyed the recent episode (3) of the SF podcast. As a ‘new’ writer having recently gone through the experience of a book being edited, getting to hear from the editor’s perspective has been so helpful. It’s a really interesting subject and the episode handled it wonderfully.’

‘I’m a newish subscriber and have just spent a very happy 30 minutes . . .’

M. Moody, London

‘I’m a newish subscriber and have just spent a very happy 30 minutes in the company of Gail, Hazel and Steph around their kitchen table listening to how Slightly Foxed started. I’m not usually a podcast person but this is so different and so delightful it’s like being an invisible guest in someone else’s home. It’s so much more fun than reading book reviews onscreen and fascinating to hear what each of you is currently reading. I shall become an avid and regular listener to the podcasts and I’m looking forward to the next one already.’

Episode 6: Well-Written Lives

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel, Jennie and host Philippa are joined at the table by eminent biographer Adam Sisman to discuss the delicate business of delving into the lives of others – warts and all or, sometimes, all warts no all. The actor Nigel Anthony lends his voice to Edward Lear’s surreal verbal contortions, unearthing the deep sorrow that hid beneath the nonsense.

‘I do so love the podcasts! I like to listen in bed . . .’

B. Carriger, Missouri, United States

‘I do so love the podcasts! I like to listen in bed after reading a little Slightly Foxed, and before turning off the light. You ladies are doing such a wonderful job. I will continue to enjoy!’

Episode 4: Viewing Is Essential

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel and Jennie talk to the artist and illustrator (and master of pastiche) David Eccles about the craft of marrying image and text. The actress Petra Markham takes to the airwaves with Posy Simmonds, and the printmaker Angie Lewin recalls her experience of being commissioned for a Slightly Foxed cover.

Episode 5: Revival

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel, Anna and Donna Coonan of Virago Modern Classics gather round the table to talk about giving new life to forgotten voices, and Helen Bourne heads for the Pyramids with a young Priscilla Napier.

Pure Arcadia

Humphrey and Solveig Stone on M. F. K. Fisher

I don’t really consider M. F. a cookery writer per se. She is a sort of food alchemist and is positively sensual about the pleasure of food. ‘I just wish my fellow countrymen were more relaxed. They have been conditioned to believe there is something basically evil about physical and moral sensuality.’ Her books are full of recipes, not all of them about food.

1 Mar 2007

Episode 3: Stet

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel and Anna discuss the art of editing with author and creative writing teacher Sue Gee, and Helen Bourne delves into the dark side of Beatrix Potter.

From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves || Jan Morris, Conundrum

How James Morris finally became Jan is an extraordinary story, and her memoir Conundrum is a gripping and thought-provoking read which casts fascinating light on the fevered debates of today. Read on for an extract from Chapter 15 where we join James at his beloved home Trefan in Wales where he spends one last summer living as a man before heading for Casablanca to meet the magician . . .

‘Just to let you know that I tuned in to my first Slightly Foxed Podcast this afternoon . . .’

S. Hersey, Merseyside

‘Just to let you know that I tuned in to my first Slightly Foxed Podcast this afternoon and what a delight it was to hear the voices and reflect on SF’s beginnings. All I can say is “Well done” for providing a homely and approachable organisation. Your conversation about children’s books came home; I regularly re-read old copies by Alan Garner and Rosemary Sutcliffe. I also have many faded and rather worn books, each of which gives me pure joy when I handle them. Having also listened to the quote regarding books, bookcases and collecting, I thought I’d show some of mine containing, amongst the seeming mayhem, my first remembered book that my father bought me, a Ladybird Julius Caesar. Max the cat likes to sit near them all. Thank you again.’

With Bold Knife and Fork

Jane Lunzer Gifford on M. F. K. Fisher

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher did write exquisitely. She also wrote a vast amount, and one might fear indigestion on so hefty a diet of opinion, scathing contempt and passion for the many and varied food experiences of her long and pretty colourful life. Still, I have yet to tire of either her prose or her subject.

Episode 2: The Oldest Paper in the World

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel and Jennie talk to Frances Wood, librarian, sinologue and former head of the Chinese Collection at the British Library; Andrew Hawkins recounts the story of the oldest paper in the world; and we find out which books our readers are hoping for this Christmas.

‘I’ve just listened to the third of your excellent series of podcasts . . .’

A. Courcut, Buckinghamshire

‘I’ve just listened to the third of your excellent series of podcasts and thought I would just send this email to congratulate you on its production. I’ve enjoyed each episode but found episode 3 particularly interesting. As a boy, I wasn’t encouraged to read Beatrix Potter and have so far read only the recently published Tale of Kitty in Boots: Tod and Brock sound very much like villains of the old school and bring to mind a number of people I’ve represented in court over the years. The insight into the editing process was fascinating too.’

‘Hello Foxes, I’ve just listened to your latest podcast . . .’

Kate Harris of Harris & Harris Books

‘Hello Foxes, I’ve just listened to your latest podcast in the bookshop here (Oh, the joys of a quiet January Tuesday where even the bell on the door stays mute long enough to hear (most of) the podcast). Anyway, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed it. That’s all. Very best wishes.’

‘I just wanted to say how very much I’m enjoying your podcast . . .’

H. Waugh, NSW, Australia

‘I just wanted to say how very much I’m enjoying your podcast. What a wonderful idea and so interesting to hear how SF began, too. I’m sure many others have said this, but it really is like sitting around a big table with a group of friends having a chat.’

‘The relatively new podcast by Slightly Foxed is such a joy . . .’

N. Kristensen, Aarhus, Denmark

‘The relatively new podcast by Slightly Foxed is such a joy to listen to – the absolute cosiest podcast out there, I’m sure!’

‘I’m really enjoying the podcasts . . .’

G. Cotter, Lancashire

‘I’m really enjoying the podcasts. An oasis of civilized peace in a world that has gone raving mad.’

Episode 1: Kindred Spirits

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

In the first episode of The Slightly Foxed Podcast, Gail, Hazel, Steph and SF director Jim Ring meet round the kitchen table at No. 53 to remember how it all began and Veronika Hyks gives voice to Liz Robinson’s article on Anne Fadiman’s well-loved Ex Libris.

Reading off the Beaten Track (Trailer)

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

For 14 years now, the team at Slightly Foxed has been hunting down forgotten books and weaving them into a quarterly magazine. It’s become a favourite for thousands of readers worldwide, more like a well-read friend than a literary magazine. And now, there’s something new: The Slightly Foxed Podcast for adventurous readers.

‘I have rediscovered you! Years ago I was devouring slightly dog-eared Slightly Foxed . . .’

C. Brissenden, United States

‘I have rediscovered you! Years ago I was devouring slightly dog-eared Slightly Foxed volumes passed on by a dear friend who subscribed. I recently had a wonderful walk and talk my brother, briefly home from abroad, and we connected over books and learned of our mutual adoration of SF. And he told me of your podcast! I am just so enjoying it. So interesting, relaxing, fun, and well-produced. Currently halfway through episode two, and harbouring delicious anticipation for Ep 3. I really like the piano intro music, too. Just perfect. Well done, and thank you!’ C. Brissenden, US

A Personal Landscape

Andy Merrills on Alfred Wainwright

Every reader of Wainwright will have his or her favourite passages: if nothing else the sequence is a monument to the self-effacing whimsy of a modest man. Enthusiasts point to the dedications of the different volumes, for example – The Eastern Fells ‘to the men of the Ordnance Survey’, The Southern Fells ‘to the sheep of Lakeland’, The North Western Fells ‘to those unlovely twins, my right leg and my left leg. Staunch supporters which have carried me about for over half a century, endured without complaint. And never once let me down.’ Again and again, the lovingly pastoral tone is enlivened by a wry (and occasionally macabre) humour.

The Sunday Times Podcast of the Week

The Sunday Times

‘If you like books, you will love this podcast.’

An Unsettling Read

Ruth Symes on E. M. Forster, A Passage to India

As the long flight plugged on through the night, Forster’s powerful descriptions of the scenery and climate of India beckoned me. I longed to feel the way the Asian heat ‘leapt forward’ hour by hour, to see the ‘angry orange’ sun that ‘had power without beauty,’ and to smell the toddy palms and neem trees and sweet ‘green-blossomed champak’. I wanted to feel beneath my feet what Forster describes as ‘something hostile in the soil’ and see the sky at night when ‘the stars hang like lamps from the immense vault’.

1 Mar 2007

All Washed Up

Christopher Robbins on George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

The book was the first full-length work by George Orwell to be published. A tale of poverty in two cities, it is divided into two parts: in the first the author becomes a dishwasher in Paris; in the second he lives the life of a tramp in London. The book’s obvious appeal for me was that it seemed to be written by a soul mate, a letter from one unpublished writer and dishwasher to another. It enabled me to romanticize my deadly dull occupation, not least by allowing me to think of myself not as a dishwasher but as a plongeur.

‘I have only just managed to listen to episode 4 of the podcast . . .’

S. Denholm, Northumberland

‘I have only just managed to listen to episode 4 of the podcast as I moved house 3 weeks ago. I have been working out where to put my books, which involves difficult decisions. All my working life was spent with books (libraries, retail and library supply) so you might say they are an obsession. Thank you for your journal and the podcasts, both of which I love.’

‘I have fallen in love with your podcast . . . ’

K. Whittacre, New York, United States

‘I have fallen in love with your podcast and many of the books that you recommend. I need to stop listening however because my list of what I’d like to read only grows and grows! Thank you for being a treasure!’

‘The Slightly Foxed podcast is a delight! . . .’

S. Graham, Devon

‘The Slightly Foxed podcast is a delight! I challenge anyone to not be inspired to pick up a book after listening to it.’

‘I am looking forward to the next podcast . . .’

H. Mills, Surrey

‘I am looking forward to the next podcast, they are not only interesting in their own right but it makes me feel I am actually in Hoxton . . . Keep ‘poding’.’

‘Thank you very much indeed for the fifth Slightly Foxed podcast . . . ’

W. Edmond, Leicestershire

‘Thank you very much indeed for the fifth Slightly Foxed podcast which I have enjoyed instead of doing some urgent admin . . . much more fun! I always listen to it several times, and seem to hear more each time.’

