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K. Nichols, Washington, USA

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Fulmar, Gannet and Puffin

Fulmar, Gannet and Puffin

In shelves to the left and right of the fireplace in our dining-room, my husband keeps an extensive collection of books about Scotland. Half a shelf is given over to volumes on St Kilda. If ever I feel the need to escape from Hammersmith to a landscape of vast skies, mountainous waves, sea-spray blowing like white mares’ tails across the rocks, this is where I turn: to the extraordinary archipelago, 110 miles west of the Scottish mainland, whose black cliffs and dizzying stacks, the highest in Britain, unfold in a drumroll of Gaelic names – Mullach Mor, Mullach Bi, Conachair.
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The Art of Bookselling

The Art of Bookselling

Just as most good books aren’t really about the things they say they are, Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop (1978) isn’t really about a bookshop. It’s about English insularity, politics, the misuse of power and the headstrong persistence of hope, with Florence Green’s Suffolk bookshop a symbol for every newcomer who ever found their best intentions beaten down by suspicion and hidebound tradition. At the end of the book, the formidable local matriarch Mrs Gamart manipulates her MP nephew into pushing through Parliament a bill specifically designed to close down Florence’s shop in favour of a local arts centre. The arts centre is Mrs Gamart’s pet project, and the town of Hardborough falls into line behind her. Florence has to con­clude that ‘the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop’. That is the last line of a book about a book­shop. An upbeat ending it is not.
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Not So Verray Parfit

Not So Verray Parfit

I once taught English at a girls’ school in which the head of depart­ment didn’t like poetry. It’s an odd aversion but it worked well for me. The poetry room was right at the top of a very tall building, and thither wended her way every pupil in the place, to be rewarded by peaceful sessions chewing over every kind of poem, from epic to lyric to limerick. But some of these girls also had to pass public exams. The A-level syllabus was dictated by a higher authority and this term the poetry module featured Chaucer. No problem in that. To me, he is the tops. He understood the complicated, subtle, self-deluded and some­times glorious nature of human beings better than any writer, before or since, and he displayed enough humour, generosity and lightly worn erudition to keep a whole pilgrimage entertained from here to eternity.
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Fresh as Paint

Fresh as Paint

My brother, my sister and I grew up in a rambling farmhouse in Hampshire hung with pictures by friends of our parents, for they knew a wide range of artists and tended, naturally, to buy works by people they knew. Some of these paintings seemed gloomy and frankly baffling, but those by Julian Trevelyan and his wife Mary Fedden danced with life and colour. Julian and Mary were among our favourite week­end guests, and we were particularly in thrall to Julian, who loomed over us from his immense height with his ‘craggy welcoming face and patriarchal beard’, in the words of his cousin Raleigh Trevelyan. He would spend hours entertaining us with comic drawings, notably of himself as Edward Lear’s ‘old man with a beard/ Who said “It is just as I feared!/ Two Owls and a Hen/ Four Larks and a Wren/ Have all made their nests in my beard.”’
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Hammering Away at Words

Hammering Away at Words

‘Why do I feel as if the Earth is disappearing from under my feet?’ was the reaction of one friend when I introduced him to Hooting Yard, the ‘nonsense’ literary universe created by that most cultish of cult writers, Frank Key. Yes, you must have a care when approaching Hooting Yard. Make sure you’re sitting down or at least have some­thing solid to grab on to, because vertigo is guaranteed as you are struck by a series of dizzying revelations.
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Following the Music

Following the Music

As deputy literary editor of the Independent on Sunday in the mid-1990s, it was my job to organize and compile several of the routine book columns and features every week. One such was the long-running ‘The Book that Changed Me’. It involved typing up a short telephone interview with a literary or other type of celebrity; less frequently, the contributor would write the copy themselves. It can be difficult to drum up fresh ideas once a column has been underway for some time, but we never ran short of suggestions and contribu­tions. One highlight for me was hearing Christopher Lee declaim at length down the line in Elvish, in his fanatical enthusiasm for The Lord of the Rings. I can only imagine how delighted he must have been to be offered the part of Saruman.
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The Sins of the Father

The Sins of the Father

A. A. Milne’s son musing with mixed feelings on his childhood as ‘Christopher Robin’; Daphne du Maurier’s daughter recalling life at Menabilly, the model for Rebecca’s Manderley . . . I’ve always been drawn to memoirs by the children of famous writers. They may not be as stirring as the life stories of the writers themselves, the Trollopes and Dickenses who emerge triumphant from youthful adversity, but those whose lives are lived in the shadow of celebrated parents have struggles and sufferings of their own. It can be as much a burden as an honour to bear a well-known name, and I’m intrigued to find out how they carry it.
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A Fresh Take on the ’45

A Fresh Take on the ’45

Flemington by Violet Jacob was recommended to me by my grand­parents. Posthumously. When writing my biography of John Buchan, I came across a letter he wrote in 1911 to the author, soon after the book was published: ‘My wife and I are overcome with admiration for [Flemington] and we both agree that it is years since we read so satisfying a book. I think it the best Scots romance since The Master of Ballantrae. The art of it is outstanding.’
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Through a Glass, Madly

Through a Glass, Madly

In my day, the A-level Spanish syllabus included a few score of the key pages of Don Quijote – windmills mistaken for giants, labourers for lords, prostitutes for princesses, and so on. When I got to univer­sity I found that we were supposed to know the whole novel. I struggled through most of it but couldn’t handle its digressions and longueurs. Cervantes could veer off at tangents and not return for a hundred pages or more. My tutors encouraged me to persevere. After all, Cervantes was revered as Spain’s Shakespeare.
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‘Your very good health’ | New Year Reading Recommendations

‘Your very good health’ | New Year Reading Recommendations

‘Your very good health,’ Brian said, raising his glass of champagne in the trio’s direction. ‘And by the way, gentlemen, I am not an old queen.’ He paused, forcing the men to look at him. ‘I am the Empress of Ireland!’ || Christopher Robbins, The Empress of Ireland Warm wishes from Hoxton Square, where we’d like to thank you all for your support throughout the past year – and raise a glass to good health and good reading in 2022. If you’d like some reading recommendations to brighten January, and help us clear a few shelves to make space for yet more delicious titles along the way, please do browse our selection of offers and highlights . . .
W is for Warner, Sylvia Townsend | From the Slightly Foxed archives

W is for Warner, Sylvia Townsend | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Greetings from Slightly Foxed, and a very happy New Year to you all. Before we look ahead to this year’s crop of new publications, we’re taking stock, delving through our bank of back issues and sharing some good reading from the archives. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s joie de vivre – evident in her diaries and described by Jonathan Law in his article from Slightly Foxed Issue 48 – is especially appealing this January.  ‘In 1927 Sylvia Townsend Warner was given a smart notebook by a friend; a day out prompted a few hesitant jottings and, before she knew it, she was off . . .’ If you have received a new diary this Christmas, or if we can tempt you with our selection of smart Slightly Foxed notebooks, then perhaps Sylvia can provide inspiration when faced with the blank page. Whatever the case, and wherever we find you, we do hope you’ll enjoy dipping into her life and writing.

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