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20210219095018 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 19 February 2021

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 19 February 2021

Gail Pirkis & Anna Kirk

Although I’m not seeing Hattie and Jess in person at the moment (we’re in the office one at a time for now), we’re making our presence known to each other, leaving books we’ve enjoyed on desks to be discovered the next morning. Sometimes a bag of crisps or bar of chocolate accompanies the book, or, during an especially frantic week, a bottle of wine, but the books are the main thing. A peril – and perk – of ordering in books for subscribers is that we inevitably order some for ourselves. Just a couple of recent book swaps have included In the Kitchen, a collection of food-writing recommended by Jess and delicious to dip into, and Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat, an unusual and beautiful book I felt compelled to press upon the others and then include in our forthcoming Spring Readers’ Catalogue.

20210122091024 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 22 January 2021

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 22 January 2021

Gail Pirkis & Steph Allen

Lovely though Christmas is, I must admit I also enjoy January. There’s something very satisfying about taking down the Christmas tree, tidying the house, finishing all the leftovers in the larder, putting up a calendar for the new year, opening a fresh diary and generally taking stock before spring arrives. This year, during our third lockdown, these small routines seem more important than ever. There’s an austere beauty too in the winter landscape. The sheep have cropped the grass to reveal every dip and curve in the land, the bracken has died back and the trees, now without even their tattered autumn leaves, have become living sculptures of twisted branches reaching into the sky. The winter light, low as dusk approaches, transforms the landscape and spotlights here a ridge, there a cleft in the valley.

20201222094522 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 22 December 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 22 December 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

The first wave of Christmas cards has started to arrive: ‘Hope you’re staying safe’; ‘All quiet here – only one case in the village’. News of weddings postponed, of holidays cancelled, but also of new babies, of violin exams passed with distinction, of Zoom book groups and lockdown exercise sessions. The end of the kitchen table is piled with packs of Christmas cards still waiting to be sent, but this year there’s a terrible hitch. We can’t find our address book, which has our whole lives in it.

20201127095328 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 27 November 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 27 November 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

I’ve always loved the small room I work in. It’s snug and light and looks out into the branches of a big sycamore in the next-door garden. It’s felt like a haven, a place where I can shut the door, settle down and quietly get on with things. Until now, that is. The more lockdown continues and the more pressingly my little room demands my presence, the more hostile I feel to it. It’s like an old friend who’s suddenly become unreasonably demanding. That’s because it’s where my computer is and now most essentials of life seem to have gone online – food, clothes and present shopping, work meetings, events, doctor’s appointments, friendly drinks – it’s all become virtual.

20201114114922 Slightly Foxed Issue 68

Slightly Foxed Issue 68: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

After probably the strangest year that most of us have ever experienced, London is starting to feel more familiar. There are lighted office windows around Hoxton Square, and there’s traffic again in Old Street, now including shoals of bikes, some darting in and out of the cars and vans like minnows, some wobbling dangerously. There are a lot of new and inexperienced bike riders in London these days, and whether you’re walking or driving you have to look out. At Slightly Foxed the office is buzzing, and readers and contributors have been active too, putting pen to paper, or rather finger to key, to give the two of us plenty to read after lockdown. Sadly we had to cancel Readers’ Day this year, but we’ve booked the Art Workers’ Guild for 6 November 2021, and we look forward very much to seeing you there.

20201023090055 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 23 October 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 23 October 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

A Brief Pageant of English Verse

I won’t arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
I’ll sanitize the doorknob and make a cup of tea.
I won’t go down to the sea again; I won’t go out at all,
I’ll wander lonely as a cloud from the kitchen to the hall . . .

20200901163256 Slightly Foxed Issue 67

Slightly Foxed Issue 67: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

There’s a fox’s earth on the cover of this issue, but thanks in large part to you, this Fox has far from gone to earth. We’ve loved receiving your encouraging messages and emails during this difficult year, and you’ve pulled out all the stops with extra purchases, subscriptions and renewals. ‘I read Slightly Foxed in bed with my morning tea as an antidote to the news,’ writes N. Reifler. Now it’s autumn, and we’re happy to say that our publishing programme is up and running, with a great deal to look forward to.

20200918093036 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 18 September 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 18 September 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Last Thursday was a red-letter day for me because it was that now rare thing, a real letter day. Among the catalogues, bills and offers to sell the house shoved through the letterbox was an envelope addressed in the distinctive handwriting of an old friend. For many years now, widowed and against all advice, she has lived alone in a slightly dilapidated house in a remote part of rural France, reading and rereading her favourite books, ruled over with an ‘iron paw’ by her dog and cat and subsisting on very little money. She sees a few local friends, but nowadays, she says, she tends more to reclusiveness, quoting Colin Dexter’s verdict on Inspector Morse: ‘He was somewhat of a loner by temperament – because though never wholly happy when he was alone he was usually slightly more miserable when with other people.’

20200821093530 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 21 August 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 21 August 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s true that I’m writing this in Highbury, but mentally I’m in Suffolk. We came back yesterday from a week’s family holiday, and after months of being confined to London and seeing very little of our grandchildren, I’m finding it hard to make the transition. In my mind’s eye I’m still on the harbourside at Walberswick grasping the back of my 7-year-old grandson’s T-shirt as he crouches above the water, his small body tense with excitement as he strains over the edge to see if there’s anything in the net he’s dangling into the murky depths below. ‘Shall I pull it up now?’ ‘Well, wait a little bit, you’ve only just looked.’ ‘But there’s something in it. I know there is. I can see it!’ We peer down. Something seems to be moving, and yes! Oh joy! ‘Granny, it’s a crab! It’s huge. It’s gigantic. Quick, come and look!’

20200724093012 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 24 July 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 24 July 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

On Sunday afternoon we set out for a walk in what is to me one of the strangest green spaces in this part of London, Abney Park Cemetery. Hidden behind the chic little boutiques and coffee shops of Stoke Newington Church Street, its 30-acre site originally formed part of the grounds of Fleetwood House and Abney House, both built in the 1600s and now demolished, one of which was lived in from 1734 until his death in 1748 by the preacher and hymn writer Isaac Watts.

20200630091014 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 30 June 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 30 June 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

My admission in an earlier diary that, whereas my husband loves our nearby park, to me it just feels like pretend countryside, produced one shocked email and several hurt comments from local friends. Our contributor Roger Hudson (compiler, too, of An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, which we’ll be publishing in September) told me that he had once felt the same way about Kensington Gardens, but had made a ‘conscious decision to abandon comparison with the real country of his childhood’. He was helped in this, he said, by the facts that parts of Kensington Gardens still felt rather like the parkland of a country seat, so providing a kind of transitional experience, not quite town and not quite country, and he advised me to strike out away from the joggers and dog-walkers into the wilder areas.

20200623093332 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 23 June 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 23 June 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

There was a time when we toyed with the idea of doing a holiday house-swap. Friends and acquaintances returned with exciting accounts of economical summers spent in other people’s houses, and holiday company brochures were full of tempting descriptions and heartfelt praise from customers who had formed lifelong friendships with other families in faraway places, getting to know the local community and going back year after year.