‘The podcasts are wonderful and really interesting . . .’

P. Francis, Cornwall

‘The podcasts are wonderful and really interesting, including aspects about the publishing business. Only criticism of the latest one is that I missed the dogs barking in the background!’

In the Eye of the Storm

Posy Fallowfield on Richard Hughes, In Hazard

In Hazard is an extraordinary read. It resembles The Human Predicament in mixing fiction with fact, but here the ‘fact’ is not a devastating political movement which took years to grow, but a devastating meteorological event which took place within a week. In November 1932 the steamship Phemius was sucked into a Caribbean hurricane and tested to the limits, yet somehow she and all her crew survived. The owner of the shipping line to which Phemius belonged approached Hughes and suggested he record the dramatic story. Hughes agreed to describe the storm and its effects on the ship as accurately as he could, with the proviso that he would invent a fictitious captain and crew . . .

1 Mar 2019

‘I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you . . . ’

D. Shannon, Ohio, United States

‘I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you for the prompt shipment of the lovely set of Ronald Welch books. They’re simply gorgeous, and they make me want to ditch my university teaching for a few weeks to dive into them all. And thank you for all that you continue to do. The podcast is a delight to listen to on the way to and from campus, and all of you gave me and my husband a lovely afternoon of tea and conversation at Hoxton Square in the summer of 2017.’

‘I’ve just listened to episode 3 and thoroughly enjoyed it . . .’

C. Fisher, Madrid, Spain

‘I’ve just listened to episode 3 and thoroughly enjoyed it. All the contributors wear their considerable learning very lightly which adds to both the listening pleasure and also the learning process of the listener! I was delighted to hear that Slightly Foxed will be republishing Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman novels. I think I’ve read them all but will make a point of buying what will undoubtedly be wonderful new editions.’

‘Episode 4 of your podcast has turned me into an addict . . . ’

M. Etherington-Smith, London

‘Episode 4 of your podcast has turned me into an addict; very, very interesting and you all sound so nice – a counter-blast against the monstrous regiment of politicians we endure every day . . . Very best to you all and of course to the dogs.’

‘I have just finished listening to the most recent podcast . . .’

G. Colgan, County Meath, Ireland

‘I have just finished listening to the most recent podcast and my only disappointment is that it is not three times as long. It is an absolute pleasure and I look forward to the 15th of every month now.’

‘I have listened to the latest edition of the podcast while . . .’

L. Cameron, Cumbria

‘Just thought you would like to know that I have listened to the latest edition of the podcast while 6 children are having a nerf gun battle over the entire area of my house. Thank you for giving me a glance into a civilised, bullet-free world for half an hour. Back into the fray now with my head full of pyramids and books to order… Although better check under my sofa for hidden eggs first. Thanks again for such sage advice.’

‘Just to say thank you for such a warm welcome . . . ’

C. Thomas, Bedfordshire

‘Just to say thank you for such a warm welcome to the Slightly Foxed family. Love the quarterly. Was a bit worried would have to eke it out but there are the wonderful podcasts and back issues to dip into too. A peaceful, cosy treat from the stresses of the world with lots of ideas for good books. Congratulations all.’

Before the Sun Set

Penelope Lively on Priscilla Napier, A Late Beginner

This wonderful recreation of a time and a climate of mind – a hundred years ago, one realizes, startled – is not just an evocation of place but also of the child’s eye view. A Late Beginner ranks quite simply with the greatest accounts of how it is to be a child, to see with that strange, skewed, uncontaminated vision.

‘I received the mailing with my new membership card, and the lovely . . . ’

A. Greer, Virginia, United States

‘I received the mailing with my new membership card, and the lovely bookplate reproductions and bookmark. Many thanks for taking the trouble to do that. Slightly Foxed customer service is outstanding! I feel I have a relationship with you, although we are an ocean away and have not met in person.’

‘I must tell you that I was very late for work today having discovered at breakfast time . . . ’

S. Bailey, Oxford

‘I must tell you that I was very late for work today having discovered at breakfast time that I didn’t finish the latest issue of Slightly Foxed after all. Eventually I looked up at the clock and it was already gone nine. Fortunately, I work flexible hours. Thank you for such a wonderful, beguiling periodical.’

‘I wish I were a millionaire . . . ’

T. Love-Taylor, London

‘I wish I were a millionaire – I would buy subscriptions for all my friends! One of the great delights of Slightly Foxed is the high production values you exert-paper, printing, magnificent illustrations. It always gives me a thrill of pleasure when each issue arrives-such a beautiful object in a world of plastic and IT!’

‘The quarterly itself is a joy and always sends me scurrying to my bookshelves . . . ’

B. Berkeley-Hill, Kent

‘The quarterly itself is a joy and always sends me scurrying to my bookshelves to see if I just might have a copy of a long-forgotten book. . . ’

3 Apr 2019

‘I have received my Spring issue and read it from cover to cover . . . ’

T. Patton, Co. Antrim

‘I have received my Spring issue and read it from cover to cover in one sitting! Pure unadulterated pleasure. From that I moved on to one of my purchases Hand-Grenade Practice in Peking, finishing it in a day! What an amazing insight into a foreign student’s life in China in 1975. The book had just the right balance of detail and humour. Such an easy but enriching read. I have moved on to Giving up the Ghost and am thoroughly absorbed in it.’

‘I wanted cheering up so I opened A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book . . .’

H. Mills, Surrey

‘I wanted cheering up so I opened A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book and you could have heard my chuckles from Weybridge to London. I really think it is a book that everyone ought to have with them, by them, anywhere, any place; a good laugh is what we all need.’

2 Oct 2018

‘I have been hugely impressed with you and all your enterprises . . . ’

S. Moody

‘I have been hugely impressed with you and all your enterprises ever since I first came across you many years ago. I am even more impressed to receive this morning beautifully bound copies of The Little Grey Men and Down the Bright Stream, which I ordered only a few days ago. My godmother gave me the first on my eleventh birthday and now I give these two to my grand-daughter, hoping she will love them as much as I did. The illustrations are nostalgically perfect.’

‘Not just one of the finest publications for book lovers . . . ’

C. Taylor, The Netherlands

‘Not just one of the finest publications for book lovers I’ve ever come across, Slightly Foxed doubles down with friendly people answering the phone and outstanding service. So happy to have renewed my subscription for another two years today!’

8 Feb 2019

‘I love good reading and a fine use of language . . . ’

E. Tennessen, New Mexico, United States

‘I love good reading and a fine use of language, so when I discovered SF, I was immediately enchanted and ordered a sample issue. I’ve read half of issue 60 and I’m a convert. So pleased to announce that I’ve ordered a subscription and a copy of Drawn from Memory and Drawn from Life. Thank you for your excellent work!’

‘I have just finished A House in Flanders by Michael Jenkins . . . ’

S. Hersey, Merseyside

‘I have just finished A House in Flanders by Michael Jenkins. I bought it from you a couple of weeks ago and have cherished every single page from the start. It is a charming, evocative and wistful narrative, forming such a well of sympathy with the characters that I was quite unnerved at the end with Tante Yvonne’s demise. Books like this create strong and memorable images in mind and memory, evoking yearnings and emotions. It’s been a wonderful few days sinking into this beautiful little book and being cosseted with each turn of the page. This the third SFP book I own. In themselves, they are a perfect shape and size. Design and layout are excellent, illustrations delightful. It’s a joy simply to look at them with their neat little format and eye-soothing cream colour.’

‘I am rarely moved to write about such matters. But . . . ’

S. Lamport, London

‘I am rarely moved to write about such matters. But as a first-year subscriber to Slightly Foxed I have come to appreciate greatly the quarterly magazine, which reveals pleasures I would almost certainly have missed otherwise. The winter issue introduced me to two delights: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Lionel Davidson’s Kolymsky Heights, both of which I have since enjoyed immensely. So thank you for your introduction to them. They have each, in their different ways, been revelatory.’

‘I did so enjoy the podcast . . . ’

P. Morrall, Devon

‘I did so enjoy the last podcast and I absolutely loved A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles which was recommended by one of you, can’t now remember which! I had it as a talking book on a long drive recently and was completely absorbed, couldn’t stop driving, which must be the moving version of “couldn’t put it down”!’

The Hunt for Hitler

Adam Sisman on Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hilter

I cannot now remember when I first read Hugh Trevor-Roper’s The Last Days of Hitler (1947). My memory is confused by the fact that I knew the author in old age and was to become his biographer; Trevor-Roper himself told me about the extraordinary circumstances in which he had come to write the book. In September 1945 he had been awaiting discharge from the army so that he could resume his pre-war role as an Oxford don, when he was asked to undertake an urgent investigation into the fate of the Führer.

The Paris Effect

Laura Freeman on Nancy Mitford’s Parisian novels

Brimming. That was how I spent my first weeks in Paris. Brimming with tears at the smallest setback. For Nancy Mitford’s Northey in Don’t Tell Alfred, dispatched to Paris to be secretary to Fanny Wincham, the new Madame l’Ambassadrice at the British Embassy, it is the ‘cruel food’ of France that sets her off. Beef consommé. Brimming. Lobster. Brimming. Foie gras. Brimming. ‘A Frenchman on board told me what they do to sweet geese for pâté de foie gras,’ says Northey at dinner on her first night at the Ambassador’s Residence. ‘Very wrong and stupid of him,’ says Fanny.

Bookshop of the Quarter: Spring 2019

This independent bookshop is settled between the river and Richmond Green in leafy Richmond-Upon-Thames. The shop appears small from the outside but, within its doors, the bookshelves stretch far and are full of interesting reading. We spoke to bookseller Helena Caletta about life in the bookshop on this bend of the river Thames.

New this Spring from Slightly Foxed

We’re delighted to report that the Spring issue of Slightly Foxed (No. 61) has left the printing press at Smith Settle. It ranges far and wide in the usual eclectic manner, and we do hope it will provide plenty of recommendations for reading off the beaten track. With it, as usual, you’ll find a copy of our latest Readers’ Catalogue, detailing new books, our backlist, books featured in the latest issue of the quarterly, recommended reading and other offers and bundles . . .

‘Wonderful writing and great conversation . . .’

