From the Editors

1st September 2006

Slightly Foxed Issue 11: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st June 2006

Slightly Foxed Issue 10: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st March 2006

Slightly Foxed Issue 9: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st December 2005

Slightly Foxed Issue 8: From the Editors

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).
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st September 2005

Slightly Foxed Issue 7: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st June 2005

Slightly Foxed Issue 6: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st March 2005

Slightly Foxed Issue 5: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st December 2004

Slightly Foxed Issue 4: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st September 2004

Slightly Foxed Issue 3: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st June 2004

Slightly Foxed Issue 2: From the Editors

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.
- Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood
From the editors
1st March 2004

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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