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Last 30 Pairs A portrait of a childhood in two parts | E. H. Shepard’s Drawn from Memory & Drawn from Life

The lodger has gone home to Germany for dental treatment, and I have crept into her room with a purpose. Standing on a kitchen chair, I pull out from the top of the bookshelves three little hardbacks, worn and water-stained.

Back to School with Roald Dahl | An Extract from Boy

Greetings from No. 53 Hoxton Square, where September is well and truly upon us and there’s a familiar back-to-school feeling lingering in the air. This quarter’s publications and reading recommendations are flying out the door to readers far and wide, for which we thank you. If you are yet to sample our bumper autumn crop, please do take a look at our Readers’ Catalogue via the Slightly Foxed website.

‘Every September day is born in a caul’ | A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook

Greetings from Hoxton Square where we are beginning to ready your pre-orders of Adrian Bell’s A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook. In this, the final selection from Adrian Bell’s weekly essays, written between 1950 and 1980 for his local newspaper the Eastern Daily Press, completes our seasonal quartet. ‘You can stand in the windless calm of an autumn evening and hear the heartbeat of the countryside,’ Bell writes, and it’s that steady, persistent, unchanging heartbeat that we can hear in these beautifully observed little pieces.

A comforting, informative and enjoyable read | New this Autumn from Slightly Foxed

Greetings, dear readers, from Hoxton Square. We’re delighted to report that the new autumn issue of Slightly Foxed has now left the printing press at Smith Settle and should arrive with readers in the UK in the coming days and elsewhere over the next few weeks. We do hope it brings much reading pleasure.

The Other Day | New from the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

‘Children bear a great deal that their elders know nothing of,’ wrote Dorothy Whipple, and that is the keynote of this lovely memoir – a book her agent described as ‘the best thing she had done yet’, though she was already a successful novelist when it was published in 1936.

‘Memory and recollection are mysterious powers, and recollection is the more mysterious and puzzling of the two . . .’

Erich Kästner, journalist, screenwriter and author of the immortal children’s book Emil and the Detectives, was born at the end of the nineteenth century in Dresden – that ‘wonderful city full of art and history’ which was razed to the ground by the Allies in 1945.

Sprouts and Parsnip Wine | ‘Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle . . .’

Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle. There amid the customary colours of furze and wheat was a seven-acre field that ‘had suddenly become tinctured with the colour of Mediterranean skies’. Nothing like it had ever happened before, so that the villagers caught their breath at the sight of this miracle: a great, vivid patch of cerulean ‘so clear and pure that it made one think of eyes or skies’.

Letters, Notes, Diaries & Journals

Greetings from No. 53 Hoxton Square, where the sun is shining through the office windows onto our desks as we open this week’s correspondence from our readers all over the world. We have been fortunate over the years to have received many delightful missives from readers far and wide in various forms, though nothing cheers us quite as much as an old-fashioned letter.

‘Muriel was at a crossroads. Something would have to be done, but what?’ | The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerly

Diana Petre and her twin sisters grew up in Barnes, South London, in the care of an elderly housekeeper, having been abandoned in 1912 by their mother, the enigmatic Mrs Muriel Perry, whose real name and true identity were a mystery. After an absence of ten years, Muriel reappeared and took charge of her children, with disastrous results.

‘A Utopia of tea-parties, dinner-parties . . .’ | Period Piece

Greetings from somewhere between Hoxton and Cromer as we journey to East Anglia for our summer soirée at The Holt Bookshop in Norfolk this evening. For this week’s news we thought we’d make a stop in Cambridge along the way, and transport you to Gwen Raverat’s childhood home in an old mill house on the Backs along the river Cam where ‘there was plenty to see; nearly all the life of Cambridge flowed backwards and forwards over our bridge, and before our house’.

Taking the Plunge | From the Slightly Foxed Archives

Greetings from Hoxton Square, where this time next week we will readying to shut up shop and head to Liverpool Street for the 14.52 to Norwich. From there we’ll tootle along to Holt to meet Hazel and Steph at The Holt Bookshop to toast our summer issue of Slightly Foxed, the new quarter’s SF Edition Life in Our Hands and Adrian Bell’s Summer Notebook, browse the shelves and talk books with friends and fellow readers.

Richard Hillary | The Last Enemy 30 copies left

Richard Hillary was a charming, good-looking and rather arrogant young man, fresh from public school and Oxford, when, like many of his friends, he abandoned university to train as a pilot on the outbreak of war in 1939. At the flying training school, meeting men who hadn’t enjoyed the same gilded youth as he had, his view of the world, and of himself, began to change. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, he shot down five German aircraft and was finally shot down in flames himself, sustaining terrible burns to his face and hands.

‘Variety, the unexpected, a bit of vulgarity and the ridiculous mixed in with the elevated’ | Present ideas for father figures

This has been Roger Hudson’s recipe in compiling a commonplace book from material he’s gathered over the past 40 years. Surprise, recognition, amusement, An Englishman’s Commonplace Book calls forth a variety of reactions. Ranging over the centuries, it contains a rich mix of often arresting facts, vivid descriptions, absurd observations and wise words, all organized under subject headings to help find that appropriate quote. Altogether a book for the times and a perfect present.

Down to Earth | Rural reads for the summer

Greetings from No. 53 Hoxton Square, where the rain is lashing the old metal-framed window panes and we’re spending our lunch breaks holed up on the sofa with mugs of hot soup, dreaming of escaping the city for Adrian Bell’s flower-filled orchard or, more appealingly, a comfortable chair fireside until summer decides to arrive. We fear it may be a little while yet until summer does come to stay and so, in the interests of remaining cheerful come rain or shine, we’re plotting a jolly trip out of the city.

Summer, June summer | Cider with Rosie

Laurie Lee described this, his best-loved and best-known book, as ‘a recollection of early boyhood’, adding the acknowledgement that ‘some facts may have been distorted by time’. Whether or not they have, as one critic put it, ‘Cider with Rosie seems true as long as you’re reading it – and that’s the most important thing.’

Interesting articles, beautifully presented | New this Summer from Slightly Foxed

Greetings, dear readers, from Hoxton Square. We’re delighted to report that the new summer issue of Slightly Foxed has now left the printing press at Smith Settle and should arrive with readers in the UK in the coming days and elsewhere over the next few weeks. We do hope it brings much reading pleasure.

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Newsletters

Last 30 Pairs A portrait of a childhood in two parts | E. H. Shepard’s Drawn from Memory & Drawn from Life

Back to School with Roald Dahl | An Extract from Boy

‘Every September day is born in a caul’ | A Countryman’s Autumn Notebook

A comforting, informative and enjoyable read | New this Autumn from Slightly Foxed

The Other Day | New from the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

‘Memory and recollection are mysterious powers, and recollection is the more mysterious and puzzling of the two . . .’

Sprouts and Parsnip Wine | ‘Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle . . .’

Letters, Notes, Diaries & Journals

‘Muriel was at a crossroads. Something would have to be done, but what?’ | The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerly

‘A Utopia of tea-parties, dinner-parties . . .’ | Period Piece

Taking the Plunge | From the Slightly Foxed Archives

Richard Hillary | The Last Enemy 30 copies left

‘Variety, the unexpected, a bit of vulgarity and the ridiculous mixed in with the elevated’ | Present ideas for father figures

Down to Earth | Rural reads for the summer

Summer, June summer | Cider with Rosie

Interesting articles, beautifully presented | New this Summer from Slightly Foxed

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