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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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Hanging Around in Doorways

Hanging Around in Doorways

I first read Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding (1946) in my twenties – a teaching colleague had recommended it – and loved it. I took it at face value: I enjoyed its plot, succumbed to its atmosphere, appreciated its descriptions and believed in its characters. I remembered it as a Good Book and sought out others by McCullers (always admiring her titles – The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of the Sad Café). But in your twenties you are robust, busy looking ahead and perhaps less inclined to dwell on the past. You don’t necessarily think sad stories apply to you. Now, rereading it several decades later, I am surprised at how moved I am by Frankie, the central character, and how much I identify with her. Which is odd, considering she is a 12-year-old on the brink of adolescence and I am 72.
SF magazine subscribers only
Reaching for the Moon

Reaching for the Moon

Edward Hopkins is a middle-aged bachelor, retired from teaching arithmetic to breed poultry in the English countryside. He gardens, he is vainglorious about his prize-winning chickens, and he is a regular attendee at meetings of the British Lunar Society. He is also an arrogant snob, utterly self-absorbed and lacking in self-awareness. He tells us he has a ‘gift for friendship’ and a ‘restful, pleasant personality’. Among his neighbours he has ‘selected’ two gentlemen, with whom he has spent happy evenings ‘discussing my poultry until long past midnight . . . It was a great regret to me when both of them decided to go and live farther away.’ Oh, I thought, this is going to be good.
SF magazine subscribers only
Friendship and a Book

Friendship and a Book

The novelist Graham Swift and I first met at a literary gathering on the outskirts of Norwich in June 2005. The university backdrop to our meeting seems strangely extra-territorial in retrospect, as though the campus’s concrete ziggurats had been dropped from Minsk on to a Mediterranean version of East Anglia. The memory is coloured not only by the exotic Babel of writers and languages around us, but also by one of those brief English heatwaves which descends just as the school exams are about to start, a false promise of summer followed by weeks of rain.
SF magazine subscribers only
Stumbling with Precision

Stumbling with Precision

According to Dorothy Dunnett’s fans, she is one of Scotland’s greatest writers. They descend on Edinburgh for their annual symposium on Dorothy Dunnett Day. They read the books alongside a 900-page Dorothy Dunnett Companion. They maintain two rival Dorothy Dunnett websites, and a Dorothy Dunnett Twitter feed, squabbling over every detail of the books with a heartfelt but rather off-putting enthusiasm. Since discovering Dorothy’s delights during frequent long railway journeys, I have joined their ranks. What we train commuters require is shaggy-dog stories, the longer the better, funny, intricate and with plenty of dashing about. I close my eyes and listen to the audiobooks, a remarkable performance by the Scottish voice actor David Monteath.
SF magazine subscribers only
Historical Adventure Novels for the Young at Heart | Last Ronald Welch Sets Remaining

Historical Adventure Novels for the Young at Heart | Last Ronald Welch Sets Remaining

Greetings from Hoxton Square where a rootle through the stock and stationery cupboards in search of more wrapping paper has revealed that we are down to our last 20 sets of Ronald Welch’s gripping historical adventure novels for children. And so, herewith, a hastily thrown-together email from the bookish elves here at Foxed HQ to let you know that if you’ve been thinking of investing in a set as a present for a young-at-heart reader, with stocks dwindling and the last recommended posting dates for Christmas fast approaching, now would be a good moment to do so.
Produced by people who love books, for people who love books | Slightly Foxed Editions

Produced by people who love books, for people who love books | Slightly Foxed Editions

Greetings from Slightly Foxed HQ, where we’re busily packing up all manner of bookish treats for readers far and wide and cheerily navigating our way through a developing obstacle course of packing materials, parcels and post bags. There’s still time for us to help with gifts for fellow bookworms – or, indeed, a well-deserved treat for yourself – and where better to find inspiration than in our series of Slightly Foxed Editions.
Intellectual Refreshment | New this Winter from Slightly Foxed

Intellectual Refreshment | New this Winter from Slightly Foxed

‘I may be a long way from you all but I am dependent on Slightly Foxed for intellectual refreshment and for opening new paths, either to books unknown to me or to old favourites. All my good wishes for your continued successes!’ C. Stelzer, Arizona, USA Greetings, dear readers, from Slightly Foxed HQ. We’re delighted to report that the new winter issue of Slightly Foxed has now left the printing press at Smith Settle and should arrive with readers in the UK in the coming days and elsewhere over the next few weeks. We do hope it brings much reading pleasure.

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