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Articles & Extracts

Troublesome Ghosts

Troublesome Ghosts

Every morning, when the dog drags me out, we take the Church Walk behind the shops, through a wrought-iron gateway into the churchyard, passing the old half-timbered Guildhall. There, on a rock sticking out of a shrub border, is a bronze plaque of a woman with an odd gaze, her hair done up in a bun, against a background of distant hills. The plaque is a brand: Much Wenlock and this part of south-west Shropshire have become Mary Webb Country.

SF magazine subscribers only

Up There on a Visit

It was the custom then, in the late ’70s, and still is for all I know, for editors to saunter forth from their ivory towers and visit bookshops with the reps, experience life at the sharp end of the book trade and so on. It was called being ‘on the road’ but tended to concentrate on large centres of population easily reached from London. Nothing could disguise the jittery bonhomie of the unfortunate rep chosen for this honour, or the loathing in the eyes of the bookseller forced to undergo ordeal by young puppy on top of the usual ordeal by rep.

SF magazine subscribers only

Kindred Spirits

Kindred Spirits

Do you treasure ancient paperbacks, spines gone, pages browning, brittle and crumbling, held together (or not quite) with perished elastic bands, simply because you also treasure the memories they evoke as much by their physical appearance as by their contents?

Slightly Foxed Issue 1: From the Editors

Welcome to the first issue of Slightly Foxed, the magazine for adventurous readers – people who want to explore beyond the familiar territory of the national review pages and magazines, and who are interested in books that last rather than those that are simply fashionable. We plan to bring you, each quarter, a selection of books that have passed the test of time, that have excited, fascinated or influenced our contributors, and to which they return for pleasure, comfort or escape; the kind of books that sell steadily and quietly to those who know about them, but are no longer to be found on the review pages or sometimes even on the bookshop shelves.

- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

From the editors

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