20200616103049 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 16 June 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 16 June 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

With the latest easing of travel restrictions, there’s a lot of talk of public transport and who should use it, which in London mainly means the tube. When we first moved here in the early 1970s the Victoria Line from Walthamstow to Brixton via Highbury and Islington had only recently been built, and this brought with it the first of the estate agents who arrived to cash in on an area full of elderly residents easily persuaded to move out of their crumbling Georgian and Victorian properties and sell them to people like us.

20200609101541 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 9 June 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 9 June 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

On Friday evening I had just settled comfortably into that delicious moment between waking and sleeping when there was a loud crash from the floor above my head. My first thought was that my husband had fallen over something, but since there was no cry for help I decided no action was required. After a moment or two of silence, however, sounds of banging from above began again. My second thought was that my husband might now be unable to speak and was banging on the floor to attract my attention, but he’s a hardy sort, and ashamed as I am to admit it, after only a moment’s hesitation I snuggled down again and pulled the bedclothes over my head.

20200602101505 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 2 June 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 2 June 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

This week we’ve been waking up to some of those blue and gold mornings that in my case bring on thoughts of escape and waves of nostalgia, not for hot exotic places, but for the English beaches that stay in your memory for ever if you were lucky enough to know them as a child. Growing up by the sea in Devon, spending all day on the beach (entirely unsupervised) or out in a fishing boat, I genuinely couldn’t imagine what people who didn’t live by the sea did all day. I adored Arthur Ransome’s books (see SF no. 18) but we weren’t Swallows and Amazons children, sailing and building campfires and being self-sufficient. Those kinds of summers were for the children who holidayed down the coast at posher places like Salcombe. For us the sea and the beach were facts of life, places where people earned their living, but they were magical too.

20200601144114 Slightly Foxed Issue 66

Slightly Foxed Issue 66: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

As we write this, towards the end of April, we are still in total lockdown because of the coronavirus. In these difficult times, we’d like to say how very touched we’ve been by all the extra efforts you’ve been making to support us, writing to us, extending your subscriptions and buying more books. It’s something we’ll never forget.

20200104104451 Self-isolating Fox

Coronavirus News

A message to readers

We are now safely able to dispatch orders for Slightly Foxed books and goods three days a week. Please note that all orders will take a little longer to be dispatched than usual.

We are so grateful that orders are coming in as they help our small business to keep going, and we value your continued support.

20200526100013 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 26 May 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 26 May 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

One benefit of the lockdown is that we’ve begun to explore our local neighbourhood in a way we hadn’t done before. Roads that we previously hurried down on our way to somewhere else have suddenly come into focus, revealing bits of local history we hadn’t known about.

20200519103006 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 19 May 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 19 May 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Every Thursday now at 8 p.m. in London and across the country, we stand on our doorsteps and clap and bang saucepans as a thank-you to the NHS nurses and doctors and all the other workers who put their lives on the line for us every day and night of the week. On 12 May it was, appropriately, International Nurses Day, which is celebrated on Florence Nightingale’s birthday (her 200th this year), and hearing her mentioned on various radio programmes, I took down Cecil Woodham-Smith’s biography, published in 1950, and read the first few chapters.

20200512100057 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 12 May 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 12 May 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Though I have now just about learned how to make video calls from my smartphone, as mentioned in an earlier diary, the practical and technical challenges of the lockdown continue. A friend emailed me recently with the link to a mask-making tutorial on YouTube. We’re all going to have to wear masks and there are likely to be shortages, so why not start stitching now, she suggested. I could make them in different colours for the whole family, including fun ones for the grandchildren. I watched as deft fingers cut, tacked, sewed and turned bits inside out but couldn’t really make sense of it all and decided to leave it for another day.

20200505104537 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 5 May 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 5 May 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

A highly sensitive translator friend of ours once told us, quite seriously, that he couldn’t read in a room where there were other books. Their presence was too distracting, too powerful. We sniggered rather unkindly at the time, but this week, wandering round the bookshelves and feeling somewhat cut-off and unreal in the dim light of a wet afternoon, I felt acutely the presence of authors I’d once been passionately attached to and hadn’t thought of for a long time, especially the diarists, nestling in the ‘biography’ section in the spare room.

20200428090053 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 28 April 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 28 April 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

When the lockdown first began and we were instructed to leave the house only for an hour’s regular exercise we started going for an early evening walk in our local park. My husband loves Clissold Park. Over the years he’s run round it, watched birds in it, observed the trees in their various seasons, pushed our daughter on the swings, and played football with our grandchildren. He feels sentimental about it, and it is a lovely park. Like a lot of London parks it was once attached to a private house, and that has now become an upmarket café where yummy mummies sit chatting in the sun with their expensive buggies beside them, and media dads queue up for posh ice creams while speaking amusingly on the phone to other media dads.

20200421090032 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 21 April 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 21 April 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

There’s an old Victorian sofa in the bay window of our bedroom that we bought in a junk shop in Norfolk many years ago. It’s pretty battered now, the pale green loose cover is somewhat torn despite my efforts to mend it and some of the springs have gone. It really should be reupholstered but, apart from the expense, I’m unwilling. It feels like an old friend who’s seen me through various periods of my life and I don’t want to change it by giving it a facelift. The ends let down so you can put your feet up, and there’s a nice comfortable depression in the seat where your bottom goes. That’s where I’ve been reading in the afternoons for the past few weeks.

20200410110504 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 10 April 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 10 April 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

The room where I work – to call it ‘my study’ sounds too grand somehow and ‘my office’ feels too businesslike – is almost at the top of the house and faces on to the garden. Sitting at my desk I look out into the branches of a giant sycamore where grey squirrels race up and down, but if I stand up I can look down into our own small garden, and the others in the terrace stretching away in a sort of wedge shape, getting longer as they go. In some of them the flowering cherry trees are out (‘loveliest of trees’ as Housman called the woodland cherries), and the big hawthorn at the bottom of our garden, which hides the worst of the red-brick care home over the wall, is just coming into bud. Through the arch in the entrance to the care home I can usually see cars moving along Highbury New Park, but there are almost none today. The schools are open only to the children of front-line workers now, and I can hear the little girls next door calling to one another in the garden.

20200403120030 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 3 April 2020

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 3 April 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s no secret that neither Gail nor I are entirely comfortable in the digital world, but stuck at home as we are I’m having to try to get to grips with all the untapped possibilities of my smartphone. I’m finding this something of a challenge as my communications are usually limited to calls of the ‘I’m on the bus now and should be back about 6.30’ variety. This week our kind neighbour joined me up to the street’s WhatsApp group and shortly after I found I was broadcasting the conversation I’d had with my husband at breakfast to the entire street and didn’t know how to stop it. This has unnerved me, but I’m told the world is full of puzzled children looking at pictures of disembodied knees and hands as grandparents attempt to have a conversation with them on FaceTime or Skype. 

20040301170439 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 1, Christopher Corr, ‘Slightly Foxed’ Christopher Corr is a painter and illustrator based in London. He has a strong interest in architecture, and his work is often inspired by his extensive travels to other cities. Colour is very important in his paintings, which are done on hand-made Indian and Italian paper. www.christophercorr.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 1: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

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.

20040601165758 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 2, Tsugumi Ota, ‘Bathers’ Tsugumi Ota is a Japanese artist based in London. Her main media are stone and marble sculptures, woodcuts and drawings. Often inspired by myths, poems and classical writings, Tsugumi’s images are striking and original.