I. Birch, Devon

‘I’m a new subscriber and would like to say how much I enjoy both the quarterly and the podcast. Wonderful writing and great conversation – am so glad to have found you! With good wishes and appreciation for all you do’

Commons People

Rowena Macdonald on Philip Hensher, Kitchen Venom

When I first started working at the House of Commons, back in 2001, Philip Hensher was still discussed in dark tones by my colleagues. He was the only employee in living memory to have been sacked. Five years before, he had written Kitchen Venom, a novel set in the Clerks’ Department where we worked, about John, a secretly gay, hunchbacked senior clerk who spends his workday afternoons sneaking off to see a beautiful Italian rent boy in Earls Court.

‘Tombs, dear. Where’s your other sock?’

Extract from A Late Beginner, Priscilla Napier

No one told me that the pyramids had been one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, but they were certainly the primal wonder of mine. From early on they exercised an oddly persistent fascination.They could not, it seemed, be taken for granted, like hills and trees and houses. Approached along the pyramid road they got larger and larger and larger until they filled up one half of the sky. It took a long while to ride lurchingly round the Great Pyramid on a camel, and from no angle could their stupendousness be made a thing of nought. They were made of square yellow blocks, exactly like sugar lumps, but higher than I was.

Slightly Foxed Issue 61: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

As many of you will already have gathered, if only from the discreet note on the contents page of the winter issue, this spring we’ve embarked on a new project, the Slightly Foxed podcast. Your reaction to this may possibly…

Sound Nonsense

Christopher Robbins on James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

The words rolled out, natural and clear, and I listened with new ears and understanding. Enlightenment had finally come. Passages spoken aloud in an Irish accent, by someone who loved the prose enough to commit long passages to memory, released the book’s power. Its beauty had been unlocked not by a literary intellectual, but by a half-tight man in a cheap suit standing at the bar of a Dublin pub. Finnegans Wake was revealed as a work of sound rather than sense, a form of high falutin, Gaelic, literary rap. Ireland talking in her sleep. It was as if Brian had taken me by the elbow, and guided me into this particular tavern to receive a final, Celtic benediction.

A Leap into the Light

Derek Johns on Jan Morris, Conundrum

I first met Jan Morris in the offices of the publisher Random House in New York in the early 1980s. I was a junior editor there, and was invited to meet someone I considered to be one of the most intriguing writers I had read. This was nothing more than a handshake and an acknowledgement of our shared Britishness in New York. But I was immediately struck by Jan’s warmth and affability, qualities that are key to her genius for talking to people and drawing stories from them. (For while Jan is less of an extrovert in person than in her writings, and indeed in some ways is quite reserved, she nonetheless possesses a remarkable ability, surely learned in the world of journalism, to nose out a story.)

Underwear Was Important

Hazel Wood on Posy Simmonds

Posy’s dialogue is as good as her draughtsmanship, and she has a talent for names (an area in which so many writers fall down) which is as good as that of Evelyn Waugh or Anthony Powell. What enchants and convinces in all her work is the brilliantly observed detail. If Posy draws a French coffee pot it is a completely authentic French coffee pot. The appearance of her characters – toddlers, sulky teenagers, pushy mothers, angst-ridden authors, pretentious publishing types – is always spot on. This kind of texture, she says, is the equivalent of verbal description in a novel . . .

The Temptation of Mrs Harris

Maggie Fergusson on Paul Gallico, Flowers for Mrs Harris

It was astonishing to me that a grown-up could cry, and more than astonishing that anyone should cry for joy. The memory came back to me a few weeks ago, as I reread, with my 9-year-old daughter, Paul Gallico’s Flowers for Mrs Harris. For Gallico, most fondly remembered as the author of The Snow Goose, was a master of the bittersweet, of the mysterious kinship between suffering and joy. He knew how to fold together humour and poignant detail in just the right proportions to prevent his prose from curdling into mawkishness and sentimentality.

1 Dec 2008

Unsung Heroes

Alastair Glegg on learning to read at prep school

The library at Fonthill Preparatory School was just what I imagined a Gentlemen’s Club to be like: shiny brown leather armchairs with velvet cushions, long oak tables, panelled walls, a coal fire in the corner, and windows looking on to the branches of an enormous beech tree. And, of course, books. It was there that I came to know the schoolboy classics of the time: the adventures of Biggles, the misadventures of William, and the voyages of the Swallows and the Amazons.

Immemorial Rhythm

Gordon Bowker on Richard Hillyer, Country Boy

Few have recalled that now distant rural way of life with such riveting honesty as Richard Hillyer in his memoir Country Boy. Richard Hillyer was the pseudonym used by Charles James Stranks, the son of a poor farm labourer, born at the dawn of the last century in the isolated Buckinghamshire village of Hardwick (here called Byfield) . . .

Making the Best of It

William Palmer on Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer

‘One day there appeared at luncheon sitting opposite to us a rosy, gray-bearded, bald-headed, gold-spectacled old gentleman who captivated my attention . . . Something seemed to bubble and sparkle in his talk and his eyes twinkled benignly.’ This was one small American girl’s first meeting with Edward Lear in 1870. At about the same time he was writing of himself in his diary: ‘Broken down with a hideous load of sorrow – the blinding accumulation of now nearly 60 years.’

Country Boy

Richard Hillyer

The coloured words flashed out and entranced my fancy. They drew pictures in the mind. Words became magical, incantations, abracadabra which called up spirits. My dormant imagination opened like a flower in the sun. Life at home was drab and colourless, with nothing to light up the dull monotony of the unchanging days. Here in books was a limitless world that I could have for my own. It was like coming up from the bottom of the ocean and seeing the universe for the first time . . .

‘A glorious reassurance . . . ’

B. Staffen, Swansea

‘To all at Slightly Foxed, Today, 21st January 2019, is apparently ‘Blue Monday’, considered, by some, to be the most depressing day of the year. Well, I find that I must disagree with this nomenclature . . . ’

‘I’m loving the podcasts – great to have such insights into the workings of SF . . .’

C. Spencer, Dorset

‘I’m loving the podcasts – great to have such insights into the workings of SF. And, of course, I am still so in love with SF itself – it is an absolute joy.’

‘Very much enjoying these podcasts . . .’

R. Greggs, Massachusetts, United States

‘Very much enjoying these podcasts. And it’s OK to hear the dogs contributing their comments to the conversation. And Country Boy, it ranks as my favorite SF Edition book. Thanks to everyone.’

‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your most recent Podcast . . .’

A. Brownlie, York

‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your most recent Podcast. I am recuperating from major surgery, and I have to admit this is the first podcast of any kind I have ever listened to. What fun to feel we are sitting round your table. Has my coffee mug left a ring? I particularly enjoyed the comments on the Virago Modern Classics. It took me back to my bookselling days when the list was first launched. Since you published my little piece about Harrods Library (SF 32) I have become addicted to your wonderful quarterly, and it is always a joy to hear it arrive on the mat. Vivat Slightly Foxed’

‘I’m also delighting in your podcasts . . . ’

R. Barlow, Victoria, Canada

‘. . . I’m also delighting in your podcasts. As it happens, I discovered podcasts last fall and was thrilled that your first episode coincided with my subscription order. The stars were aligned! It’s life-affirming to hear you discuss your focus on quality over bling (while in the background dogs bark and builders build). The most recent one about reprints is my favourite so far. So, I write to say thank you to all of you for producing a wonderful publication and keeping me sane during the tempests of life. Best wishes from a smiling Canadian!’

‘Congratulations on the accolade for your podcast from The Sunday Times . . .’

W. Edmond, Market Harborough

‘Congratulations on the accolade for your podcast from The Sunday Times – very well deserved!’

‘Two episodes in and I’m hooked . . . ’

W. Percy

‘Sick of bestsellers and celebrity authors? Escape into a civilized world of knowledgeable and witty bibliophiles. Two episodes in and I’m hooked. The host skillfully weaves the conversation round the kitchen table at this pocket-sized magazine as the Slightly Foxed team and their guests discuss lesser-known literary gems. I particularly enjoyed hearing from the formidable and entertaining Frances Wood, formerly of the British Library, about her time spent in Mao’s China. This is a real find.’

‘The equivalent of a bookish chat with a good friend . . . ’

A. Parsons, Warwickshire

‘Dear slightly foxes, I listen to a wide range of bookish podcasts and yours has gone straight to the top of my favourites list. My only mistake was listening to it in the car on my morning commute rather than settling down in a comfy armchair with a cup of tea. It honestly does feel like the equivalent of a bookish chat with a good friend.’

‘It’s a terrific honour . . .’

Michèle Mendelssohn

‘I’m over the moon, pleased as punch and downright delighted that my book has been shortlisted. It’s a terrific honour.’

‘Thank you to the judges and to the Biographers’ Club . . .’

Bart van Es

‘I’m hugely happy to be on the shortlist. Many of the previous winners are books I’m familiar with and love, so it’s exciting to be (sort of) in their company. I can only say “thank you!” to the judges and to the Biographers’ Club.’

‘I am honoured and delighted . . . ’

Roland Philipps

‘I am honoured and delighted that A Spy Named Orphan has been chosen for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2018, not least because of the brilliant, fascinating and varied company it keeps on the shortlist.’

‘I’m delighted to be shortlisted . . . ’

Fiona Sampson

‘I’m delighted to be shortlisted by such a distinguished set of judges, and especially for the Biographers Club, who keep our genre thriving despite the pressures exerted by changes in literary fashion, publishing and bookselling.’

‘What a delightful 60th issue of Slightly Foxed . . . ’

J. Isaacson, Dorset

‘What a delightful 60th issue of Slightly Foxed, especially the art work by Posy Simmonds. Enjoyable to see the dogs portrayed, Stanley looks to be a dog with attitude. I also enjoyed and can identify with fellow subscriber Janet Morgan’s views about Facebook. I should have liked to have attended the recent celebrations at the London Library Reading Room but at least this year I was able to come to the Readers’ Day which I enjoyed. Thank you for the hard work it must have been to organise. The venue was delightful too.’

‘Slightly Foxed really is quite special . . . ’

F. Glaser, Belgium

‘Slightly Foxed really is quite special, and always a pleasure to read; I’m sure it’ll be inspiring some more bookish gifts over the coming years! If I don’t hear from you again this year, many thanks for everything, have a wonderful Christmas, and a very happy New Year.’

