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‘She was a most remarkable woman . . .’ | Slightly Foxed gift ideas

‘She was a most remarkable woman . . .’ | Slightly Foxed gift ideas

As Mothering Sunday approaches in the UK and Ireland (those of you in the rest of the world have a little more time!), we thought some of you may appreciate a few bookish gift ideas for the ‘most remarkable’ women in your lives, be they mother or grandmother figures – or any fellow booklover or, indeed, yourself! All items can be wrapped in handsome brown paper, tied up with our cream ribbon and sent directly to recipient, or to you to hand over in person. If you’re worried about delivery times, or if you’re cutting it a little fine when placing your order, you can choose to have an instant gift card sent to you by email or directly to the recipient.
The books that turned us into readers | Celebrating World Book Day 2023

The books that turned us into readers | Celebrating World Book Day 2023

Greetings, dear readers, from Hoxton Square. Today marks World Book Day here in the UK and in Ireland. World Book Day encourages children to read for pleasure, and develop a love of books and reading. The charity offers every child and young person the opportunity to have a book of their own. Over the past 26 years, World Book Day has inspired a life-long habit of reading in children in the UK and Ireland – and, indeed, around the world – a truly noble endeavour.
True to Both My Selves | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

True to Both My Selves | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Introducing the latest addition to the Slightly Foxed Editions list, No. 62: True to Both My Selves By the time she was 14 Katrin FitzHerbert had lived in nearly thirty different places and attended fourteen schools – an unusual childhood, and the more so because it gave her two separate identities, one formed in the Germany of the Third Reich, the other in England after the Second World War. In True to Both My Selves, winner of the 1998 J. R. Ackerley Prize for autobiography, Katrin FitzHerbert tells the gripping story of her family, beginning with the marriage of her German expatriate grandfather and English grandmother, in London in 1905. Their fate was decided by an ugly and little-known chapter in British history, the ill-treatment of the quiet, law-abiding German minority in Britain during the First World War. Expelled by the British Government in 1919 and with their 8-year-old daughter Elfreda in tow, the couple finally and thankfully left to make a new life in a small German town near Berlin. By 1931 Elfreda had fallen in love and married the German man who in 1936 would become the author’s father, a committed member of the Nazi Party employed in the Hitler Youth administration, whom Katrin idolized. In True to Both My Selves she gives a fascinating inside account of what it was like to grow up in a National Socialist state . . .
Giovanni’s Room | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Giovanni’s Room | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Greetings from Hoxton Square, where the office is much tidier than it has been in many months in preparation for the arrival of our new spring publications. As we’ve spent so much time of late looking forward, we thought it apt to delve back into the vast Slightly Foxed archive and landed in Issue 6, published in June 2005. There we meet Mary Flanagan reflecting on the summer of her second year of university and learn of her particular attachment to James Baldwin’s extraordinary novel, Giovanni’s Room.
‘Slightly Foxed is a perfect readers’ periodical . . .’ | Spring Sale

‘Slightly Foxed is a perfect readers’ periodical . . .’ | Spring Sale

Greetings from Hoxton Square, where we’re rolling up our sleeves to spring clean the office in readiness for the arrival of an abundance of spring publications in a few weeks’ time. As delightful as it is to receive each quarter’s delivery, it often means that we have to get rather creative in order to make space for our new additions while they wait to be shipped off to readers around the world. If you’d like to help us clear a few shelves and take the opportunity to fill any gaps in your Slightly Foxed collection, now is the time.
Adrian Bell | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook

Adrian Bell | A Countryman’s Spring Notebook

We’re delighted to bring you news of a Slightly Foxed special release: Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Spring Notebook Another treat for lovers of Adrian Bell to put alongside A Countryman’s Winter Notebook, which we published in 2021. A Countryman’s Spring Notebook is our second seasonal selection from the weekly column Bell wrote from 1950 to 1980 for the Eastern Daily Press and catches beautifully the arrival of Spring in the East Anglian landscape he loved and knew so well. Each essay is a little masterpiece, a fleeting moment captured with a painterly eye and the down-to-earth observation of the farmer Bell became after he left his fashionable life in Chelsea shortly after the First World War – an experience which produced his much-loved farming trilogy, Corduroy, Silver Ley and The Cherry Tree.
Hens, Hons and Counter-Hons | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Hens, Hons and Counter-Hons | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

‘It was becoming rather apparent by this year of 1935 that not all of us were turning out quite according to plan,’ writes Jessica Mitford in her brilliantly funny and perceptive account of growing up as the fifth of the six notoriously headstrong Mitford sisters. And it was perhaps Jessica – always known as Decca – the lifelong hard-line socialist, who turned out least ‘according to plan’ of them all. We hope you enjoy reading an extract from Slightly Foxed Edition No. 52: Hons and Rebels.

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