Slightly Foxed Issue 2: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Slightly Foxed was officially launched on 11 March at Daunt Books in Marylebone High Street, w1. Daunt’s was a perfect setting, embodying everything you would hope for in a bookshop – helpful, well-informed staff, a wide and well-ordered selection of books, quick service, even polished wood panelling. It was a pleasure to see all the people who have helped to make Slightly Foxed a reality gathered together to wish it well.

20040901164229 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 3, Jonny Hannah, ‘Foxed Brand Fireworks’ Born and bred in the kingdom of Fife, Jonny Hannah now works as an illustrator in Southampton, but remembers occasionally to have the odd whisky. He publishes his own limited-edition books and posters with the Cakes & Ale Press, a cottage industry of some repute. His obsessions include Hank Williams and Rocket Man, and he sometimes wears co-respondent shoes.

Slightly Foxed Issue 3: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Since Slightly Foxed was launched, its office has been comfortably sited in Canonbury, a quiet part of North London with leafy roads and literary associations: George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Louis MacNeice and Nancy Mitford are just a few of the writers who have lived in its Georgian and early Victorian houses – usually during periods when they were somewhat down on their luck. Since then Canonbury has come up in the world, but there are still many writers living nearby.

20041201172027 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 4, Ronald Searle, ‘Foxed throughout’ Reproduced by kind permission of the artist and The Sayle Literary Agency, and taken from the book Slightly Foxed – But Still Desirable: Ronald Searle’s Wicked World of Book Collecting.

Slightly Foxed Issue 4: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Slightly Foxed has now settled comfortably into Clerkenwell. The only drawback of the new office is the spectacular view – we spend far too much time watching the clouds, which at this time of year race over the dome of St Paul’s at a sometimes alarming rate. (If you’d like to come and visit – and don’t mind aged dogs – you’d be most welcome.) We haven’t spotted any Christmas lights going up yet, but it can’t be long.

20050301170530 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 5, Linda Scott, ‘Slightly Foxed’ An established illustrator, Linda Scott has enjoyed working for a variety of clients since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1998. She also teaches at the London University of Arts and at Falmouth College of Arts.

Slightly Foxed Issue 5: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Slightly Foxed celebrates its first birthday this month, and we send special thanks and good wishes to our original subscribers who so sportingly took us on trust a year ago. We’re absolutely delighted that so many of you have decided to re-subscribe – a good number for two years. If you know of anyone who just hasn’t got round to it yet, it’s still not too late, and our offer of a reduction on a two-year subscription still stands (if you’re feeling generous, of course, you could always give them a gift subscription). And for anyone who missed the early issues and would like to complete the set, a limited number of back issues are still available.

20050601165832 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 6, Ben McLaughlin, ‘Shadow Fox’ Ben McLaughlin was born in London in 1969, studied at Central St Martin’s School of Art and has been exhibited for the past seven years by Wilson Stephens Fine Art. His work is in both private and corporate collections in Britain, Europe, the USA and the Far East. His paintings can be viewed on www.wilsonstephens.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 6: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s a hopeful time of year. The stalwart London plane trees have unfurled their leaves, and the sun is rising higher behind the City domes, towers and spires that we can see from our now not-so-new office windows. City-dwellers are beginning, as Hardy said, to ‘dream of the south and west’, and we hope that the travellers among you, armchair and otherwise, will enjoy Barnaby Rogerson’s piece on travel writing on p.11.

20050901160605 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 7, Hannah Firmin, ‘Autumn’ Since leaving the Royal College of Art Hannah has worked as a freelance illustrator and printmaker for a wide range of clients. In 2004, her cover for Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was named ‘Book Cover of the Year’ at the British Book Awards. More of her work can be seen at: www.hannahfirmin.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 7: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Sadly, just as we were celebrating the arrival of the summer issue, we lost a member of our team. On 15 June, Jennings the cocker spaniel died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 13. We miss him greatly. He was in on the earliest beginnings of Slightly Foxed, always beside us at meetings to remind us with a yawn or a discreet whine that things had gone on too long, always good-humoured and enthusiastic. He bore his increasing deafness and loss of sight without irritability, but it became obvious this year that he was failing. His brother Pugwash, by contrast, is in rude health and, after a decent period of mourning, is now enjoying his position as top and only dog. But he lacks Jennings’s subtlety.

20051201155654 over Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 8, Sue Macartney-Snape, ‘Slightly Foxed’ Sue Macartney-Snape was born in Tanganyika, educated in Australia and now lives in London. She has had several sell-out exhibitions of her work and has been acclaimed as the Wodehouse of Art. Prints of her work are available from SMS Editions, tel: 01256 884043.

Slightly Foxed Issue 8: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s Christmas again – our second, which seems cause for celebration in itself, especially as subscriptions are holding steady and even (dare we say it) creeping up. We raise a celebratory glass both to those of you who have stuck with us, as the publisher Anthony Blond once said, through thin and thin, and to those of you who have come on board more recently. Thank you for all your letters of appreciation and encouragement. Slightly Foxed subscribers do seem a most convivial group of people – humorous, enthusiastic, impatient of pomposity, and with a telling, even poetic, turn of phrase (‘Ten minutes ago, out of the Atlantic wind, came the postman carrying Slightly Foxed ’ begins a recent e-mail from a subscriber in Donegal).

20060301154707 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 9, Emma McClure, ‘Chickens’ Emma McClure trained as a painter at Winchester and Chelsea Schools of Art and now lives and works in London. She exhibits regularly and has had several successful one-person exhibitions at the Cadogan Contemporary Gallery. She can be contacted on: 07748 408937 or emmamcclure@hotmail.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 9: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

When we mentioned last year that we were moving to a new office, with spectacular views over St Paul’s, we’re not sure what image this will have conjured up. One of those atmospheric, old-fashioned magazine offices perhaps, heaped with books and unread submissions, where coffee was made with a kettle rather than a machine and the switchboard was manned by a chirpy character who’d been there for decades, recognized callers’ voices and always knew where everyone was.

20060601154539 Refreshment, detail, Toni McGreachan - Slightly Foxed Issue 10

Slightly Foxed Issue 10: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

At the end of February we travelled north through sleet and snow to see the spring issue of Slightly Foxed coming off the press. As many of you will know, Slightly Foxed is printed by the friendly firm of Smith Settle in Otley, and we and twenty or so of our Yorkshire subscribers spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon seeing round the works – a tour which was followed by a convivial get-together over cake and a glass of Madeira.

20060901151226 Cover artwork, John Holder, with apologies to Gainsborough - Slightly Foxed Issue 11

Slightly Foxed Issue 11: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s one of those pleasant moments when nothing very particular is happening in the office. Pugwash the cocker spaniel is snoring in the late summer sunshine by the terrace window, a splendid helper is stuffing envelopes on the kitchen table, and from time to time the phone rings with a request for a slipcase or a subscription. Or it may be one of you just ringing in for a chat, which is always delightful. It’s a golden, meditative time, when the summer’s nearly over and the madness of the Christmas season hasn’t begun.

20061201115148 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 12, John Caple, ‘Old Jack Frost the Almanac Seller’ John Caple lives and paints in the Mendips in North Somerset. He exhibits regularly with the John Martin Gallery, London and his work can be seen on the gallery’s website www.jmlondon.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 12: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Well, it’s Christmas again. We’re glad to report that as the year ends Slightly Foxed is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with subscriptions coming in, the direct debit system up and running, and an excellent response to our modest forays into merchandizing.