10 Dec 2018

‘One of your best productions . . .’

F. Karabotsos, Canada

‘The E.H. Shepard books have arrived! They are so chock full of illustrations! Wonderful. I wish more of your SFEs had pictures. Love that the covers and endpapers alternate colours. Makes them a subtle matching set. One of your best productions.’

‘The volume was all that I had expected, and more . . . ’

B. Anderson, United States

‘As to the production of A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book – I must say many thanks. The red ribbon page marker was an unexpected special touch. Only my leather-bound volumes seem to have such a useful device. The paper bookmark was also an added bonus, as was the signed postcard. The volume itself was all that I had expected, and more . . . ’

15 Dec 2018

‘What would I do without you?’

J. Elliott, Shropshire

‘I have just renewed my membership for another three years. What would I do without you? Slightly Foxed is one of the good things to look forward to every quarter, you bring a smile to my lips and joy to my heart with every issue. Thank you! All best wishes.’

22 Nov 2018

Legends of the Grail

Simon Brett

‘Some people are snooty about illustrating grown-up fiction, vapouring on about how their imaginations will generate all the images they need. The riposte to that is Dickens and Phiz, Surtees and Leech, Sherlock Holmes and Sidney Paget. In the past The Folio Society has added to this roll of honour with such achievements as Joan Hassall’s wood engravings for Jane Austen, Simon Brett’s for a gamut running from Keats and Shelley to Legends of the Grail, Charles Keeping’s drawings for the 16-volume Dickens, Edward Bawden’s linocuts for Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. Folio threw a lifeline to illustrators as work for advertisers and magazines began to dry up from the 1950s, and it continues to be the one firm regularly commissioning pictures for something other than children’s books.’

Winter Garden

Miriam Macgregor

Miriam Macgregor’s seasonal wood engraving decorated the contents page of Issue 36 of Slightly Foxed, Winter 2012.

Potter’s Dark Materials

Sue Gee on Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Mr Tod

Set in a brooding Cumberland landscape of crags, empty dwellings and moonlit woodland, the characters, menacing atmosphere and plot of Mr Tod have all the hallmarks of classic crime fiction – approaching, indeed, something much greater.

1 Mar 2004

Slightly Foxed Subscribers’ Writing Competition 2019

The deadline for the Slightly Foxed Subscribers’ Writing Competition 2019 has now passed. We will be in touch with the winner(s) in due course, and an announcement will be made in the forthcoming Summer issue of Slightly Foxed, published 1 June.

Join the Slightly Foxed team

Slightly Foxed is looking for a friendly, enthusiastic person to join their London office on a full-time basis. The Administrator (Office & Subscriptions) will be responsible for processing subscriptions, packing orders, gift-wrapping, stock management and general day-to-day office administration among other things

We need a lively, well-organized person who enjoys communicating with customers. Slightly Foxed prides itself on its personal, friendly and high-end service so, in this role, you’ll be a very important part of the team.

Moscow Under the Terror

Michael Barber on a 1937 guidebook to Moscow

Written by the Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, the guide describes Moscow as ‘the city of emancipated and joyful labour’. In fact it was a huge building site over which hovered the angel of death. The architect of this apocalyptic landscape was Josef Stalin, who had promised Muscovites that in future life would become ‘merrier’. In 1935 he approved a ten-year plan that would do for Moscow what Haussmann had done for nineteenth- century Paris.

‘What a delight . . . ’

P. Guest, Victoria, Australia

‘What a delight and what a coincidence! The very day that your first podcast arrived on my tablet, I had a small operation on one of my eyes that for a brief period is preventing me from reading. Now I can savour the delights of Slightly Foxed with one of my eyes heavily bandaged. Sheer bliss as I rest up for a few days while I wait for my next print edition to arrive.’

The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize Shortlist 2018

Slightly Foxed and the Biographers’ Club are delighted to announce the shortlist for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2018. The prize of £2,500 will be awarded on 26 February with a drinks reception at Maggs Bros. on Bedford Square, London.

‘Gentle joy . . . ’

M. and R. Levy, Somerset

‘My reason for writing is that today we listened to your new podcast as we drove to pick up our son from university. I listen to quite a few of these and they vary from fascinating to self-indulgent. What you have done is a very difficult thing to do and is hardly ever done as well as your podcast does it – to represent and bring to life in a new medium the experience you give your subscribers through the quarterly. The whole feeling of gentle joy we get from discovering new books and authors and being reminded of old favourites was there as was so much else we get from your quarterly and what it opens up. Thank you and keep them coming.’

Yes, Yes, Sir Jasper!

Julia Keay on Georgette Heyer

My father read these books? The strict disciplinarian, the occasionally benevolent dictator, the terrifying dispenser of chastisement? How could he like them?

Dog Days

Jeremy Noel-Tod on W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

Freely mixing words and pictures throughout, The Rings of Saturn is an exquisite scrapbook of the after-the-fact, its faded yet vivid photographs set like silk scraps into paragraphs of arabesque, antiquarian prose.

1 Jun 2008

‘An intimate setting in which we were cherished, invited guests . . . ’

P. Watson-Farrar, Norfolk

‘Absolutely loved hearing both podcasts today, one after the other. May I say how much my enjoyment was enriched by the clear, fluent way all participants expressed themselves, and in such lovely mellow tones, managing to convey an intimate setting in which we, the listeners, were cherished, invited guests around a familiar and comfortable table. Warmest thoughts to you all.’

Christmas Holidays

Extract from Drawn from Memory, Ernest H. Shepard

We three children were looking forward to Mother’s birthday, which was December 18th. December was ‘our’ birthday month, Cyril’s on the 20th, mine on the 10th: but the 18th was by far the most important. With a view to deciding what was to be done, we gathered round the schoolroom table, each armed with a statement of his or her financial resources. My assets were contained in an old purse that I kept hidden in a corner of the writing desk. This I emptied on the table. The contents were: one silver sixpence, one silver threepenny bit, and an assortment of coppers – total one shilling and tenpence halfpenny. Cyril was not in a much stronger position, and it remained for Ethel to retrieve the situation, which, I have to admit, she did most nobly. Lucky enough to have a godmother who sent her postal orders she was able to produce nearly ten shillings. Most magnanimously, she suggested that we pool our resources and give Mother one really nice present rather than three inferior ones. Cyril and I volunteered to draw and paint a birthday card between us, and we left it to Ethel to decide on the nature of the present.

The Oldest Paper in the World

Frances Wood on The Oldest Paper in the World

It is not surprising that having invented paper over 2,000 years ago, the Chinese found a wide variety of ways to use it. Though the seventeenth-century landscape artist and arbiter of taste, Wen Zhengheng, considered painted wallpaper vulgar, Li Yu (1611–80), owner of the Mustard Seed Garden, advocated brown rather than white wallpaper, and Chinese painted wallpaper depicting birds, flowers, garden architecture and butterflies became popular in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1794, the first British ambassador to China, Lord Macartney, even brought back a set painted with scenes of Chinese streets and workshops for his banker Mr Coutts which can still be seen in the bank’s boardroom.

Whatever Happened to Elizabeth Jenkins?

Nigel Andrew on Elizabeth Jenkins

When she died in 2010, at the astonishing age of 104, the novelist and biographer Elizabeth Jenkins was all but forgotten, her name known only to a few aficionados, her books mostly long out of print. And yet, in her day, her reputation had been up there with the other distinguished Elizabeths of mid-twentieth-century fiction, Bowen and Taylor. What happened?

A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book by Philip Rhys Evans is on its way to be this year’s novelty bestseller . . .

Vanessa Thorpe, Observer

‘After a long career as a Suffolk GP, Dr Philip Rhys Evans may well be astonished to find himself lined up as a surprise literary hit this winter. But a short book compiled by the now-retired doctor with his wife Christine detailing the funny, bizarre and poignant situations he has encountered over his many years in practice is now a novelty Christmas title attracting glowing reviews . . .’

‘A super addition to the Slightly Foxed repertoire . . . ’

W. Edmond, Leicestershire

‘What a super addition to The Slightly Foxed repertoire, very well done Foxes! I’m sure I’m not the only subscriber who feels that they are now even more part of the Troop, it felt very cosy to be in the The Slightly Foxed Earth, as it were! Looking forward to Episode 2.’

‘This is completely different to other literary podcasts . . .’

Cambette

‘. . . It’s about good reads you’ve never heard of. I’ve now got a long list of fascinating books to buy after only two episodes and not a single “bestseller” among them! A new gem.’

‘Unmissable! Inviting; stimulating . . . ’

Bibliophile Annie

‘Unmissable! Inviting; stimulating; a companionable encouragement to persevere in reading widely and well. The first episode has already added some newcomers to my “to read” list, and I’m very much looking forward to future instalments. You will, too. Novel!’

‘Excellent voices, really interesting content . . . ’

S. Naidoo, Norfolk

‘Wonderful! I am in the middle of listening to the first one (using The Podcast App). Had to stop in order to tell you how thrilled I am. Excellent voices, really interesting content, this is just what I hoped for. Thank you so much and congratulations to the whole team.’

Neither a Borrower . . . ?

Oliver Pritchett on some more elementary dos and don’ts of book etiquette

Every year the registrar of Public Lending Right issues a report on the authors whose books have been most often borrowed from libraries. You can be sure these days that Danielle Steel, Josephine Cox and James Patterson will be up there with the leaders, but it might be more interesting, I think, to discover the name of the author whose books we borrow most often from each other. We need more information about these delicate transactions between friends. I’d also like to know the title of the book which is most often borrowed and never returned, and I’d be disappointed to learn that it was something like A Sensible Guide to Home Plumbing or The Grouter’s Friend . . .

‘Oh joy, now you are sitting around my kitchen table as well! A masterly development for Slightly Foxed and one that adds another layer of pleasure to your inspirational idea and beautifully produced journals.’

L. Tones, County Durham

Between the Lines

Sue Gee on E. H. Shepard, Drawn from Memory & Drawn from Life

It is hard to know whether it is the featherlight words of A. A. Milne or the airy ‘decorations’ of E. H. Shepard that everyone has ever since loved the more, so perfect was their partnership . . .

