What excellent company you are!

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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Episode 41: Barbara Pym and Other Excellent Women

Episode 41: Barbara Pym and Other Excellent Women

Paula Byrne, author of The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, and Lucy Scholes, critic, Paris Review columnist and editor at McNally Editions, join the Slightly Foxed team to plumb the depths and scale the peaks of Barbara Pym’s writing, life and loves. From Nazi Germany to the African Institute; from London’s bedsit land to parish halls; from unrequited love affairs with unsuitable men to an epistolary friendship with Philip Larkin; and from rejection by Jonathan Cape to overnight success via the TLS, we trace Pym’s life through her novels, visiting the Bodleian and Boots lending libraries along the way. There’s joy in Some Tame Gazelle, loneliness in Quartet in Autumn, and humour and all human experience in between, with excellent women consistently her theme.
57 minutes
Another Self | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Another Self | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

James Lees-Milne wrote that he ‘always felt an outsider in every circle’. It was this, combined with his eye for detail and highly developed sense of the ridiculous, that made him such a wonderful comic writer. John Betjeman compared the impact of Another Self to that of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall. We’re delighted to announce that this classic memoir will be available to readers once more, published on 1 June in a Plain Foxed Edition. These sturdy little books, bound in duck-egg blue cloth, come in the same neat pocket format as the original Slightly Foxed Editions. Please do go forth and place your order now.
Z is for Zola, Émile | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Z is for Zola, Émile | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Greetings from Hoxton Square, where we can scarcely believe we’ve come to the end of our alphabetical adventures through the Slightly Foxed archives, arriving at Andrew Wall’s piece on The Ladies’ Paradise by Émile Zola. We do hope you’ll enjoy it. It’s been a joy to delve into back issues and revisit old favourites, from Margery Allingham’s crime fiction to consumer culture with Émile Zola, via Barbara Comyns, Graham Greene, Molly Keane, Marilynne Robinson, Kurt Vonnegut and many more along the way. And we have barely burrowed into the archive of hidden gems: eighteen years’ worth of entertaining and original reading recommendations, good humour and good writing.
A Boy at the Hogarth Press | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

A Boy at the Hogarth Press | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

There have been many memoirs of life among the Bloomsberries, but none more wickedly frank or funny than Richard Kennedy’s A Boy at the Hogarth Press. In 1926, at the age of 16, Richard Kennedy left school without a single qualification and went to work at Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press. Though home from home for London’s intellectual élite, the Press’s damp basement at Tavistock Square was anything but elegant, with the legendarily mean LW keeping a close check on everything, including the toilet paper, and frequently exploding when confronted with RK’s latest idiocy. The Woolfs clearly developed a fondness for their apprentice, but when he left several years later LW pronounced him ‘the most frightful idiot he [had] ever had the privilege of meeting in a long career of suffering fools’.
Another Self | Chapter I: Tobias and the Angel

Another Self | Chapter I: Tobias and the Angel

My world was the only real world. Nothing about it seemed incongruous; and those events which happened in it were never inconsequential. Its relation with the great outside world was tenuous. By which I do not deny that a few of my notable fancies were sparked off by momentous contacts with the unreal, outside world. For of course they often were. A riveting story or a glamorous present might do the trick, and set the magic working. On the other hand the pattern of events in my world was often outrageously disturbed by trivial demands made by the unreal world, such as to eat tapioca pudding, to wash my teeth, or to go to bed when I felt disinclined.
Now that spring has come . . . | Seasonal reading from Slightly Foxed

Now that spring has come . . . | Seasonal reading from Slightly Foxed

Greetings from Hoxton Square, where we’re looking forward to the Easter break next week and the prospect of fresh air, feasting and, most importantly, time to read. Therefore, if you would like to give the gift of good reading to a fellow booklover (or yourself!) in time for the long weekend, we suggest placing your order in the coming days. The office will be closed from 5.30 p.m. Thursday 14 April until 9.30 a.m. on Tuesday 19 April for Easter. However, our online shop will be open all hours as always, so do feel free to order books, invest in a literary bundle, pick up a tote bag, acquire a notebook, stock up on bookplates, renew your subscription – or, indeed, take out a new subscription – while we’re away, and we’ll send out all orders as soon as we’re back at the packing desk.
Inspire a love of reading | Slightly Foxed Cubs

Inspire a love of reading | Slightly Foxed Cubs

Today, 2 April, is both Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday and International Children’s Book Day, which is celebrated each year to inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s literature. Not that we need an excuse to do so here at SF HQ, of course. However, we thought it only fitting to shine the spotlight on our series of Slightly Foxed Cubs this weekend. These beautifully produced collectable children’s books strike a nostalgic chord with many older readers and introduce a younger generation to writers whose marvellous books have, unaccountably, been allowed to slip out of print. Bound in coloured cloth, with printed endpapers and original illustrations, the Cubs make ideal presents for the young and young at heart. Whether you wish to escape into nature with BB, venture back to Roman Britain with Rosemary Sutcliff, join up the dots of history with Ronald Welch or begin to build a library for a bookworm by picking a few titles by each author (or collecting the full set at once) we have books, bundles and offers to satisfy all readers and occasions.
Jan Morris | Conundrum | Rescued – a grand love

Jan Morris | Conundrum | Rescued – a grand love

‘Conundrum is the nearest thing Jan has written to an autobiography. But as she herself acknowledges, in a sense all her writing is autobiographical. Her books represent conversations between Jan Morris and the places she is writing about. Her approach is wholly subjective, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that she has imposed her personality on the entire world. Yet Conundrum is indeed unique among her books.’ Derek Johns in his preface to Slightly Foxed Edition No. 46: Jan Morris, Conundrum

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