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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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Giving up the Ghost | Part One: A Second Home

Giving up the Ghost | Part One: A Second Home

It is a Saturday, late July, 2000; we are in Reepham, Norfolk, at Owl Cottage. There’s something we have to do today, but we are trying to postpone it. We need to go across the road to see Mr Ewing; we need to ask for a valuation, and see what they think of our chances of selling. Ewing’s are the local firm, and it was they who sold us the house, seven years ago. As the morning wears on we move around each other silently, avoiding conversation. The decision’s made. There’s no more to discuss. About eleven o’clock, I see a flickering on the staircase. The air is still; then it moves. I raise my head. The air is still again. I know it is my stepfather’s ghost coming down. Or, to put it in a way acceptable to most people, I ‘know’ it is my stepfather’s ghost. I am not perturbed. I am used to ‘seeing’ things that aren’t there. Or – to put it in a way more acceptable to me – I am used to seeing things that ‘aren’t there’. It was in this house that I last saw my stepfather Jack, in the early months of 1995: alive, in his garments of human flesh. Many times since then I have acknowledged him on the stairs.
Lea Ypi wins The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2021 for Free

Lea Ypi wins The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2021 for Free

Slightly Foxed and The Biographers’ Club are delighted to announce that the winner of the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2021, chosen by judges Susannah Clapp, Horatio Clare and Johnny de Falbe, is Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi. Free is an engrossing coming-of-age memoir in the midst of political upheaval. With acute insight and wit, Lea Ypi traces the limits of progress and the burden of the past, illuminating the spaces between ideals and reality, and the hopes and fears of people pulled along by the sweep of history.
Hens, Hons and Counter-Hons | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Hens, Hons and Counter-Hons | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

‘It was becoming rather apparent by this year of 1935 that not all of us were turning out quite according to plan,’ writes Jessica Mitford in her brilliantly funny and perceptive account of growing up as the fifth of the six notoriously headstrong Mitford sisters. And it was perhaps Jessica – always known as Decca – the lifelong hard-line socialist, who turned out least ‘according to plan’ of them all. We hope you enjoy reading an extract from Slightly Foxed Edition No. 52: Hons and Rebels.
Season’s Greetings from Slightly Foxed

Season’s Greetings from Slightly Foxed

Season’s greetings to you all from SF HQ, where we’re merrily stock-taking and tidying, eyeing up the mince pies and preparing to shut up shop for the Christmas break. The office will be closed from 3 p.m. this afternoon (Thursday 22 December) until Tuesday 3 January. We are so grateful for your orders, and we do hope that all items are well received. While most things arrive in good time and in good order, inevitably the odd thing goes astray or arrives in less than perfect condition. If this is the case please let us know by email and we can arrange replacements to be sent out in the New Year. We look forward to catching up with you when we’re back at our desks in January. Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm throughout the year. We’ll now raise a glass to our dear readers around the world who have kept us going with orders and messages of goodwill.
Last orders, please | Books, goods & gifts from Slightly Foxed

Last orders, please | Books, goods & gifts from Slightly Foxed

Warm wishes from the Slightly Foxed office, where the final post bags are filling up and we’re readying ourselves to wave goodbye to the postman and his laden van for the last time in 2022 later this week. Wednesday 21 December is the last advised posting date for Special Delivery mail to arrive at destinations in the UK by Christmas. Please do place any last orders for Christmas – or for any other occasion before the end of the year – as soon as possible, making sure to select First Class or Next Day Delivery as your postal option on the website or over the phone. Everything that’s published and produced by Slightly Foxed, and marked as in stock on the website, is readily available here in the office and can be dispatched post-haste!
Hons and Rebels | The Society of Hons

Hons and Rebels | The Society of Hons

Unity and I made up a complete language called Boudledidge, unintelligible to any but ourselves, into which we translated various dirty songs (for safe singing in front of the Grown-Ups) and large chunks of the Oxford Book of English Verse. Debo and I organized the Society of Hons, of which she and I were the officers and only members. Proceedings were conducted in Honnish, the official language of the soci­ety, a sort of mixture of North of England and American accents. Contrary to a recent historian’s account of the ori­gin of the Hons, the name derived, not from the fact that Debo and I were Honourables, but from the Hens which played so large a part in our lives. These hens were in fact the mainspring of our personal economy. We kept dozens of them, my mother supplying their food and in turn buying the eggs from us – a sort of benevolent variation of the share-cropping system. (The H of Hon, of course, is pro­nounced, as in Hen.)
Literary Gifts & Fantastic Foxes | From the Slightly Foxed Emporium

Literary Gifts & Fantastic Foxes | From the Slightly Foxed Emporium

Greetings from SF HQ, where life may be imitating art as we carry tall towers of books to the packing desk ready to wrap and dispatch to our dear readers. However, rest assured that we’re looking much more cheerful (and being more careful!) than these fully foxed figures in Quentin Blake’s cover artwork for Slightly Foxed Issue 24. And thankfully Dusty the office dog is safely snoozing on the sofa rather than getting under our feet like this book-thieving fox . . . There is still time to add to our packing piles and post bags before the year is out, and you’ll find books and goods, seasonal reads and stocking fillers in our online emporium. And, in honour of SF contributor Quentin Blake turning 90 this Friday, we’re also recommending a selection of pocket-sized titles bearing his fantastic, often foxy, illustrations.
‘Smashing little hardbacks’ | Slightly Foxed Editions

‘Smashing little hardbacks’ | Slightly Foxed Editions

Greetings from a busy, book-filled Slightly Foxed office, where we’re merrily navigating our way through an obstacle course of post bags, packing materials and parcels. There’s still time for us to help with gifts for booklovers, and we’d like to shine a light on our Slightly Foxed Editions – beautifully produced cloth-bound hardbacks, just the right size to hold in the hand and with a ribbon marker to keep your place. And, if you have missed out on a title or two from our series of limited-editions, our Plain Editions come in the same neat pocket format as the original SF Editions and will happily fill any gaps in your collection – as well as forming a delightful uniform series of their own, each bound in duck-egg blue cloth. Perfectly designed to curl up with, these classic titles are highly individual and absorbing reads.

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