‘I am transported every time I hear from you to that “Wonderful Land of Books” that lives within us. It is lovely to hear your voices and learn how it all began. You are a light in the darkness for us across the seas.’

C. Taft, United States

‘They are really delightful . . .’

C. Dawson

‘Thank you very much for the bookmarks that came with my recent order, they are really delightful.’ C. Dawson, Cambridge

‘I’m a big fan and read my quarterly every morning . . .’

D. Graham

‘I’m a big fan and read my quarterly every morning. Keep up the excellent work!’

10 Oct 2018

‘Thank you for my copy of A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book . . .’

M. Arbuthnot

‘Thank you for my copy of A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book and my new jute book bag which is replacing the much loved and worn into holes one that I have at the moment. It is always such a pleasure doing business with you and I really appreciate the personal touch of the accompanying postcard.’

11 Oct 2018

‘A thing of beauty . . .’

J. Darcy

‘So thrilled you’re doing a calendar this year. I was given one as a gift a couple of years ago and was heartbroken to find you weren’t selling one last year. A thing of beauty.’

19 Oct 2018

‘I’m so glad you’ve created a subscription for the Editions . . .’

M. Warnement, United States

‘I can’t wait to get Slightly Foxed Editions 44 and 45. I reread Winnie the Pooh this year and saw the exhibition of Shepard’s drawings. I’m so glad you’ve created a subscription for the Editions, so that I can pay in advance and don’t have to think about it. They will just come, like the gifts they are, as they are published. These are my Christmas gifts to myself. Thank you, and your photos on your website and in your email are beautiful’.

19 Oct 2018

Birth of a Book

A short vignette of a book being created using traditional printing methods. Shot at Smith-Settle Printers, Leeds, England for the Daily Telegraph. The book being printed is Slightly Foxed Edition No. 18, Suzanne St Albans, Mango and Mimosa Shot, Directed…

‘What a restorative healing transfusion SF is . . .’

J. Sanger, United States

‘I have just renewed online for 3 years, but if I could have done so for 10 years I would have. I cannot tell you what a restorative healing transfusion SF is.’ J. Sanger, United States

11 Sep 2018

‘I love Slightly Foxed . . . ’

R. Edlin-White, Nottingham

‘I love Slightly Foxed and tend to have several on the go at once – one on the breakfast table, one in the car and the latest issue beside my bed. I’ve discovered several ‘new’ authors including J. L. Carr (hilarious) who have become simply indispensible. My speciality is ‘forgotten’ authors so SF is just my thing!’

5 Nov 2018

‘The podcast is yet something else from Slightly Foxed to enchant. Thank you so much for giving me such pleasure throughout the years.’

B. Hulm

Not So Plain Jane

Daisy Hay on Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre was the novel that opened my eyes to literature. It was the first classic I picked up that I couldn’t put down. I read it from cover to cover in one heady weekend when I was 13: I had a nightmare about Grace Poole on Saturday night, and a sulk on Sunday afternoon when my mother made me put it down to talk to some cousins who’d come for tea. By Sunday evening I was done and I knew, with a certainty I still remember vividly, that literature was my thing . . .

Cover Artist: Issue 61, Faith Chevannes

Faith Chevannes

Faith Chevannes is from the Tamar valley on the Devon and Cornwall border. Her drypoint prints and mixed media pieces are inspired by the spectacular landscape around her and reflect its ever-changing seasons, its wildlife and its ancient farming cycles.

Cover Artist: Issue 60, Chris Wormell, ‘The Fox’

Chris Wormell never went to art college or had any formal training and is entirely self-taught. Nevertheless, he has become one of the finest illustrators working in Britain today. His illustrations, predominantly wood engravings or linocuts, are timeless, beautiful and inspiring.

Well Done, Carruthers!

Jim Ring on Erskine Childers, Riddle of the Sands

In the depths of last winter the bathroom, if by no means warm, was the least glacial room in the house. Ever since the children were born it’s also been the only place in our North Norfolk home in which there is sufficient freedom from interruption to read. I was convalescing from Zadie Smith (On Beauty) and needed the literary equivalent of comfort food: of toad in the hole, cottage pie or dead man’s leg. The choice was Howard’s End, Brideshead Revisited or The Riddle of the Sands, all steadfast companions since I grew out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. There was a rattle of rain on the bathroom window. It was an evening for Erskine Childers. I closed the door firmly on the children, drew the bath and settled down to read.

Thomas Hardy’s Study At Max Gate

Howard Phipps

Howard Phipps studied painting and printmaking at The Gloucestershire College of Art. He is now based near Salisbury and is probably best known for his drawings and engravings of the chalk downs of Wiltshire and Dorset.

Nettlecombe: Garden in October

Claire Dalby

‘As the Second World War draws to a close, a group of six friends pool resources in order to rent a sizeable House in the Country – capital H, capital C. Their list of requirements is exacting. It has to be ‘one of those houses that’s been built bit by bit, for hundreds of years’. It has to have acres of land and dozens of outhouses. As it turns out, such a house does exist, a pretty, rambling but rather rundown Tudor manor house in deepest Kent. And so they move in . . .’

November News: The gift of beautifully packaged good reading

If you would like to introduce a fellow booklover to the world of Slightly Foxed this Christmas, why not get your order in before the rush? The packing desk is well-equipped with rolls of good brown paper, lengths of foxy cream ribbon, piles of wood-engraved gift cards and towers of handsome gift boxes in hopeful anticipation . . .

Swallows and Amazons for Ever!

Jim Ring on Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons

The train from the south drew in to the junction with the line that led to the hills. We changed, and already there was freshness in the air on a day of azure skies and deep shadows. I went to admire the Puffing Billy that was to haul us on the last leg of our journey, inhaling the intoxicating cocktail of hot oil and steam that engines exude. The whistle blew, I ran back to the carriage, the doors slammed, and we clanked our way west with the setting sun. I hurried from side to side of the carriage . . .

Edgcumbes Coffee Roasters & Tea Merchants

Slightly Foxed Subscriber Benefits

Slightly Foxed subscribers receive a 10% discount on Edgcumbes freshly-roasted coffee and hand-blended loose leaf tea products . . .

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

Reading Retreat

Slightly Foxed Subscriber Benefits

Slightly Foxed subscribers receive a 10% discount on reading retreats at lovely houses around the UK . . .

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

The Old Bakery

Slightly Foxed Subscriber Benefits

Slightly Foxed subscribers receive a 10% on reading retreats at The Old Bakery . . .

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

October News: Forest School

As the build-up to Christmas in all of its fun and exhausting glory fast approaches, the office foxes have been wondering if they could abandon the scaffold-clad confines of Hoxton Square for a spell in the forest. But then who would greet Paul from Smith Settle with the winter haul in a few weeks’ time, hand-write gift messages, swaddle parcels in tape and wrestle postbags downstairs for our cheery postman to collect each day? No! It simply won’t do. We are far too fond of our readers and conscious of their literary present requirements for that so, for this month’s mailing, we’re making do with a spot of armchair escapism with Brendon Chase instead . . .

Trips to the Past

Sophie Breese on Daphne du Maurier, The House on the Strand

Set in Cornwall, it is a brilliantly compelling story told in recognizable du Maurier style: civil disturbance lurks in the background; it has a frustratingly passive narrator; and it deals with that all too painful subject, unrequited love. But whereas some of her novels hint at the supernatural, this one is a true time-travel story.

1 Sep 2018

‘I truly love your publication . . .’

L. Bastien, USA

‘This past Christmas my husband gave me a gift subscription to your publication (I’m sure my having strategically placed your catalogue in places I was sure he’d see it helped him know what I really wanted . . .) Opening my mail box and finding a package addressed to me is a simple pleasure that makes me smile . . . even more so now as it will be from SF. I must tell you I truly love your publication. I knew I needed a subscription as soon as I received a back issue you sent me (no. 50) last February. I’m thoroughly enjoying having digital access now, as well. I bring my iPad to my daughter’s dance classes and read to my heart’s content. Thank you all!’ L. Bastien, United States

2 Mar 2018

‘May you continue to increase horizons for evermore . . .’

T. Kreling, London

‘Thank you all for excellent telephone contact, speedy & secure delivery, appropriate bookmark and card: may you continue to increase horizons for evermore.’ T. Kreling, London

22 Aug 2018

‘How different from anything I have ever read . . .’

J. Cawthorne, Suffolk

‘I adored Jennie Erdal’s book – how different from anything I have ever read. Warmly admiring of all the Slightly Foxed team.’ J. Cawthorne, Suffolk

19 Sep 2018

‘I just love the notebooks . . .’

D. Sayed, Surrey

‘Thank you for all my lovely goodies posted recently. I just love the notebooks and the Christmas cards are for special people. I’m so looking forward to the calendar and The Christmas Cracker. I find your online shop extraordinary and no matter how busy you are, or who answers the phone, there is always chat time. Thank you.’ D. Sayed, Surrey

‘A joy to hold in your hand . . .’

B. Davidson, London

‘Just a quick note to thank you for the delivery of my recent order of A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book, a great surprise in this morning’s post, just as I hoped it would be, very dry and clever, plus the second copy is one Christmas present off the list. As usual these books are not only interesting and something I may not necessarily have come across with other publishers, but also a joy to hold in your hand. Many thanks.’ B. Davidson, London

28 Sep 2018

‘An absolute delight . . .’

J. Gilfrin, Hertfordshire

‘Dear all, I just wanted to thank you so much for my order of A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book. It arrived last week, so carefully packed and in immaculate condition. I was particularly touched by the postcard with a message from Olivia enclosed with it, and the bookmark. The book itself, beautifully printed, is an absolute delight. If I find myself feeling a bit down, I pick it up and open at random, and immediately feel better! Many thanks for this and all your excellent publications, not least the wonderful quarterly magazine.’ J. Gilfrin, Hertfordshire

8 Oct 2018

Damian Barr’s Literary Salon

Damian Barr’s Literary Salon tempts the world’s finest writers to the world’s loveliest venues to read from their latest, greatest works and share their own stories. They showcase established names alongside emerging talents, and have invited Slightly Foxed contributors such as Sarah Perry, Richard Holloway and Diana Athill to regale audiences with tales.

September News: This is the way light fell on the picture for me . . .

