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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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Challenging the Old Gang

As a beneficiary of the Welfare State and the Permissive Society – to name just two of their life-enhancing achievements – I owe an enormous debt to the liberal intelligentsia who, in the teeth of opposition from the Old Gang, brought them to pass. But who were these irreverent shock troops and what motivated them? The answer is given by one of their standard bearers, Noel Annan (1916‒2000), in his dazzling group portrait Our Age (1990), which is not only a joy to read but also a wonderful crib for anyone studying the social history of Britain from the 1920s to the 1960s.

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’Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost?

’Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost?

Tennyson’s In Memoriam (1850) is a poem about love and death, the two things which change all things – which is a powerful reason for reading what happens to be a powerful piece of writing, one of the key works of the nineteenth century, and one which has been described antithetically as the epitome of Victorian scepticism and of Christian faith.

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Porridge and the Shorter Catechism

Porridge and the Shorter Catechism

Florence Marian McNeill, known as Floss, understood the importance of regional dishes. You may know her better as a folklorist; but without The Scots Kitchen, first published in 1929, she’d never have begun collecting the scraps of song, story, local traditions and unlikely remedies which grew over the years to become her definitive work on folklore, The Silver Bough.

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One of the Regulars

At the back of Penelope Fitzgerald’s only short-story collection, The Means of Escape (2000), there is a charming black-and-white photograph of the author. It shows her buttoned into a high-collared shirt under a garment that appears to be an academic robe but could simply be a very large cardigan. Not quite smiling, she looks gentle yet distinguished, exactly as I remember her; and, as I looked at the photograph, there she was again and so was I, back in the old public library at the top of Highgate Hill in north London.

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Adrift on the Tides of War

Adrift on the Tides of War

It is an irony that the dramatization of a novel may deter not spur. Instead of leading the viewer to the book, it becomes a substitute. Such a fate appears to have befallen Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War, which in its Balkan and Levant trilogies traces the wartime travails of young Harriet and Guy Pringle as they flee the advancing Germans, first in Bucharest and Athens, then in Egypt and the Middle East. The six volumes were published to acclaim between 1960 and 1980. Yet Manning’s work is now probably better remembered as the 1987 BBC TV dramatization starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.

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The Sound of Chariots

The Sound of Chariots

Rosemary Sutcliff knew about chariots. In the first of her four Roman books, The Eagle of the Ninth (1954), her young hero, the centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila, politely suggests to his British friend Cradoc that the British are all charioteers. Cradoc replies (accurately): ‘The British can all drive after a fashion; not every one is a charioteer.’ Marcus, however, is the real thing, the best in his Legion. Elegantly he slaloms Cradoc’s four strong little black stallions through planted spears, and then, reaching open land, he gives them their heads and they are off, at full gallop.

Hands off the Handlebars

Hands off the Handlebars

Throughout his work – James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), Fantastic Mr Fox (1970), Danny, The Champion of the World (1975), The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982) and more – Dahl is firmly on the side of the child, whose world is generally populated by adult grotesques, full of cruelty, unkindness and absurd demands. In Boy, we can see where these creatures come from.

Winning on Points

Winning on Points

The first book I ever bought for myself was Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. I’ve bought thousands more books since, but Ballet Shoes is still a very special favourite. It hasn’t been out of print since it was published in 1936. I recently treated myself to a first edition with its rare silver cover (so fragile it generally disintegrated within weeks) but my first copy was a Puffin paperback.

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Lost in the Fens

Should you really never judge a book by its cover? Had I gone along with that dictum years ago I would not have happened upon Edmund Crispin. Shameful though it is to admit it, I was attracted not by the name of the author – unknown to me – but by a Penguin Crime jacket. Its green and cream design caught my eye at an Amnesty International book sale in the church opposite our house. Our dining-room had recently been redecorated, and I judged Frequent Hearses would, suitably displayed, tone with the colour scheme.

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At War with Churchill

At War with Churchill

The date is 28 September 1939. The author cannot know that what he will record in this 15-shilling notebook – and the many that follow it over the next six years – will become an astonishing first-hand account of Britain’s darkest hours, and a vivid, often harrowing portrait of one of its greatest leaders. For this is an extraordinary soldier, General Sir Alan Brooke, later Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, destined to become Churchill’s right-hand man as head of the British armed forces, and broker of the Grand Alliance with Roosevelt and Stalin. Yet despite the pivotal role he played, his name is still comparatively little known.

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The Twilight Hour

The Twilight Hour

Davidson’s book offers us a series of intense, lyrical and surprisingly moving meditations on landscapes, buildings and mythical settings, as seen at the close of day through the eyes of painters and writers. The Last of the Light is a spellbinding exploration of that haunted moment of transition, either on some particular evening or in the history of the civilizations through which Davidson effortlessly roams. Again and again we find ourselves confronting the familiar with fresh eyes, noticing the tiny but significant details that he brings to the fore and quickens into life.

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Hitting the Nail on the Head

Hitting the Nail on the Head

1. Jan Struther, the well-known and successful writer, lecturer, radio performer etc. (with a subdivision called Jan Struther, the much-too-little-known and really pretty terrific serious poet whose depth and brilliance will only really be appreciated by a discerning literary public after she is dead!) That ‘item no. 1’ was the first on a list concocted by my grandmother Jan Struther in a letter to her brother Douglas in 1951.

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Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 63, Louise O’Hara, ‘Wandering by the Light of the Moon’

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 63, Louise O’Hara, ‘Wandering by the Light of the Moon’

Louise O’Hara is a professional mixed media artist based in the heart of Cheshire. Her style has been described as quintessentially English, romantic and nostalgic. The work she produces is influenced by tactile aged surfaces such as peeling paint on walls and fabrics that are threadbare but which are laden with memories.

The Eagle of the Ninth | The dark hour before the dawn

The Eagle of the Ninth | The dark hour before the dawn

‘The best kind of historical fiction, far too good to be limited to children’s bookshelves’ We are pleased to announce the publication of two new titles in the Slightly Foxed Cubs series of highly collectable classic children’s books, The Eagle of the Ninth and The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff.

The Eagle of the Ninth | The dark hour before the dawn . . .

The Eagle of the Ninth | The dark hour before the dawn . . .

Sometime about the year AD 117, the Ninth Legion, which was stationed at Eburacum where York now stands, marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again.

The Roman Novels by Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920‒92) wrote three of her four great historical novels for children set during the last years of the Roman occupation of Britain – The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers (winner of the Carnegie Medal) – between 1954 and 1959, and the fourth, Frontier Wolf, which comes third in the chronological story, in 1980. Slightly Foxed is now reissuing all four of the Roman novels, with their original illustrations, in a limited, numbered edition.

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