20070301113911 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 13, Susan Leiper, ‘Spring Garden’ Susie Leiper is a freelance calligrapher in Edinburgh. Oriental, especially Chinese, art influences most of her work: the poetry on the cover is by the 20th-century Chinese poet Mu Dan, and the garden is inspired by Japanese paste-resist textiles. Susie is a Fellow of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators.

Slightly Foxed Issue 13: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Emerging from the miasma of winter colds and flu that hung over the office – even Pugwash was under the weather – we were immensely cheered by the splendid selection of Christmas cards you sent us, many of them fox-related. We enjoy all your letters and postcards too. Thank you so much. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: our contact with you, our subscribers, is one of the great pleasures of life at Slightly Foxed.

20070601113155 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 14, Simon Dorrell, ‘Foxgloves’ Simon Dorrell is a freelance illustrator, principally of books and periodicals; a painter of landscapes and interiors in oils and in watercolour; a designer of gardens in the Arts & Crafts tradition; and art editor and co-publisher of the quarterly journal Hortus: www.hortus.co.uk

Slightly Foxed Issue 14: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

No doubt you’ve noticed, as we have, how smartly the press has jumped on to the ecological bandwagon. Over the past twelve months we’ve received special ‘green’ issues of various magazines, encouraging us to inspect our supermarket fruit and veg for country of origin, buy a wormery and avoid flying if at all possible.

20070901112954 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 15, Shazia Mahmood, ‘Loch Eishort ’ Shazia Mahmood uses a variety of tools, to create organic and unplanned images. She often paints landscapes while on location. More of her work can be found at www.shaziamahmood.com.

Slightly Foxed Issue 15: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Time and tide, as they say, wait for no man, and the past few months have seen some significant changes in the office of Slightly Foxed.

Our marketing manager Kathleen, who did wonderful work in getting copies of SF into bookshops when we were starting out, has just moved, with her two small children and her designer husband James (who draws the foxes which often appear on our covers), to become Events Manager at Robert Topping’s new bookshop in Bath. We miss her greatly, but we keep in close touch (anyone who’s ever been part of Slightly Foxed still continues, somehow, to be ‘on the strength’) and we’ll be launching our Winter issue at the Bath bookshop.

20071201104414 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 16, Posy Simmonds, ‘Fireside Reading’ Posy Simmonds lives and works in London. Her graphic novel Tamara Drewe was published in November 2009 and in 2010 the story was adapted as a feature film.

Slightly Foxed Issue 16: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

With mist obscuring the dome of St Paul’s and winter closing in, it seems a long time since we were driving through lush, sunlit Devon lanes to the launch of the Autumn issue at the (tiny) Big Red Sofa bookshop in Chagford, right on the edge of Dartmoor. As always it was a convivial get-together, with subscribers coming from as far away as Exmouth, and keen interest taken from the bookshop regulars in Slightly Foxed. This beautiful area, where moor and countryside meet, is home territory to Gail. Her family have long connections with it, and our visit to Devon was combined with a splendid housewarming for the eco-friendly house that she and her husband have dreamed about for years and which is now finally finished, down to the last slab of granite and foot of grass roof. However, don’t panic. Gail, like the rest of us, is still based in London, and SF continues exactly as before.

20080301103529 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 17, James Nunn, ‘with apologies to Eric Ravilious ’ James Nunn burst on to the illustration scene with the panda on Lynne Truss’s bestselling Eats, Shoots & Leaves. He can also draw foxes and elephants, all of which can be seen at www.jamesnunn.co.uk

Slightly Foxed Issue 17: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Well, Spring again, and with it the start of a fresh venture. As we mentioned in the last issue, for some time now we’ve been becoming increasingly aware of the number of excellent books that have been allowed to slip out of print – in particular those fascinating memoirs and personal accounts that bring alive a particular moment or place, that allow you into someone else’s world and make you feel you have actually known the writer. Often these books light up a period in a way that no history book can. So it seemed to us to make sense to reprint some of them. From now on with each issue of Slightly Foxed we’ll be offering a new title, with a piece to introduce it in the issue itself.

20080601102108 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 18, Cyril Edward Power, ‘The Eight’ Linocut by Cyril Edward Power (1872–1951), reproduced courtesy of the Estate of Cyril Edward Power and the Redfern Gallery.

Slightly Foxed Issue 18: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

One of the things we’ve learned during the four plus years we’ve been going is that you, our subscribers, are the kind of people who like to keep in touch. You write to us (such heart-warming letters); if you happen to be in London you visit (you’re always welcome – apart from the pleasure of seeing you, it gives us an excuse to drag ourselves away from the computer); and we often enjoy a chat with those of you who phone us when the time comes to renew.

20080901100810 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 19, ‘Vulpes Major’ contributor to Slightly Foxed but is officially retired and doesn’t wish to be promoted . . .

Slightly Foxed Issue 19: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

For some months now, at our regular get-togethers, the five of us have been sitting round the table, chewing our pens and agonizing over the question: Is it time to put the price of Slightly Foxed up? We’ve held it for nearly five years – since we started in fact – and during that time the cost of postage has risen four times and the price of paper has risen twice, not to mention all the usual running costs of the office. (Even Pugwash’s running costs have risen steeply as he’s a very wobbly old dog now, rather like Thurber’s dog Muggs, who would wander unnervingly about ‘like Hamlet following his father’s ghost’.) Needless to say, we’ve done everything we can to keep costs down – including no staff pay-rises – but those who advise us on our finances have been murmuring with ever-growing insistence about the need to increase our price and urging us to do so.

20081201160502 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 20, Susan Brown, ‘St Paul’s’ Susan Brown’s studies of European cities are an essay in investigating and capturing ‘spirit of place’, an exploration of the creative relationship between peoples and buildings which reflects the triumphs, and sometimes the pitfalls, of European civilization: www.susanbrownstudio.co.uk

Slightly Foxed Issue 20: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

This issue marks a bit of a celebration for us – Slightly Foxed’s fifth we birthday. It seems no time ago – certainly not twenty issues – that we we’re sitting round the kitchen table, arguing about a title, discussing printers and finances and page designs and paper thicknesses, and how to get the word out about a new quarterly that — let’s be frank  — a lot of people felt couldn’t possibly work.

20090301154532 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 21, Francis Farmar, ‘Fox and Steam Train Francis Farmer describes himself as a painter of places. His work gives contemporary flavour to ‘prospect’ pictures, which bend and stretch the landscape it in order to describe more than can be seen from a single earth-bound viewpoint. www.francisfarmar.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 21: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s bitterly cold today – frost on the London roofs, and the spires of the City churches rising sharp and white against an ice-blue sky. For a lot of us it feels internally pretty cold too. Talk in the news of worse economic times to come, global warming, wars across the world. One could get pretty depressed . . .

20090601153557 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 22, Simon Laurie, ‘Greek Boat’: Simon Laurie trained at the Glasgow School of Art and is a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Watercolourists and the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. He has won many awards and his work is in a number of public collections.