Greetings from No. 53, where the number of boxes is fast diminishing and the route to the kettle fast widening as the office foxes beaver away to get books into the hands of readers around the world . . . Please read on for an extract from the latest title in the SF Editions list, Jennie Erdal’s wickedly funny Ghosting: A Double Life, introduced by a snippet of SF editor Hazel’s article in the current issue of the quarterly.

The Missing Librarian

C. J. Wright on escaping the British Museum’s Department of Printed Books

Somewhere high in the Austrian Alps there may lie the body of a librarian, for that is where Robert Proctor was last seen, at the head of the Taschach valley, on the morning of Sunday, 6 September 1903.

Between the Lines

Linda Leatherbarrow

While enjoying an unaccustomed and leisurely breakfast in bed, Rose was struck by a new thought. She laid down her toast, flicked away a crumb, and gazed gloomily at her surroundings: whatnots, little gilt console tables and hand-me-down tapestry chairs, and that was only the bedroom. What had once seemed so comfortable, offering continuity and a well-polished notion of permanence, was now nothing more than a baleful echo.

‘I absolutely adore it . . .’

E. Mascaretti, Italy

‘I just received my first issue of the magazine and I just wanted to say I absolutely adore it. Thank you for your message and the wonderful bookmark, I’ll immediately add it to my collection.’ E. Mascaretti, Italy

15 Sep 2018

‘The bookmarks arrived today and I am delighted . . .’

C. Russell, Somerset

‘The bookmarks arrived today and I am delighted with them, thank you once again. I am also enjoying hugely catching up on the Foxed Quarterlies I missed!’ C. Russell, Somerset

‘I have enjoyed it so much . . .’

R. Antelme, London

‘Dear Slightly Foxed, I was recently given a subscription to your quarterly booklets for my 50th birthday. It was from a very good friend that I introduced to Persephone Books. So I knew, having never heard of your books, that it would be good as my friend has great literary taste! I have devoured the Summer read . . . ’

15 Oct 2018

September News: Wonders & Absurdities

Each Christmas for the past sixteen years Dr Philip Evans has sent his friends and family a small booklet of ‘wonders and absurdities’ gleaned from many different sources over the year. When he sent the booklets to us they made us laugh so much we decided to publish a selection. The result is A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book, a very personal look at the pleasures and eccentricities of English life from a well-read individual with a keen sense of humour and many decades of observing his fellow men and women in his work as a Suffolk GP. Altogether this is a little book we’d say you can’t do without in these serious and uncertain times . . .

Slightly Foxed Issue 60: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Well, this issue is our 60th, and it’s making us feel a bit ruminative – emotional even – remembering the little group (four plus a baby) who sat round Gail’s kitchen table, discussing an idea for a magazine that we weren’t at all sure would work. The baby is at secondary school now and the original four has nearly trebled, if we count all the great people, both full-time and part-time and with ages ranging over six decades, who contribute to the production of Slightly Foxed.

Autumn 2018 Launch Party: A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book

Slightly Foxed & the Leaping Hare

welcomed friends, subscribers and local book-lovers to Wyken Vineyards to celebrate the publication of the Autumn issue of Slightly Foxed, SFE No. 43: Jennie Erdal’s Ghosting and a Slightly Foxed Special.

Our guests enjoyed books galore, a glass of wine and readings of wonders and absurdities!

Wall Street Journal’s Five Best: Lynne Olson on Britain’s European Allies

We’re absolutely delighted to see that John Hackett’s memoir I Was a Stranger has been selected by author Lynne Olson for her The Wall Street Journal ‘Five Best’ books feature on Britain’s European Allies . . .

Jarrold

The Book Department
1-11 London Street
Norwich NR2 1JF

Tel: 01603 697278

www.jarrold.co.uk

‘Thank you so much for your help and patience . . .’

C. Parker, Norwich

‘To whichever kind person stayed online and on the phone this afternoon as I ploughed on trying to place an order for your Summer-Clean. I have since been into my online account and enjoyed whizzing through all the options. I don’t know what I was doing wrong but thank you so much for your help and patience on such a hot day and when you’re in the midst of so much internet activity. Stars all!’

23 Aug 2018

‘What you do at Slightly Foxed is inspirational . . .’

D. Wakefield, Somerset

‘My parcel arrived this morning; I couldn’t believe it. Such efficiency on SF and PO’s parts, thank you! I’m delighted with its contents; it’s quite startling to feel that happy with a parcel at 77. The cards are witty and pretty, the little green notebook is perfect for quick thoughts and observations, and I love the paperback’s size and content . . . ’

3 Aug 2018

‘I have nearly finished Blue Remembered Hills which is wonderful . . .’

C. Gillespie, Surrey

‘Hattie (if I may), I have nearly finished Blue Remembered Hills which is wonderful and I’m so glad I found your site. The packaging was excellent and showed real care in looking after books and thanks for the catalogue and bookmark – always useful. Pity you aren’t in South London! (for me anyway.) Looking forward to dealing with you again and thanks for an extremely prompt transaction. Cheers.’

Bookshop of the Quarter: Autumn 2018

We’re delighted that the Corsham Bookshop has sold copies of Slightly Foxed for the past thirteen years and recommends us to readers each and every quarter. Therefore, it was a pleasure to learn more about life at the bookshop, as well as add to our reading list, courtesy of bookseller Janet Brakspear.

Autumn

Llewellyn Thomas

‘It’s hard to believe autumn is here already. But the days are shortening, the air is growing brisker, and gradually the city is coming to life again as people trickle back after the long summer break. London is back in business, and it’s all go here in the Slightly Foxed office, with the latest of the Slightly Foxed Editions and Slightly Foxed Cubs arriving from the printers, and some new projects afoot . . .’

A Skein of Wild Geese

C. F. Tunnicliffe

‘The essays sparkle with precise details. Whether he’s picking out the order of birdsong at dawn in a Wisconsin wood, following a mink track through the snow in January or tracing the first signs of thaw in spring, the essays are warm, beautiful things. They have some of the aphoristic appeal of Emerson, the wildness of Thoreau, the poetry of Whitman – but it’s the rhythm of them that gets you . . .’

La Casella Villa

Slightly Foxed Subscriber Benefits

Slightly Foxed subscribers receive a 10% discount on bookings from September to June at this farmhouse in Umbria . . .

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

Munnings Art Museum Birthday Lecture

Wednesday 3 October 2018
Dedham Assembly Rooms, Essex

The Munnings Art Museum’s second birthday lecture was a wonderful opportunity to hear life stories from broadcaster and former politician, Martin Bell OBE, in a beautiful setting. Like Sir Alfred Munnings, Bell grew up in the Waveney Valley on the Suffolk/Norfolk border and his father, farmer, writer and first Times crossword compiler Adrian Bell was friends with Munnings in the 1930s.

‘It made my heart race . . .’

S. Harris Ramini

‘I couldn’t be more delighted with Slightly Foxed. I have been a member for some time now, loving the reviews, relishing the superb writing style, but until now I had never bought any of the specially bound books. Oh, I’d made lists of my favourites and promised myself this treat but just never actually got around to it. Then I read the review of Ghosting by Jennifer Erdal. It made my heart race . . .’

September News: What glory!

It’s the turn of the quarter once again here at Slightly Foxed and what a glorious haul the new season brings.

Thanks to the usual sterling work of Tracey and her team at Smith Settle printers in Yorkshire, the new issue of the quarterly: No. 59, ‘Manhattan Moments’, is now on its way to readers all around the world. We do hope you’ll enjoy it when it arrives.

August News: The last days of summer

The last days of the Slightly Foxed Summer Clean are upon us . . . Don’t forget that for all orders over £20 received before the end of the month we’ll send you a complimentary set of handsome bookmarks by way of thanks.

August News: Marching with Marlborough

It is August 1704 and the Duke of Marlborough is leading an allied army through the Low Countries to challenge the Catholic Louis XIV of France, who has his eye on the Spanish throne . . .

Do read on for an introduction to Ronald Welch’s Captain of Dragoons, a wonderfully atmospheric and fast-moving book set during the early years of the War of the Spanish Succession, by our dear – now sadly departed – friend, reader and regular contributor Jeremy Lewis.

‘Slightly Foxed is exactly the right size for handbags . . .’

G. Wootten, Darlington

‘Has anyone ever told you that Slightly Foxed is exactly the right size for handbags in any situation where a boring wait is part of the procedure? I never go to the surgery without it, even if it means re-reading contributions as they always bear a second look . . .’

4 Mar 2018

‘The wisest perspective of entertaining and diverting reading . . .’

A. Evans, Twickenham

‘Herewith my cheque hoping that, for another two years, you will continue to deliver the wisest perspective of entertaining and diverting reading. All good wishes to you all . . .’

18 Jan 2018

‘The Fox continues to be a welcome highlight in my year . . .’

S. Stock, Essex

‘Dear Fox, As ever, it’s good to be reminded that my subscription has expired. I can’t imagine not wanting to renew. As ever, I have enjoyed my year of reading, both reading the articles and, through them, (re)discovering books and authors. The Fox continues to be a welcome highlight in my year. I had . . . ’

16 Jan 2018

Shelf Life

Ysenda Maxtone Graham on culling bookshelves

‘You must be cruel to be kind,’ gardeners tell you, about pruning roses. ‘The more you cut them down, the more they love it.’ This might be true of roses but is it true of book collections? I should imagine they absolutely hate it. Or perhaps the ones that survive are so relieved that they turn a blind eye to the atrocities going on further down the shelf . . .

August News: By Order of the Editors, Wayzgoose Holiday

We don’t really do sales here at Slightly Foxed so instead we thought we’d simply send out a plea to our dear readers to help us clear a shelf or two this August, and take the opportunity to stock up on paperbacks, notebooks, back issues and cards . . .

August News: The Slightly Foxed Summer Clean

We don’t really do sales here at Slightly Foxed so instead we thought we’d simply send out a plea to our dear readers to help us clear a shelf or two this August, and take the opportunity to stock up on paperbacks, notebooks, back issues and cards . . .

