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I have been devoted to your podcast for over a year; it could be improved only by being more frequent. Every book I have ordered from you has been a delight; nothing disappoints. I receive your emails with pleasure, and that’s saying a lot. Slightly Foxed is a source of content . . .
K. Nichols, Washington, USA

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Far From a Fling

Far From a Fling

The shelves of John Murray seemed filled with books by its strong-minded, often indomitable women writers when I went to work there in 1972: Jane Austen, Queen Victoria, travellers like Isabella Bird, Freya Stark and Dervla Murphy. Elizabeth Grant was one of whom I had not heard; idle curiosity drew me to her but I was soon engrossed. Born in 1797 she died in 1885, her posthumous fame beginning with the publication of her memoirs, edited by her niece (also Lytton Strachey’s mother) in 1898. The Memoirs of a Highland Lady went through four printings that year and has been reprinted regularly ever since, for readers are fascinated by its picture of the life of a Highland laird’s family in the twilight years of the clan system, at Rothiemurchus, the beautiful ‘Gateway to the Cairngorms’ near Aviemore. Adding to the interest are the casual though then unexceptional cruelties of her upbringing, a mysterious tale of star-crossed love and the eventual ruin of the family fortunes brought about by the political pretensions and financial incompetence of her father.
SF magazine subscribers only

Pastures of the Sky

I was 16 when I first read Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but because this is a novella that begins with an ending, full of uncertainties and possibilities, I soon realized that this was a complex grown-up story in which there might be sadness as well as joy. The unnamed narrator – whom Holly calls Fred because he reminds her of a much-loved younger brother – sees that she is schooled in the dark arts of glamour and seduction yet is intrigued by the reckless bravado of her disclosures. Whatever you do, seems to be her message, do it with style, and ignore convention. ‘Leave it to me,’ she says. ‘I’m always top banana in the shock department.’
SF magazine subscribers only
A Salute to Betjeman

A Salute to Betjeman

On Hampstead Heath a leisured stroll To calm the mind and soothe the soul – North London’s take on Flatford Mill – The air is thick with heat, and still, The sunshine gilds the two hilltops Burnishes meadow, pond and copse. All round a gorgeous vista spreads Though (adders lurk in all woodsheds) The TV mast on Highgate Hill’s A blot; the Royal Free – bitter pills For anyone who cares, to swallow And doubtless, some day, worse will follow As Betjeman once prophesied While all around him beauty died.
SF magazine subscribers only
Bentley Gently

Bentley Gently

One of the literary forms that has always given me most pleasure, in between the serious stuff, has been the clerihew, named after its inventor Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956). Bentley was chief leader writer for the Daily Telegraph from 1912 to 1934. In 1905, a decade before he produced another of his inventions, the modern detective novel, with Trent’s Last Case, he published a slim volume entitled Biography for Beginners, which opens, under the heading ‘Introductory Remarks’, with this four-liner: The Art of Biography / Is different from Geography. / Geography is about Maps, / But Biography is about Chaps.
SF magazine subscribers only
Social Climbing is Risky

Social Climbing is Risky

The Eustace and Hilda trilogy is a comedy of manners, an illustration of how the middle classes are lost in the upper-class world of great houses and Venetian palazzi, and puzzled by men called Dick who do not share their bourgeois morality. But like all good comedy, it has an underlying seriousness. The world Eustace finds himself in is mysterious to him; for his sister, who is more perspicacious, it is frightening. And how true this still rings, several decades later: some of us find life socially awkward, or are not quite at ease in our own skins sexually – or both.
SF magazine subscribers only

The Importance of Being Decent

In January 1939, as Europe was convulsing to the rhythms of what George Orwell would call ‘the tom-tom beat of a latter-day tribalism’, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and E. M. Forster were gathered at Waterloo Station. It was a solemn occasion. Auden and Isherwood were about to leave the country of their birth for the United States, where, several months later, Auden would compose ‘September 1, 1939’, the ominous poem in which he would look back on ‘the low dishonest decade’ he had just lived through, and tremble at the one to come. Auden and Isherwood attracted much criticism for their decision to leave England at so crucial an hour, yet Forster refused to abandon his friends. As he bade them farewell at Waterloo, he told them that it was now their duty to ‘keep away’ and ‘see us sink from a distance’. It would be his duty, he continued, ‘to face a world which is tragic without becoming tragic myself ’.
SF magazine subscribers only
Educating Ulyth

Educating Ulyth

I hardly need tell you that ‘Brazil’ is supposed to be pronounced ‘Brazzle’, although I still find it hard not to pronounce it as it looks. Unmarried, childless, but busy and fulfilled, Angela Brazil (1869–1947) lived in Coventry (a place to which some of her characters are metaphorically and unwillingly sent), and most of her romantic inclinations, it seems, were channelled into celebrating the romance of life in a girls’ boarding-school, which she distilled into 59 novels. Unlike Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School and Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books, Brazil created a totally fresh school for each novel: The Dower House, The Manor House, The Woodlands, Aireholme, Brackenfield, Silverside, Birkwood Grange and so on.
The Power of Stealing Hearts

The Power of Stealing Hearts

Not a little of the appeal of Kilvert’s Diary for its early readership was the total contrast it provided to contemporary horrors. What could offer a better escape than the largely unruffled beauties, certainties and tranquillity of the high Victorian period to be found there, and in Trollope’s novels, equally popular in the war years? As Plomer wrote to the novelist Elizabeth Bowen when he first read the diary, ‘It’s as good as the Caledonian Market,’ then the happy hunting ground for Victoriana.
SF magazine subscribers only
19th November 2014

‘Pocket-sized little chunks of perfection’

‘A memoir written in the late 1920s and recently republished in the beautiful Slightly Foxed Paperback series. The book tells of Bell’s move, at 20 years old, from bohemian Battersea to a small farm in Suffolk. Bell is a favourite of mine, and his nature writing is immediately transporting. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the Slightly Foxed Paperbacks, pocket-sized little chunks of perfection, are the most beautifully made paperbacks I’ve ever had the pleasure to own. They’re made by a traditional small press in Yorkshire to standards that make reading on a device seem like the most depressing possible compromise.’ On Adrian Bell’s Corduroy
- Erik Heywood, Book/Shop
From the press
1st December 2007

Slightly Foxed Issue 16: From the Editors

With mist obscuring the dome of St Paul’s and winter closing in, it seems a long time since we were driving through lush, sunlit Devon lanes to the launch of the Autumn issue at the (tiny) Big Red Sofa bookshop in Chagford, right on the edge of Dartmoor. As always it was a convivial get-together, with subscribers coming from as far away as Exmouth, and keen interest taken from the bookshop regulars in Slightly Foxed. This beautiful area, where moor and countryside meet, is home territory to Gail. Her family have long connections with it, and our visit to Devon was combined with a splendid housewarming for the eco-friendly house that she and her husband have dreamed about for years and which is now finally finished, down to the last slab of granite and foot of grass roof. However, don’t panic. Gail, like the rest of us, is still based in London, and SF continues exactly as before.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors

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