Slightly Foxed Issue 22: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

The Slightly Foxed office hasn’t changed much over the years, apart from the fact that, as we’ve already mentioned, it’s got more crowded, what with the increasing number of back issues and the new Slightly Foxed Editions. This is of course especially true when we’ve just had a delivery from our printers, Smith Settle, which arrives via their driver, Brian, who sets off from Yorkshire in the dark hours and arrives in London in time for an early cup of tea.

20090901131715 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 23, Gary Bunt, ‘Home’ Gary Bunt is represented by the Portland Gallery, 8 Bennet Street, London SW1A 1uRP. Gary’s work can also be seen on the gallery’s website: www.portlandgallery.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 23: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

The summer seems to have flown by, with nothing more dramatic to report from the Slightly Foxed office than the theft of Jennie’s bike (two sturdy locks and all – that’s London for you) and the small dramas surrounding the presence of Chudleigh, our now not-so-new puppy who, though growing up fast, is still inclined to exercise his jaws on paper, pens, clothing, handbags and upholstery.

20091201130938 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 24, Quentin Blake, ‘Slightly Foxed’ Quentin Blake has drawn ever since he can remember. Now in his seventies he is recognized, according to the Guardian, as a ‘national institution’.

Slightly Foxed Issue 24: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Well. We’re sitting here quivering slightly because we’ve done something rather rash. We’ve bought a second-hand bookshop. Actually, we’re pretty excited about it. Like many good things, it came to us in a serendipitous way. Not many months ago word reached us that Nick Dennys, the owner of the Gloucester Road Bookshop (123 Gloucester Road, London SW7) was looking for someone sympathetic to buy the business. The bearer of the news wondered if we might be interested.

20100301130822 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 25, Simon Palmer, ‘Braithwaite Lane’ (detail) Simon Palmer’s watercolours have been widely exhibited in one-man and group exhibitions for thirty years. More of his work can be seen at www.jhwfineart.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 25: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Now the Christmas rush is over and spring is in the air, it’s all paint charts and carpet samples at Slightly Foxed. The bookshop facelift is under way, and after dealing with urgent matters like leaks and cracks – it’s an old building and the storeroom and office space run under the pavement, with all that that implies – we’re on to the fun part now. We’re (slightly) changing the name to ‘Slightly Foxed on Gloucester Road’ – look out for the foxy sign! In corporate-speak it would probably be called ‘rebranding’, but as you know, we’re anything but corporate, and in any case we don’t want to change the shop’s essential welcoming character, which its regulars value so much.

20100601124312 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 26, Leon Morrocco, ‘Blue Temple, Madurai’ Leon Morrocco’s work can be found in many notable public and private collections, including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Scottish Arts Council, the Leeds Art Gallery, the Nuffield Foundation and the Queensland Art Gallery. For more information contact the John Martin Gallery: www.jmlondon.com ..

Slightly Foxed Issue 26: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Our bookshop is truly up and running now under its new banner ‘Slightly Foxed on Gloucester Road’. Renovations have been modest – fresh paint, new carpet, some moveable shelving to allow us to create space for launch parties and events and, as a finishing touch, a traditional pub-style hanging sign featuring the fox. Frankly, we’re so thrilled with it it’s hard for us to keep away, and we do hope that any of you visiting London will drop in there too, to have a browse and meet Tony and the rest of the staff. You’ll find a bookshop leaflet with more details in this issue.

20100901122956 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 27, Angie Lewin, ‘Midnight Garden’ Angie Lewin studied printmaking at Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design and at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. Her limited-edition linocut, wood-engraving, lithograph and screen prints are inspired by skeletal plant forms seen against the sea and sky of North Norfolk and the Scottish Highlands. Her work can be seen at www.angielewin.co.uk

Slightly Foxed Issue 27: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Autumn. Season of mists . . . Chudleigh the office dog is getting his winter coat and we’re thinking of turning on the heating. Traditionally autumn is also one of the busiest publishing seasons when firms launch their ‘big’ books in time for the Christmas market, and review pages and bookshop displays expand.

20101201121953 Downs in Winter, wood-engraving, Howard Phipps - Slightly Foxed Issue 28

Slightly Foxed Issue 28: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Predictably perhaps, given the season, it’s all go here at Slightly Foxed, what with dispatching the new book bags (for which there’s been a gratifying demand – hurry while stocks last!), taking orders and sending off copies of the quarterly to new subscribers. Then, of course, there’s fulfilling requests for Slightly Foxed Editions, forwarding orders for slipcases (also very popular at this time of year), chatting on the phone to those of you who ring us with enquiries and suggestions (always welcome), not to mention all the stuffing and franking of envelopes that goes with a small business like ours.

20110301114510 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 29, Rebecca Campbell, ‘The Foragers’ Rebecca Campbell’s work has been described as ‘quintessentially English’ but is influenced by an eclectic source of material ranging from Indian Mogul miniatures and Persian textiles to medieval tapestries. She is represented by Jonathan Cooper, Park Walk Gallery, London: www.jonathancooper.co.uk

Slightly Foxed Issue 29: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

‘Spring, the sweet spring . . .’ The flower shop round the corner from Slightly Foxed is full of daffodils and hyacinths now, and from our window the City spires are standing out sharply against a pale blue sky. It feels as if everything is drawing breath after the long cold winter, and after a busy season we’re drawing breath too.

20110601111515 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 30, Emily Burningham, ‘Beach Huts’ Emily Burningham studied at Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design. Her design business was established in 2005 and now produces textiles and stationery. For more details and examples of her work visit www.emilyburningham.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 30: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

At this time of year, one can’t help noticing, the population of London changes. In the centre of town the buses and tubes are filled with overseas visitors and a Babel of foreign voices. But the narrow streets around us in Clerkenwell are strangely quiet, emptied of the crowds of workers who normally fill the local pubs and wine bars. It feels as if the clocks have gone back fifty years.

20110901110057 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 31, Robert Field, ‘White Moon’ Robert Field is a mosaicist whose work has appeared in many exhibitions in both Britain and France. He is also the author of a number of highly successful books which have been used for creative design and is a founder member of the British Association for Modern Mosaic (BAMM). His work can be seen at www.robert field.co.uk and at the Quarr Gallery: www.quarrart.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 31: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

There’s an invigorating sharpness in the air now, that frosty tang that brings with it thoughts of country walks, winter fires, evenings with a good book, the possibilities of a new term. And with that, we can’t resist straightaway mentioning Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School by Ysenda Maxtone Graham, the latest of our Slightly Foxed Editions (see p. 12), and possibly the funniest we’ve published so far.

20111201104149 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 32, Alice Tait, ‘Gloucester Road in the Snow’ Alice Tait graduated from Bath Spa University in 2002 and has been working as an illustrator ever since. Her clients have included, among others, The Times, Vogue and Waitrose. She also has her own online print shop at www.alicetaitshop.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 32: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

We’re sitting here in the office today, looking out at the leaden sky and wondering what next year’s going to be like. It’s rather a ruminative time we find, these last dark months before Christmas. One thing we do know, and that is that we’re extremely fortunate to have such a loyal body of subscribers. Some of you have been with us from the very beginning and have stuck with us ‘through thin and thin’ as the late publisher Anthony Blond once succinctly put it. We’d like you to know how grateful we are for your support – for your enthusiastic letters, encouraging phone calls, for spreading the word about Slightly Foxed – and of course for your renewed subscriptions.

