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‘Like many of your customers with the surname Fox, I’ve been an enormous fan of SF for many years and avid bookworm . . . I’m so pleased you’re still around keeping the printed word alive and kicking.’

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The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley | 30 copies left | From the Slightly Foxed Bookshelves

The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley | 30 copies left | From the Slightly Foxed Bookshelves

‘The story has all the elements of what is known today as a “misery memoir”, a genre that hovers uncomfortably but profitably between therapy for the author and emotional pornography for the reader. In both its tone and approach, however, The…

Summer Bookshop of the Quarter 2026 | Hestia Books

Summer Bookshop of the Quarter 2026 | Hestia Books

Many of our readers and booksellers will remember Slightly Foxed alumna Jess Dalby, who recently opened her brand new bookshop, Hestia Books, in the heart of the Derbyshire Dales. We know that locals will cherish Jess’s expert suggestions and exciting selection of titles, as well as Hestia’s cosy, welcoming atmosphere. We are looking forward to holding a Slightly Foxed event there in early 2027, but in the meantime, Jess tells us about her dream bookshop guests and favourite reads.

Autumn Bookshop of the Quarter 2026 | Topping & Company, York

Autumn Bookshop of the Quarter 2026 | Topping & Company, York

We were thrilled to hear that Topping & Company had opened a new bookshop in York, after many years of browsing the shelves in their Bath, Edinburgh, Ely and St Andrews branches. Managers Duncan and Saskia were kind enough to share the joys of bookselling and their favourite reads amidst an inevitably busy summer in York, just a few months after opening. This magnificent space is already abuzz with bookish discussions and exciting events, a new literary hub that we can't wait to visit in person soon.

Chips with Everything

Chips with Everything

My friend Matei was solemn-faced as he opened the door of our hotel room. Though the answer seemed obvious, I asked how he’d done. He broke into a smile and threw a thousand dollars into the air. He’d been bluffing.

SF magazine subscribers only

When the Hating Had to Stop

When the Hating Had to Stop

I was slow to appreciate that adults in my childish world had per formed and endured the extraordinary. I knew they had taken part in something called ‘the war’. But that a familiar face dispensing bacon at the grocer’s may have fought his way up Italy from Anzio, dodged flak in the skies above Germany or braved U-boats in the Atlantic wastes never entered my head.

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Sailing On

Sailing On

I chose a few sentences from the first chapter of Arthur Ransome’s Peter Duck (1932) for my mother’s funeral. I often read his books to her when she was old, demented and dying in a care home. When she couldn’t remember what had happened on the page or even the paragraph before, I whittled my reading down to selections from chapters I knew to be her favourites and which I loved myself. The opening of Peter Duck was one of them. Imagine an old seafarer, long retired, sitting on a bollard in Lowestoft’s inner harbour, watching the crew of a little green schooner preparing for a voyage.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 90: From the Editors

Henry James famously said that for him ‘summer afternoon’ were the two most beautiful words in the English language and for many of us no doubt, however unpredictable the weather, the idea of summer still conjures up hopeful and romantic pictures of warm afternoons and scented evenings, cricket games, al fresco meals and beach picnics. Wherever you’ll be this summer the right book for the right place is of course essential, and we hope you’ll enjoy the suggestions in this issue, from sailing with Arthur Ransome to wandering the unspoiled English countryside with the Victorian nature-writer Richard Jefferies or following Julius Caesar during the last year of his life with Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March – a scuffed grey copy of which was serendipitously spotted in a card board box of discarded holiday thrillers in a Greek seaside café and greatly enjoyed by Noonie Minogue (see p. 76).

- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

From the editors

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 90, Dale Bissland, ‘Shoregate Entrance, Crail’

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 90, Dale Bissland, ‘Shoregate Entrance, Crail’

Dale Bissland is a Scottish artist whose work displays technical accuracy alongside emotion and sensitivity. He is completely self-taught. After studying many of the masters of the past, particularly nineteenth-century Russian landscape painters, he has learnt to paint in a…

The Railway Man | *New* from the Slightly Foxed Bookshelves

The Railway Man | New from the Slightly Foxed Bookshelves

Introducing the forthcoming addition to the Slightly Foxed Editions list, No. 75: Eric Lomax | THE RAILWAY MAN Growing up in Edinburgh during the 1920s, Eric Lomax became obsessed by the great steam engines he saw shunting wagons in the…

‘How rare a thing is silence’ | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook

‘How rare a thing is silence’ | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook

‘How rare a thing is silence: how few in this world today are so placed that they can ever hear nothing. We have everything – from television to wrapped bread in slices – everything but this: that on an evening…

Last Call! 50% off any 4 back issues of Slightly Foxed

Last Call! 50% off any 4 back issues of Slightly Foxed

‘One of my luckiest days was when my local librarian introduced me to your wonderful magazine. I became instantly addicted and couldn’t wait for the next edition to arrive. There has not been a single contribution over the years that I have not found interesting, entertaining and informative.’– K. Craig, Victoria, Australia

The Merry Month | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook

The Merry Month | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook

The chestnut is the first tree to cast a green shade. For the first time for eight months I experienced a desire to move into that shade . . .