The City Reader: A Modern Newsstand

3050 SE Division St.
Portland, OR 97202
USA

www.the-city-reader.com

All the Fun of the Fair

Gerry Cotter on Second-hand Book Fairs

It was only after I retired that I looked along my bookshelves and realized there were many books I was never going to open again – so why not try to sell them? I signed up to sell online and was delighted when Heidegger’s Being and Time, unopened for decades and then only very briefly, sold the next day. This was evidently a Good Idea. I had been attending book fairs for years, so the next step was obvious: take a stall at a fair . . .

‘A beautifully produced volume . . .’

A. Bown, Leicestershire

‘Hello all at Slightly Foxed, thanks so much for The Road to Waterloo which arrived today – safe, sound and unexpectedly early! Once again, it’s a beautifully produced volume and maintains your brilliantly high standards. Your Ronald Welch collection has pride of place amongst some much loved and well used children’s books from three generations . . . ’ A. Bown, Leicestershire

‘One of those books which is about nothing and yet everything . . .’

L. Cameron, Devon

‘I wanted to thank you for introducing us to Adrian Bell, who both my husband and I have really enjoyed. I did not think I would at all, in fact out of all your editions I thought his sounded like the one I would least enjoy – and then somehow I read Corduroy and was mesmerized. It is so beautiful, one of those books which is about nothing and yet everything . . .’

27 Sep 2016

‘A magical description of a vanished time . . .’

M. Sandberg, Lincolnshire

‘I just wanted to tell you all how very much I have enjoyed Adrian Bell’s Corduroy. It is a magical description of a vanished time, very evocative in so many ways and has kept me engrossed far beyond my usual lights out time . . .’

‘Blessings for being a bright spot in my life . . .’

K. Petersen, USA

‘I have just finished devouring Corduroy and Silver Ley and am hoping that you will publish the third book in the trilogy. My husband is a farmer in a small way (they’re all small in New England) and these books (plus Brensham Village) capture the joys (quiet) and character – as well as the trials – of farming . . .’

20 Dec 2017

‘Your small publication is a jewel . . .’

E. Smithies, Canada

‘Your small publication is a jewel and I look forward to every issue. My best to you all,’ E. Smithies, Canada

31 Jan 2018

‘It seems like an old friend . . .’

J. Lange, Glasgow

‘I’m so glad I discovered Slightly Foxed even if it was only a couple of years ago. It seems like an old friend; the reviews are perfectly pitched in terms of length and content and the feel of the magazine is so good . . .’

2 Jan 2018

Pride and Prejudice

Joan Hassall

‘So “why do I like Miss Austen so very much”, and why do I think Pride and Prejudice perfect? Because it is, quite simply, magical. There is nothing “common-place” about Pride and Prejudice. It has a tightly woven, seductively intricate plot, which unfolds so delicately that the reader falls blindly into the traps of imperception set by the author, alongside that most perfect of imperfect heroines, Elizabeth Bennet . . .’

‘Best present ever . . .’

E. Castellucci, Hove

‘I can’t wait to receive the first magazine. I had a peek at the digital version and I already love it. Best present ever . . . ’

‘An island of warmth and civility . . .’

M. Ward, Northampton

‘To all at Slightly Foxed – providing an island of warmth and civility amongst the fury’ M. Ward, Northampton

20 Dec 2016

‘I’m going to frame one of the cards . . .’

N. Wineriter, USA

‘Dear Slightly Foxed, Yes, I know Christmas is over, but I’m getting an early start for this year and placing an order now! Absolutely LOVE the Christmas card design. I could look at it all year. I’m going to frame one of the cards. Thank you!’

2 Feb 2016

‘I am working my way through the book with great delight . . .’

D. Jennings, Manchester

‘Dear Slightly Foxed, Many thanks for No. 48 and 84, Charing Cross Road. Ms Hanff has lost none of her exuberant charm over the years and I am working my way through the book with great delight . . .’

15 Dec 2015

‘Thank you for your lovely newsletters . . .’

P. Oley, South Shields

‘Thank you for your lovely newsletters and for the pleasure I get from reading each copy of Slightly Foxed. I really look forward to it coming. I wish I lived nearer . . .’

14 Dec 2015

‘Beautiful copy of 84, Charing Cross Road . . .’

J. Barry, Hertfordshire

‘A little early to send a Christmas card, but I felt I needed to thank you after such a after such a pleasant weekend, due to the arrival of both the Winter issue of the magazine and the beautiful copy of 84, Charing Cross Road . . .’

30 Nov 2015

‘The bookplate designs are all so beautiful . . .’

T. Wintringham, New Zealand

‘With shrieks of glee and clapping of hands like a small child at Christmas, I am delighted to say that my bookplates arrived today. I absolutely love them! The designs are all so beautiful. It was very difficult to choose . . .’

‘I hope the Slightly Foxed Christmas Card becomes an annual offer!’

S. Jackson, Manchester

‘Thank you for the pack of The Slightly Foxed Christmas Card, which I purchased to give to my reading group friends. The photograph didn’t do it justice . . .’

23 Oct 2015

‘Thank you so much for the review of the Cazalet Chronicles . . .’

K. Baumaris, Chester

‘Thank you so much for the review of the Cazalet Chronicles last year. On the basis of that I have now read all five, my mother is enjoying them also, and my eldest sister is next in line. None of us can understand how this lovely writer appears so little acknowledged in literature . . . ’

‘In the pages of Slightly Foxed I have found my people . . .’

C. Whittemore, Gloucestershire

‘The current SF has many treasures; I’m especially struck by Sarah Perry’s piece on The Blue Field – I adore these blue flowers, admire Sarah Perry, and love ‘the Englishness of parsnip wine drunk in imprudent quantities . . .’ And how good to see Robin Blake on The Man on a Donkey, a much-loved book in my childhood home that I thought forgotten. So, in the pages of Slightly Foxed I have found my people . . .’

8 Jul 2018

‘I am absolutely hooked . . .’

M. Lyons, London

‘To my shame, I have only recently subscribed to Slightly Foxed but I am absolutely hooked. Thank you for everything you all do. It is such a lovely thing.’ M. Lyons, London

12 Jul 2018

‘I really enjoyed Sarah Perry’s article . . .’

R. Sanders, Devon

‘My parents bought me a gift subscription recently. I may only be halfway through the first edition that I have received (No. 58), but I really enjoyed Sarah Perry’s article on The Blue Field and I wanted to order the Slightly Foxed edition . . .’

‘I was immediately intrigued . . .’

Suzannah Rowntree, Vintage Novels

‘The other week, a surprise parcel turned up in the mail for me. Inside was a beautiful, clothbound new edition of a never-before-published Ronald Welch book, The Road to Waterloo . . .’

A Confrontation with Evil

Ursula Buchan on Richard Hillary, The Last Enemy

It seems a rather odd thing to admit these days, but I spent much of my youth reading war comics and watching war films. That’s how it was if you lived in a house filled with boys in the 1960s. As a result I can still recite, without recourse to Wikipedia, the names of the three men who won a bar to the Victoria Cross (Chavasse, Martin- Leake and Upham, if you are interested), and I can easily recall the boiling hot afternoons during the summer holidays that I spent at Tobruk or on the Normandy beaches, flying low over the Möhne dam or high in the skies above Kent – all while sitting in a 1/9d seat at the Regal Cinema, Wallingford . . .

Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Kathleen Lindsley

We’ve celebrated the art of wood engraving from the very first issue of Slightly Foxed, using these richly detailed illustrations to decorate our articles. In Issue 43 we began an occasional series of standalone features on some of our favourite engravers, and Kathleen Lindsley was the first. This beautiful engraving of a lunar eclipse seemed to be . . .

July News: The Last Enemy

As the Battle of Britain was being commemorated with a roar of engines and ribbons of coloured smoke for the RAF’s special centenary year celebrations overhead this lunchtime, here at No. 53 we were turning to the bookshelves to prepare to celebrate in a literary fashion for today’s newsletter . . .

June News: In search of the thing itself

Inspired by the thought of fleeing the scaffolding of Hoxton Square, we’re steaming into the Slightly Foxed archives, travelling back to the spring of 2013 and stopping off in Brazil, via Ukraine, to meet one rather extraordinary writer in this month’s article from a back issue . . . ‘Her name is Clarice Lispector, one of the most original and fascinating writers of the twentieth century.’

The Last Enemy

Richard Hillary

September 3 dawned dark and overcast, with a slight breeze ruffling the waters of the estuary. Hornchurch aerodrome, twelve miles east of London, wore its usual morning pallor of yellow fog, lending an added air of grimness to the dimly silhouetted Spitfires around the boundary. From time to time a balloon would poke its head grotesquely through the mist as though looking for possible victims before falling back like some tired monster …

Hurricane Clarice

Michael Marett-Crosby on Clarice Lispector

The sleeper lounge is old-fashioned British Rail, all tartan carpet, smeared tables and microwave cuisine. Tonight it contains a gathering of solitaries, all of us making separate journeys to London. The man beside me is still working, though it’s nearly ten o’clock. By chance we order the same whisky. We raise our plastic glasses, embarrassed in a very British way. I want to encourage him. He is at war with a pile of papers. But he is wishing me good luck as well. He has been glancing at the author’s face on the back cover of my novel. She does rather stare . . .

Attics with Attitude

Elisabeth Russell Taylor on Rachel Khoo, Little Paris Kitchen

I am sometimes asked which writers have changed my life. Next time I shall not answer ‘Proust’ but ‘Rachel Khoo’. For five years, since the death of my husband, I had all but given up cooking and eating, all but forgotten what I had valued before my personal doomsday. Rachel Khoo has re-engaged my taste-buds and my enthusiasm. I may even convert my fantasy dinner parties into real ones. I am already making lists . . .

Northamptonshire’s Ideal Countrymen

Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 July 2018
Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire

The BB Society and the H. E. Bates Group brought together accomplished authors, artists, historians, actors and others at Lamport Hall to celebrate the county’s literary and artistic heritage of ‘BB’ and ‘HE’. There were also displays of pictures, books and memorabilia, as well as film shows and illustrated talks throughout the weekend.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Clare Leighton

In Issue 58 of Slightly Foxed, Richard Platt reintroduced us to Henry Thoreau, his tragic tale of loss and his literary road to recovery. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers was written after Henry fled to the woods to work the land and build a cabin, running away from grief and depression that followed the death of his brother. This decoration by Clare Leighton appeared on the cover of the American edition of his book.