20120301122709 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 33, Andy Lovell, ‘Creek’ For the last 20 years Andy Lovell has enjoyed a successful career as an illustrator. He has also had regular exhibitions of his printmaking, which has now become the main focus of his work. Drawing and painting from life form the starting-point for his images, which are then honed, simplified and transformed through silkscreen and monoprint. For further details see www.andylovell.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 33: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Now the year has turned and spring bulbs are bravely poking up in Clerkenwell window-boxes, we’re looking forward hopefully, as well as looking back thoughtfully over the events of the past year, which was quite an adventurous one for SF.

20120601121208 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 34, Ed Kluz, ‘The Silver Fox’ Ed Kluz was raised in the Yorkshire Dales and now lives in Brighton. He studied painting at the Winchester School of Art. He is a printmaker, illustrator, painter and designer, and finds inspiration in the historical objects, buildings, landscape and folklore of Britain. His eyes look into the past but his feet are firmly in the present: www.edkluz.co.uk

Slightly Foxed Issue 34: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Summer: the season of literary festivals, and Slightly Foxed is on the road. Our travels began early with an appearance, with author and contributor Penelope Lively, at the Words by the Water Festival in Cumbria in early March. Later that month we were at Christ Church, Oxford, for the first in what we hope will be a regular series of Slightly Foxed talks on forgotten authors at the Oxford Literary Festival. This year the philosopher and critic John Gray delivered a brilliant and entertaining talk on the work of John Cowper Powys, arising from the piece he wrote in our spring issue, neatly placing Powys as ‘an outdoor Proust’. On 14 June we’ll be launching the summer issue at Mr B’s cosy and very individual bookshop in Bath. And on Sunday 8 July we’ll be appearing at the West Meon Literary Festival in Hampshire with our contributor and prize-winning biographer Maggie Fergusson.

20120901093426

Slightly Foxed Issue 35: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

One of the most enjoyable things we do at Slightly Foxed – and there are many – is the commissioning of our covers. People often say they wish they could have reproductions of them, and so, in the spring, Alarys did some research, and we went off to visit a couple of small, environmentally friendly firms. One, in Lincolnshire, has now produced a lovely Slightly Foxed tea-towel for us in hard-wearing unbleached cotton decorated with one of our most cheerful spring covers, and the other, in Berkshire, a mixed pack of four fine-quality cards of the most popular ones – two with a spring and summer and two with a winter theme.

20121201091110

Slightly Foxed Issue 36: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It seems, as they say, only yesterday that we were telling you Slightly Foxed would be moving – in fact it was in 2004 that we moved from our original ‘office’ round the kitchen table of Gail’s home in Canonbury to the family’s new home in Clerkenwell. For eight years we roosted gratefully at Dickinson Court, gradually expanding, like the proverbial cuckoo, until we’d virtually taken over; turning the spare room into a post room, filling every available alcove with back issues and filing trays, and the hall with bicycles and parcels of books.

20130301090413 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 21, Francis Farmar, ‘Fox and Steam Train Francis Farmer describes himself as a painter of places. His work gives contemporary flavour to ‘prospect’ pictures, which bend and stretch the landscape it in order to describe more than can be seen from a single earth-bound viewpoint. www.francisfarmar.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 37: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

We’re now comfortably settled at our new home in Hoxton Square which, being a proper office rather than part of a flat, is far more spacious and functional than Brewhouse Yard. We do miss the spectacular view we had there of London’s domes and towers rising against the sky behind St Paul’s, but we’re enjoying the edgy inner city feel of Hoxton with its little specialist bookshops, vegetarian restaurants and bicycles chained to the railings among the plane trees and scruffy city pigeons. Thank you so much, all of you who sent us good wishes for the move and appreciative Christmas cards. We were extremely touched to receive them.

20200327123037 Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary | 27 March

Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary • 27 March 2020

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

We thought it might be cheering for all of us in these unusual and unpredictable times if we kept in touch with you via a weekly diary. It won’t be a work of literature, and it won’t be simply, or even mostly, about books, but just a way of sharing with you, wherever you are in the world, how the two of us are living our day-to-day lives in very different parts of England. We feel we’ve come to know so many of you as friends from your letters, emails and phone calls, and if there was ever a time for friends to keep in touch, it’s surely now. So here goes. Gail is writing from her West Country house on the edge of Dartmoor while Hazel is holed up at home in Highbury, North London.

20130601085517 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 38, Emily Sutton, ‘Country Show’ Emily Sutton is an artist and illustrator who lives and works in York. She has illustrated children’s books for the Victoria and Albert Museum and Walker Books, and has worked on projects for Bettys and Taylors, Random House, Penguin Books and Hermes among others. She especially enjoys drawing interesting junk-shop finds and shop fronts. For more examples of her work see www.emillustrates.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 38: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Well, summer’s here – at last. There are still plenty of people about in Hoxton Square, but it won’t be long before the city starts to empty out and that particular summer quiet descends which, if you’re still working, makes you feel both grateful and wistful at the same time.

20130901084118 Slightly Foxed Issue 39

Slightly Foxed Issue 39: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

The summer has sped by and we’ve been travelling, giving talks about Slightly Foxed (with the essential tea and cakes) at the kind of small local festivals that often seem to have more meaning than the bigger events. They’re a great opportunity for us to meet local subscribers and see some very beautiful parts of the country. On 20 September we’ll be in another lovely place, Much Wenlock in Shropshire, where we’ll be talking at Wenlock Books.

20131201173311 Slightly Foxed Issue 40, Chris Corr, ‘Now We Are Ten’ Christopher Corr’s painting is inspired by his travels around the globe. Vivid colours and city scenes are what excite him. Recent commissions include a series of portraits of the Shard for the Shard, paintings about fish for the restaurant Kensington Place in Notting Hill and book illustrations for the Folio Society and Andersen Press. More examples of his work can be seen atwww.christophercorr.com and www.rowleygallery.com

Slightly Foxed Issue 40: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

This fortieth issue is a very special one for us. It marks the beginning of our anniversary year – ten years since we came up with the idea for Slightly Foxed and tentatively put together our first issue. They’re years in which we’ve got to know some of the most likeable and entertaining people – both subscribers and contributors – enjoyed some of the best laughs, been introduced to some of the best books, and had some of the most varied (and sometimes eccentric) experiences. During those years children have married and grandchildren have been born, Slightly Foxed has grown, and we’ve been joined by some exceptionally nice, clever and hardworking young members of staff. We can only say thank you to the Fox and to all of you who’ve supported us for giving us some of the happiest years of our working lives.

20140301151220 Slightly Foxed Issue 41

Slightly Foxed Issue 41: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

As we mentioned in the last issue, we’re marking our tenth anniversary this year in various ways, but perhaps most importantly with the publication of a very unusual little book. It’s called Slightly Famous People’s Foxes and proceeds from the sale will go to buy books for the Hospital School at Great Ormond Street, which enables children to continue their education while they are there. These won’t be textbooks but books to read for pleasure – most of us probably know how just the right book can ease a stay in hospital, especially for children who may be in isolation or having long and painful treatments. It’s a cause close to our hearts, and we’d be delighted if you felt able to give it your support. The book costs a very affordable £5, and you’ll find a leaflet and an order form enclosed with this issue.

