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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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Wonderfully Down-to-Earth

Wonderfully Down-to-Earth

Like most keen readers, I imagine, I collect the works of particular authors, placing the books in satisfying runs along my bookshelves. These runs are not alphabetical or chronological, since I am not sufficiently organized for that, but at least they come easily to hand. Among these are: the fiction of Jane Austen and John Buchan, the Regency novels of Georgette Heyer, the collections of poetry by John Clare and John Betjeman – and the popular horticultural science books of Ken Thompson. The last may not be a familiar name to you, but he is to me one of the most original and readable of garden writers, ever. Those two virtues, originality and readability, have become scarce commodities in garden writing in recent years, superseded very often by desperately ordinary blogs, vlogs and social media posts, many of which contain questionable or outdated information, delivered in a tone of deadening earnestness.
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Against the Tide

Against the Tide

On the boat, I woke to the play of light on the ceiling, reflecting off the river through the portholes behind my bed. I slept under five duvets and better than I ever had, with the water rocking me to sleep. Sometimes I was woken by the dawn chorus which the river seemed to amplify. Sound works strangely by water, and I could hear each word of the intimate conversations on the opposite bank, in The Kidneys, where students came for break-ups and boat people gathered for parties at full moon. At dusk, a flotilla of geese came honking down to the jetty where they slept, followed after sunset by party boats blasting Noughties hits which disappeared mid-lyric around the riverbend.
SF magazine subscribers only
Low Life, High Art

Low Life, High Art

For most of the last fifty years, the correct way to read the Spectator was to open it at the back, flip over a few pages and find out what on earth old Low Life had been up to that week. Had he woken up in a hedge with no memory of the previous twenty-four hours, perhaps? Had he had a brush with the law, or suffered an embarrassing bodily malfunction in a public place? Had he outraged the prevailing middle-class morals of the day in some farcical manner? The purpose of the Low Life column was to give Spectator readers a weekly glimpse of the gutter; a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God insight into the life of the bohemian drop out; a sense of what happens when a man looks at polite society’s prescriptions and says, ‘Not for me, thank you.’ And a proper belly-laugh into the bargain. Two men have been Low Life’s custodians. Both are now dead. The first, Jeffrey Bernard, was the archetypal Soho barfly: cynical, self-pitying, permanently sozzled, spitting out formless but funny poison-pen letters until the booze killed him, aged 65, in 1997. He has become a figure of legend, immortalized in a stage play named after the Spectator’s frequent one-line apology when he failed to file copy: Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell.
SF magazine subscribers only
A Life Well Lived

A Life Well Lived

Historians of children’s literature sometimes speak of a First and a Second Golden Age. The First was the Victorian/Edwardian period, when many of the most enduring classics were written – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Black Beauty, Treasure Island, Little Women, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows – and the main genres of children’s literature (fantasy, adventure, animal stories, school stories, family sagas) were established. This period is generally thought to have come to an end around the outbreak of the First World War. For whatever reasons, the interwar period produced rather less memorable children’s literature.
SF magazine subscribers only
A Consummate Professional

A Consummate Professional

I came to Cecil Beaton through Roy Strong, and Strong’s vastly entertaining diaries owe much to Cecil Beaton. In 1967, five months after he was appointed the youngest ever Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Strong made ‘juvenile jottings’ on some of the remarkable people he was meeting. The jottings became, a year later, something much more substantial. ‘Beaton’s diaries were in the process of being published at the time,’ Strong wrote, ‘and I was hypnotized by his ability to conjure up characters or a scene. His diaries were not daily, but occasional, made up of set pieces describing particular events or people . . . They were concerned, too, with a social panorama . . . It was that type of diary that I resolved to keep.’
SF magazine subscribers only
Slightly Foxed Issue 89: From the Editors

Slightly Foxed Issue 89: From the Editors

As we were sitting round the kitchen table recently, chewing over general thoughts about SF and plans for the year ahead, it struck us that some of our most interesting and original pieces have come to us via our Writers’ Competitions. One of our aims, when we started Slightly Foxed, was to find contributors from as wide a range of back grounds as possible rather than depending on professional journalists and published writers to fill the magazine. This policy has led us in so many interesting directions and proved that you don’t have to be a ‘writer’ to write well. It’s also become obvious from the many letters and emails we receive from all over the world that our subscribers are a fascinating bunch, well able to hold their own when it comes to putting words together.
SF magazine subscribers only
Extract from Love Divine | Chapter 1

Extract from Love Divine | Chapter 1

A blustery day dawns in Lamley Green, with plenty of rain in the forecast. In Holly Grove, a street of Georgian houses just off the green, curtains and shutters are being opened by sleepy residents in their dressing-gowns, some yawning, some frowning. In its basement kitchens, kettle switches are being flicked and capsules slotted into coffee machines. A dog barks. At No. 14, someone starts drilling loudly into a wall. At No. 12, the curtains remain firmly closed. Throughout the morning, the following letters will be dropped through its letterbox.

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