Header overlay

From the Editors

1st December 2014

Slightly Foxed Issue 44: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st June 2014

Slightly Foxed Issue 42: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st March 2014

Slightly Foxed Issue 41: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st December 2013

Slightly Foxed Issue 40: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st September 2013

Slightly Foxed Issue 39: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st March 2013

Slightly Foxed Issue 37: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st December 2012

Slightly Foxed Issue 36: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st September 2012

Slightly Foxed Issue 35: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st June 2012

Slightly Foxed Issue 34: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st December 2011

Slightly Foxed Issue 32: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st September 2011

Slightly Foxed Issue 31: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors

Sign up to our e-newsletter

Sign up for dispatches about new issues, books and podcast episodes, highlights from the archive, events, special offers and giveaways.