20140601144004 Slightly Foxed Issue 42, George Devlin, ‘Searing Heat: Baumes de Venise’ George Devlin was a Glasgow-based artist who exhibited internationally and whose work is represented in civic, corporate and private collections worldwide, in addition to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland. For more about George’s work please contact the Portland Gallery: edh@portlandgallery.com.

Slightly Foxed Issue 42: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

With travel in the air, summer’s a time when we think particularly of all those subscribers who read their copies of Slightly Foxed in farflung places. We have subscribers in 60 countries now, and in this tenth anniversary year we’d like to say thank you once again to all of you, at home and abroad, for supporting us, and particularly to those of you who have stuck with us through – as the late publisher Antony Blond once memorably put it – thin and thin. We had an excellent anniversary party – at the Art Workers’ Guild in Bloomsbury, already familiar to some of you from Readers’ Day. Speeches were made, glasses were raised, and Slightly Famous People’s Foxes, the little book we’re publishing in aid of the Children’s Hospital School at Great Ormond Street, was successfully launched.

20140901141026 Slightly Foxed Issue 43

Slightly Foxed Issue 43: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Our anniversary year is almost over, and it’s been marked by many good things – not least the installation of a new kitchen area in the office by our very efficient and cheerful builder Pzremek. Now that the leaves are turning in the square and the air is getting chilly, it’s a big bonus at lunchtime to have an oven that actually works!

20141201121102 Slightly Foxed Issue 44, Mary Sumner, ‘Sheep in Frost’ Mary Sumner is an artist and printmaker who lives and works in mid-Devon. Her work is rooted in her love for the English countryside and the creatures that inhabit it. Observations from her daily walks inspire her paintings, and plants, seascapes and gardens are also recurring themes. Her work can be seen in galleries throughout the UK and on her website: www.marysumner.com.

Slightly Foxed Issue 44: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Another year almost gone. The lights are going on early now in Hoxton Square, and on misty evenings there’s a sense of a ghostly earlier London hovering just out of reach, while only a few hundred yards away down Old Street huge shiny office blocks are rising to create a new ‘Tech City’. It’s making us feel a bit ruminative. Thanks to Jennie and all the young staff, we’re keeping up with and making good use of all the new technology, but we do also cling to what might be called ‘old-fashioned’ values – giving a really prompt and personal service to readers, keeping up our production standards, not cutting corners on writing and editing, and treating our suppliers and contributors decently. Thanks to you we’ve survived the recession, but things are still very tough for small businesses like Slightly Foxed, and our values do come at a cost.

20150301120120 Slightly Foxed Issue 45, Andrew Gifford, ‘Arundel Cathedral, early evening light’ Born in Middlesbrough in 1970, Andrew Gifford is now recognized as one of the most innovative landscape painters working today. His paintings and light installations have been widely exhibited, including many solo public shows. His work is in the New Art Gallery, Walsall, and Chatsworth House, and in private collections in Europe, America and Asia. For more details visit www.jmlondon.com.

Slightly Foxed Issue 45: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Intimations of spring at last! The days are lengthening, watery spring sunlight is filtering through the bare trees in the square, there’s a jug of daffodils on the windowsill, and the tatty old London pigeons are billing and cooing on the parapet outside the office.

20150601115206 Slightly Foxed Issue 46

Slightly Foxed Issue 46: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Now the long summer days are here we like to get out of the city, to meet subscribers and get to know some of the many independent local bookshops which, in spite of difficult times, are still very much alive and kicking. On 11 June we’ll be in Suffolk at just such a shop, Harris & Harris in the pretty old wool town of Clare, to launch the summer issue and the latest of the Slightly Foxed Editions, Adrian Bell’s Silver Ley (see p.13).

20150901114134 Slightly Foxed Issue 47, Gail Brodholt, ‘Autumn’ Gail Brodholt is a painter and linocut printmaker of the contemporary urban landscape. Much of her work depicts the London transport network and the journeys made across the city on tubes and trains. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and a recipient of many awards and prizes. She works full-time from her studio in Woolwich, South London. To see more of her work visit her website: www.gailbrodholt.com.

Slightly Foxed Issue 47: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s hard to believe autumn is here already. But the days are shortening, the air is growing brisker, and gradually the city is coming to life again as people trickle back after the long summer break. London is back in business, and it’s all go here in the Slightly Foxed office, with the latest of the Slightly Foxed Editions and Slightly Foxed Cubs arriving from the printers, and some new projects afoot.

20151201103534 Cover Artist: Issue 48, Sarah Woolfenden, ‘River in Winter’ Sarah Woolfenden trained at The Slade and taught art for many years. Now based in north Devon and a member of the South West Academy she draws large pictures of trees and woods in fine pen. To see more of Sarah’s work, which is available as prints and cards, visit www.sarahwoolfenden.co.uk.

Slightly Foxed Issue 48: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

By now most of us have probably begun the often rather agonized run-up to Christmas – the worry about what to buy for whom and where to find it. For Slightly Foxed readers, we suspect books are likely to feature somewhere in that list. Quite recently we read a piece by The Times columnist Jenni Russell bemoaning the fact that so many disappointing books by well-known writers are ludicrously overpromoted these days. Publishing, she wrote, ‘doesn’t prioritize what’s good, it prioritizes what’s new’.

20160301101934 Cover Artist: Issue 49, Rosie Sanders, ‘Dandelions and other flowers’ Rosie Sanders is a painter and printmaker specializing in plants. Her often bold and powerful watercolours of flowers express life and energy and sometimes fragility, not just depiction or imitation. She exhibits regularly with Jonathan Cooper of Park Walk Gallery in London. She is based in Devon.

Slightly Foxed Issue 49: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

As everyone who lives here knows, spring in London doesn’t just signal daffodils in window boxes and budding trees in squares. It signals building projects. The whole city seems to be in a state of upheaval – ‘streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up . . . piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks’. That sounds like today, but in fact it’s Dickens in Dombey and Son describing the coming of the railway to Camden Town. London is forever changing and it’s certainly doing so now around the Slightly Foxed office in Hoxton Square – still fortunately a small haven of quiet, though only a few minutes’ walk from the gleaming office blocks of the new ‘Tech City’ rising around Old Street tube station.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 50: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

We had quite a celebration for our tenth anniversary in 2014 and now this summer we’ve reached what feels to us like another significant milestone – our 50th issue. You could say Slightly Foxed has reached middle age, but it still has a spring in its step and we enjoy putting it together as much now as we did when four of us sat round the kitchen table (one of us holding a baby who is now at secondary school) and planned the first issue. One of our somewhat irrational fears at the time was that we might run out of books to write about, and people to write about them, but the reverse has been the case. We know from the steady stream of suggestions arriving from contributors inside and outside the literary world that there are still countless unusual and fascinating books to discover. That’s another enjoyable aspect of editing SF: the proof, if one were needed, that you don’t have to be a ‘writer’ to be able to write.

20160901094649 Mark Hearld, ‘Papercut Foxes’, screen print Born in 1974, Mark Hearld studied illustration at Glasgow School of Art and then completed an MA in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art. Taking his inspiration from the flora and fauna of the British countryside, he works across a number of mediums, producing limited-edition lithographic and linocut prints, paintings, collages and hand-painted ceramics. He has completed commissions for Faber & Faber, Tate Museums and Walker Books. In 2012 Merrell Books published Mark Hearld’s Work Book – the first book devoted to Mark’s work. For a selection of Mark’s limited-edition prints visit www.stjudesprints.co.uk.