The Munnings Art Museum

Slightly Foxed Subscriber Benefits

Slightly Foxed subscribers receive a 25% discount on admission to The Munnings Art Museum . . .

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

‘I simply can’t do without it . . .’

B. Champness, Cornwall

‘A short while ago I made the very bad decision to cancel my subscription to Slightly Foxed. Now I find that I simply can’t do without it. Would it be possible to start it again from when it stopped, so I don’t lose any issues?’

26 Nov 2017

‘A breath of civilization, culture, good humour, intelligence . . .’

G. Grayston, Australia

‘This is to let you know that I have just received the latest SF, for which many thanks. Once again a breath of civilization, culture, good humour, intelligence . . . has entered my life.’

24 Nov 2017

‘I loved the Readers’ Day . . .’

L. Berridge, Devon

‘I wanted to let you know how much I loved the Readers’ Day. It was the first one I’d been to and I very much hope it will be the first of many . . .’

9 Nov 2017

‘Readers’ Day was outstanding in every way . . .’

J. Bunstead-Boother, Dorking

‘Yesterday’s Readers’ Day was outstanding in every way – we loved it all. Thank you to every one of you who made it such a success . . .’

5 Nov 2017

‘Many thanks to everyone for a brilliant day . . .’

H. Evernden, Tunbridge Wells

‘Good morning to all at Slightly Foxed! I felt I must get in touch to let you know how much I enjoyed the Readers’ Day on Saturday. You had chosen a varied and interesting selection of speakers; I especially enjoyed Helena Drysdale and Posy Simmonds. Both had gone to the trouble of preparing an excellent presentation and both were excellent communicators . . .’

5 Nov 2017

‘The bookplates are a terrific product . . .’

S. Morgan, USA

‘The bookplates are a terrific product to offer customers.’ S. Morgan, USA

‘A wonderful addition to my life . . .’

G. Johnston, Brighton

‘Thanks for a fabulous publication. I’ve only been subscribing for this year, but it’s been a wonderful addition to my life. I’ve since read many of the books that you’ve covered in the last few months and have enjoyed them so much – so many brilliant reads . . . ’

9 Sep 2017

‘The magazine has been a joy to receive . . .’

M. Ward, Northampton

‘Many thanks for your letter confirming my subscription renewal to Slightly Foxed. Looking back it seems I first subscribed in 2007 – where did those 10 years go?! In all that time the magazine has been a joy to receive (no hyperbole), and it is also a pleasure to know that there are people (yourselves!), who would wish to publish such a magazine . . .’

16 Sep 2017

A Blazing Talent

Diana Raymond on the works of Pamela Frankau

How well is Pamela Frankau remembered? She was born on 3 January 1908, so last year was her centenary. But . . . no garlands? No memorials? No flourish in the literary pages? Well, Pamela would be the first to look on this with wry amusement, and without complaint . . .

A Late Victorian Afternoon

Mark Jones on Mollie Panter-Downes, At the Pines

They seemed reasonable enough requests. Don’t lie on the bed naked in case passing servants catch an eyeful. Also, in mixed company, could he try to swear only in French? Modest pleas made by Theodore Watts-Dunton to the poet and ex-libertine Algernon Charles Swinburne when they first set up home together. It was 1879 and Swinburne’s relish for brandy and flagellation had reached a critical point. In the nick of time, Watts-Dunton, the gallant walrus-moustached solicitor-turned-author, had plucked his friend from the depths and carried him off for a spot of detox in Putney.

‘It’s such a great present!’

E. Wedmore, London

‘Dear Foxed Quarterly, Thanks so much for making the ordering process so easy. I bought the September issue at Dulwich Books to give with the subscription and once I looked inside, had a really hard time resisting the temptation to just keep going. It’s such a great present . . .’

27 Sep 2017

‘There is something magical, calming and restorative . . .’

C. Fox, Oxford

‘Dear Gail and Hazel, Of course I shall be renewing my subscriptions and adding another for my brother! There is something magical, calming and restorative in your quarterly magazine. Is it perfection of format and print and illustration or choice of contribution, varied and surprising and always beautifully written? Or is it simply that you reflect my interests and experiences. . .’

‘I have stumbled into an oasis . . .’

J. Stuart-Smith, Gwynedd

‘Dear Slightly Foxed, my initial subscription was an early Christmas present to myself last year, and now I can’t imagine being without it so I must carry on. It feels like I have stumbled into an oasis of a half forgotten civilization. Long may you prosper . . .’

‘You’ve added another fan to your list!’

A. Hetzler, United States

‘Hello! I just wanted to thank you for the copy of Slightly Foxed that you recently sent me from your Instagram giveaway. Your magazine is new to me and I have been enjoying it thoroughly, not just the interesting articles and fantastic writing, but the beautiful journal itself . . . ’

‘I am enchanted . . .’

S. Rathet, United States

‘Hello friends at Slightly Foxed. How is it possible I have not heard of you before? I subscribe to the LRB, have been to the UK many times, read Persephone books, buy many British magazines at Barnes & Noble, etc. etc. (I really make an effort) but only stumbled across your website today when looking up the book A House in Flanders . . .’

7 Feb 2017

‘A most excellent magazine . . .’

R. Grant, Dorset

‘As I have said many times since first subscribing, this is a most excellent magazine and you are all doing a worthwhile and amazing job in the world of books . . .’

2 Feb 2018

Print! Tearing It Up

Somerset House explores the power of print by celebrating the past and present of Britain’s thriving independent magazine scene. Print! Tearing It Up will be the first exhibition to trace the journey of independent voices in magazines and journals from their roots in the early 20th century to today’s contemporary titles.

Until 22 August 2018
Somerset House, London
Free entry

June News: Noises and Places

Summer is now in full swing here at Slightly Foxed. The new issue of the quarterly has travelled far and wide to subscribers all over the globe, and whether you too are off to far-flung places this summer, or simply staying at home, we hope you’ll find it good company.

In this month’s newsletter we’re celebrating fathers and grandfathers with Denis Constanduros’s charming memoirs, My Grandfather and Father, Dear Father, published together for the first time as our 20th Slightly Foxed Edition. Do read on for an extract from this charming book, and a few suggestions for presents for this coming Father’s Day or, indeed, for any occasion.

North West Book Fairs

Slightly Foxed Subscriber Benefits

Slightly Foxed subscribers receive free entry to the book fairs on presenting their membership card . . .

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

‘The lure of reading it overcame my good intentions . . .’

J. Harwood Gregson, Canada

‘I was going to write and thank you for my summer edition of SF when it arrived well . . . however the lure of reading it overcame my good intentions.’

3 Jun 2017

‘Foxed is an essential part of my life!’

M. Thomas, New York

‘I recently received a mailing from you that led to the inference that my subscription has lapsed. This was never my intention. Foxed is an essential part of my life . . .’

13 May 2017

‘Slightly Foxed has become a necessary part of my life . . ’

M. Udal, Surrey

‘Dear Gail and Hazel, Slightly Foxed has become a necessary part of my life. The consistency of your publication is entirely admirable . . .’

7 Jul 2017

‘Delicious . . .’

W. Hill, Herefordshire

‘Dear foxy people, Oh! Dear me — all the jobs that don’t get done because a new copy of Slightly Foxed has arrived! Delicious . . .’

Chapter VIII ‘A Few Oughts’

Denis Constanduros

Some of my grandfather’s quotations from Dickens were developed and amplified into the form of small dramatic performances in which the whole table took part and gave their allotted responses. There was one special favourite from The Pickwick Papers which went, as…

‘Quite simply a delight . . .’

D. Jennings, Manchester

‘Dear Slightly Foxed, I look both Ms Mantel and Mr Bell away with me. I wasn’t sure how I’d get on with Giving up the Ghost but I found her view on memory very interesting. How right she is too that . . . ’

7 Aug 2017

‘So pleased to see my Slightly Foxed shelf growing . . .’

J. Hamlin, USA

‘My order arrived yesterday evening! I’m delighted and can’t wait to dig into the lovely books, and so pleased to see my Slightly Foxed shelf growing and growing . . .’

4 Jan 2018

‘My wife is delighted with her present . . .’

A. Bruce, New Zealand

‘My wife is delighted with her present. Thank you for your assistance is getting the present put together and out here in time for Christmas . . .’

‘I look forward to introducing my grandchildren to the Careys . . .’

M. Orr, Surrey

‘Thank you very much for The Road to Waterloo which arrived safely this morning – just as I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms after finishing the series . . .’

‘My kind of books!’

L. Williams, United States

‘I appreciate your close attention to my order. Can’t wait for my first copy!’

27 Apr 2018

‘Lifted our reading horizons . . .’

S. and M. Erber, New Zealand

‘A great publication and one which has lifted our reading horizons more than somewhat . . . ’

29 May 2018

Cooling off – Dunvegan

Kathleen Lindsley

‘Reading Haldane has transformed the way I understand the Highlands. He taught me how to follow on foot the routes of the drove roads, and to look for the patches of open ground that would have been the “stances” of the drovers: the resting-places, close to water and on level ground, where the men could sleep and the livestock could graze. And he introduced me to the drovers themselves: these hard men, the long-distance lorry-drivers of their day, accustomed to the boredoms and rigours of their journeys, and equipped with internalized sat-navs of astonishing accuracy. They navigated not from maps but from memories, stories and gossip . . .’

‘Who could not be inspired . . ?’

G. Chessel, Northumberland

‘Who could not be inspired by the treasures you give us in Slightly Foxed? I have been reminded so often of books that I read in the past and now have the pleasure of encountering again . . .’

31 May 2018

Bookshop of the Quarter: Summer 2018

The Suffolk Anthology is an independent bookshop in Cheltenham, named for the bustling Suffolks area in which it sits. Helene Hewett set up shop in 2015, and we’re pleased to say that Slightly Foxed has adorned its shelves from the very beginning. Since opening, the bookshop has flourished, gaining a loyal following of regular customers, as well as attracting passing visitors.

Slightly Foxed feature on the Halfman, Halfbook Blogspot

Halfman, Halfbook

For me, independent publishers are the people in the industry who are prepared to take risks on new authors and books where the larger players either don’t wish to venture, or where they can’t see there being a return on.…

Foxed News