Slightly Foxed Issue 51: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

After the events of the past few months, we must admit that, though extremely cheerful and optimistic, we’re also feeling a bit ruminative here in the office. Somehow the timeless and civilizing things we hope Slightly Foxed stands for seem more important than ever at a moment of change like this. We hope, anyway, that with the arrival of this autumn issue you can relax, draw the curtains – actual or metaphorical – and, as one of our American readers recently described it, ‘breathe a sigh of relief and slip into a world of thoughtfulness and good humor’.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 52: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

The lights in the Slightly Foxed office are staying on a little later now in the run-up to Christmas. Anna, Olivia, Katy and Hattie, our newest member of staff, have been in overdrive, dealing with subscriptions, purchases and enquiries while Stanley, the new Slightly Foxed puppy, who has put poor Chudleigh’s nose terribly out of joint, snuffles around among piles of brown paper parcels containing the latest of the Slightly Foxed Editions. As always it’s hard to believe another year is almost over and a new one’s about to start.

20170301091127 Slightly Foxed Issue 53, Spring 2017

Slightly Foxed Issue 53: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Spring, and it’s precisely thirteen years since the first issue of Slightly Foxed appeared. Then of course we had no idea of what SF would become – more of a friendly worldwide fellowship of readers than simply a magazine. Many of you have been with us from that first issue, and our subscription renewal rate is unusually and cheeringly high. As we frequently tell you, it’s your loyalty and enthusiasm that keep us going, and this year we’ve decided to express our appreciation to you in a more concrete way.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 54: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

The trees are in full deep green leaf now, making a small oasis of Hoxton Square, while not fifty yards away the traffic roars past along Old Street. New regulations to cut down air pollution in London are on the way we learn, but now the fumes hang heavily in the summer air as we make for the office, dodging people coming in the other direction who seem to be talking to themselves but are actually on their mobile phones. As Jane Austen’s great hypochondriac Mr Woodhouse observes, ‘Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.’ For many of us these days it’s a hurrying, worrying world.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 55: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

News came recently that sales of printed books have grown for the first time in four years while sales of ebooks have declined. ‘It would appear that there remains a special place in the consumer’s heart for the aesthetic pleasure that printed books can bring’ the chief executive of the Publishers’ Association is quoted as saying.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 56: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

From the start, we were keen that Slightly Foxed should feature not only contributors familiar from other book pages but also the voices of people who could write but who didn’t think of themselves as writers – people outside the literary world, who had other equally interesting kinds of experience, and for whom the written word was just as important. We’ve come to the conclusion that this describes many of our readers, judging from your sparky entries to the writers’ competitions we’ve run in the past. So, now the dark evenings have closed in again, we think it’s a good time to run another one.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 57: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

So, spring again, and it seems a good moment to report on what might be called the greening of Slightly Foxed. We’ve always been keen to be green and during the past year we’ve worked hard at it, replacing our plastic-lined padded envelopes with more eco-friendly cardboard packaging and looking into switching our office paper to a more environmentally friendly brand called Cool Earth.

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Slightly Foxed Issue 58: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

For some months now the office in Hoxton Square has been ringing to the sounds of hammering, banging, drilling, and tools dropping on to scaffolding, and we’ve often struggled to hear one another speak. If you build an extension in London today it can usually only go up or down, and our freeholder is adding an extra couple of storeys. We’re told the agony is nearly over and now it’s summer we’re looking forward to coming out of forced hibernation and opening the windows.

20180901152700 Slightly Foxed Issue 59

Slightly Foxed Issue 59: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

‘For weeks the trees had been heavy-laden with tired green leaves,’ writes BB when autumn arrives in Brendon Chase, ‘but now! What glory! What a colour ran riot in the underwood, how sweet and keen became the morning air.’ This is the season when ‘a new zest for living stirs within the blood, [and] adventure beckons in every yellowing leaf’. And sure enough, here at Hoxton Square, we’re in a decidedly adventurous mood.

20190601150541 Slightly Foxed Issue 62

Slightly Foxed Issue 62: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Here in the office, summer is when we try to relax a little, draw breath and catch up with the things for which there isn’t normally time. This year Jennie and Anna are further improving the website and putting on to the index our entire archive of contributions to past issues, so if you are a subscriber, any piece we’ve ever published will soon be available for you to read. Meantime we two will be settling down to some quiet reading in our search for unusual and outstanding memoirs to add to the list of Slightly Foxed Editions. We always welcome your suggestions, so if you have a favourite memoir that is now largely unavailable, do get in touch. There are plenty of forgotten memoirs out there we find, but few have that indefinable voice that makes them unique, and it’s a real joy when we come across one.

20190901143712 Slightly Foxed Issue 63

Slightly Foxed Issue 63: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

September has crept up on us; it won’t be long before we’re thinking about Christmas (our new festive foxed card, the fifth in the series, is now out) and here in the office there’s that familiar, excited beginning of-term feeling of things about to happen.

20191201142536 Slightly Foxed 64 Seren Bell

Slightly Foxed Issue 64: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Was there ever a moment when a good book seemed more essential? And not just because Christmas and the annual search for presents has come round again. Comfort, instruction, amusement, escape, a new perspective – whatever it is you’re looking for as a steadier in unnerving times, it’s all there in books.

20200301141621 ‘Spring Foxes’, Kelly Louise Judd - Slightly Foxed Issue 65

Slightly Foxed Issue 65: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s spring again, and a bit of news that feels cheering in today’s disordered world reaches us via an unsolicited email from ‘the world’s leading market intelligence agency’. It seems that the number of Brits who bought a print book was up last year from 51 per cent in 2018 to 56 per cent. The main reason people gave was that they prefer physical books to reading on devices. E-books certainly have their uses, but there are very particular experiences attached to the reading of a physical book, particularly a second-hand one – its look, its feel, its smell, its history as evidenced by the clues left on it and in it by previous owners. Every physical book, like a person, tells a story of its own in a way no digital book can, however convenient.

20190228104910 Slightly Foxed Issue 61

Slightly Foxed Issue 61: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

As many of you will already have gathered, if only from the discreet note on the contents page of the winter issue, this spring we’ve embarked on a new project, the Slightly Foxed podcast. Your reaction to this may possibly have been the same as ours when the idea was first put to us: ‘What exactly is a podcast?’ But now that, with some very knowledgeable assistance, we’ve got the hang of it, we realize what an enjoyable way it is of sharing with you more of our life behind the scenes at SF and introducing you to some of the interesting people who help to make the magazine what it is.

20181201110353 Slightly Foxed Literary Magazine Issue 60

Slightly Foxed Issue 60: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Well, this issue is our 60th, and it’s making us feel a bit ruminative – emotional even – remembering the little group (four plus a baby) who sat round Gail’s kitchen table, discussing an idea for a magazine that we weren’t at all sure would work. The baby is at secondary school now and the original four has nearly trebled, if we count all the great people, both full-time and part-time and with ages ranging over six decades, who contribute to the production of Slightly Foxed.

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By signing up for our free email newsletter or our free printed catalogues, you will not automatically be subscribed to the quarterly magazine. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page.

 

Slightly Foxed undertakes to keep your personal information confidential. You can read more about this in our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. Alternatively, if you have an account you can manage your preferences in your account settings.

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