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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.
Literary Gifts & Fantastic Foxes | From the Slightly Foxed Emporium

Literary Gifts & Fantastic Foxes | From the Slightly Foxed Emporium

Greetings from SF HQ, where life may be imitating art as we carry tall towers of books to the packing desk ready to wrap and dispatch to our dear readers. However, rest assured that we’re looking much more cheerful (and being more careful!) than these fully foxed figures in Quentin Blake’s cover artwork for Slightly Foxed Issue 24. And thankfully Dusty the office dog is safely snoozing on the sofa rather than getting under our feet like this book-thieving fox . . . There is still time to add to our packing piles and post bags before the year is out, and you’ll find books and goods, seasonal reads and stocking fillers in our online emporium. And, in honour of SF contributor Quentin Blake turning 90 this Friday, we’re also recommending a selection of pocket-sized titles bearing his fantastic, often foxy, illustrations.
‘Smashing little hardbacks’ | Slightly Foxed Editions

‘Smashing little hardbacks’ | Slightly Foxed Editions

Greetings from a busy, book-filled Slightly Foxed office, where we’re merrily navigating our way through an obstacle course of post bags, packing materials and parcels. There’s still time for us to help with gifts for booklovers, and we’d like to shine a light on our Slightly Foxed Editions – beautifully produced cloth-bound hardbacks, just the right size to hold in the hand and with a ribbon marker to keep your place. And, if you have missed out on a title or two from our series of limited-editions, our Plain Editions come in the same neat pocket format as the original SF Editions and will happily fill any gaps in your collection – as well as forming a delightful uniform series of their own, each bound in duck-egg blue cloth. Perfectly designed to curl up with, these classic titles are highly individual and absorbing reads.
The Prince, the Showgirl and Me | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

The Prince, the Showgirl and Me | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Introducing the latest addition to the Slightly Foxed Editions list, No. 61: The Prince, the Showgirl and Me It is 1956, and through a combination of chutzpah and some useful contacts (he is after all the son of Lord Clark of Civilisation), the young Colin Clark has got himself a job. He’s now a ‘gofer’ or general dogsbody on the Pinewood Studios set of The Prince and the Showgirl, a light comedy starring Sir Laurence Olivier (abbreviated in the diary Colin is beadily keeping to SLO) and Marilyn Monroe (MM) as the two leads. This unlikely combination proves to be a disaster. Marilyn fails to turn up on time and can barely remember her lines, while Sir Laurence is completely out of his depth with both her and her entourage. Marilyn is a troubling enigma – impossible to deal with, yet possessed of some indefinable magic that made her irresistible on screen when the ‘rushes’ come through, often upstaging Sir Laurence. The film does eventually get made and sinks without trace, but fortunately Colin Clark is there to record the agonies of its making in this sharp and hilarious diary.
Ronald Blythe | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Ronald Blythe | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Greetings from Hoxton Square, where we’re raising a glass to the nature writer and Slightly Foxed contributor Ronald Blythe as he turns 100. He lives at the end of an overgrown farm track deep in the rolling countryside of the Stour Valley, on the border between Suffolk and Essex. His home is Bottengoms Farm, a yeoman’s house once owned by John Nash, and from here he has spent many decades observing, in a series of lyrical diaries, the slow turn of the agricultural cycle, the church year, and rural change and continuity. A new selection of these writings, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside, has just been published to celebrate his 100th birthday. Please join us as we return with pleasure to Maggie Fergusson’s article from Slightly Foxed Issue 11, written in praise of Akenfield, Blythe’s famous portrait of an English Village.
The Young Ardizzone | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

The Young Ardizzone | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

There can be few author-illustrators whose books are remembered – and still read – with such affection as those of Edward Ardizzone. And affection is the keynote of this charming memoir, The Young Ardizzone, which brings alive in words and pictures the comfortable Edwardian world in which Ardizzone grew up. The creator of the ever-popular Little Tim and Lucy books begins his story in 1905 when he was 5 and his mother brought him and his two sisters home to England from Haiphong where his father was a telegraph engineer. Left in Suffolk in the care of their grandmother, the three grew up with a full complement of young bachelor uncles, great-aunts and eccentric family friends – all beautifully and often poignantly captured in Ardizzone’s deceptively simple prose and delicately humorous drawings. This classic memoir is a must for fans of Ardizzone, young and old, and a perfect introduction for those who haven’t yet discovered him. We’re delighted to announce that it will be available to readers once more, published in a Plain Foxed Edition.
Season’s Greetings from Slightly Foxed

Season’s Greetings from Slightly Foxed

Season’s greetings to you all from SF HQ, where we’re merrily stock-taking and tidying, eyeing up the mince pies and preparing to shut up shop for the Christmas break. The office will be closed from 3 p.m. this afternoon (Thursday 22 December) until Tuesday 3 January. We are so grateful for your orders, and we do hope that all items are well received. While most things arrive in good time and in good order, inevitably the odd thing goes astray or arrives in less than perfect condition. If this is the case please let us know by email and we can arrange replacements to be sent out in the New Year. We look forward to catching up with you when we’re back at our desks in January. Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm throughout the year. We’ll now raise a glass to our dear readers around the world who have kept us going with orders and messages of goodwill.
Roald Dahl | Teller of the Unexpected

Roald Dahl | Teller of the Unexpected

‘An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten . . . I didn’t have to search for any of them. All I had to do was skim them off the top of my consciousness and write them down. Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true.’ Roald Dahl, Preface to Boy
A Fortunate Man | From the Slightly Foxed archives

A Fortunate Man | From the Slightly Foxed archives

‘John Berger has spent three months shadowing his remarkable friend the local GP night and day, to paint a portrait of his life . . .’ Please join us as we travel through the Slightly Foxed archives to the Forest of Dean in the 1960s, where we meet ‘an exceptional GP’ in Dr Sassall, the country doctor depicted in A Fortunate Man by John Berger. We hope you enjoy Rose Baring’s piece from SF Issue 67. And we also bring you more information about this year’s Slightly Foxed Readers’ Day, our one-day literary festival at the Art Workers’ Guild in London. The event will be held on Saturday 5 November, and we urge you to book your place now. It’s a high point in our calendar and we look forward to hearing our contributors speak about a wide range of bookish subjects and, of course, meeting readers old and new.
The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley | Diana Petre

The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley | Diana Petre

Diana 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. For the girls, one of the highlights of their isolated lives were visits from a kindly man they knew as ‘Uncle Bodger’. In fact, as Muriel finally revealed in characteristically brutal fashion, he was their father, Roger Ackerley. Unbeknownst to the girls, he lived down the road in Richmond with a retired actress and his three further children.
Confessions of a Common Reader | From the Slightly Foxed archives

Confessions of a Common Reader | From the Slightly Foxed archives

‘Anne Fadiman recalls that Charles Lamb “once told Coleridge that he was especially fond of books containing traces of buttered muffins”’ Here at Hoxton Square we feel we may be kindred spirits with Charles Lamb, especially as the season turns and there’s a chill in the air, calling for muffins and good books to bury one’s nose in. As we come to the end of another busy working week, we’d like to take you back to where our story began: the first article of the first issue of Slightly Foxed magazine. Appropriately enough, it’s about a lifelong obsession with books. And we do hope that you, dear readers, will find a kindred spirit in Anne Fadiman.
I Was a Stranger | A Story of Friendship

I Was a Stranger | A Story of Friendship

As commander of the 4th Parachute Brigade, John Hackett was in the vanguard of the attack on Arnhem on 17 September 1944. A week later, when his depleted and poorly supplied force was at its last gasp, he was badly wounded in the stomach and leg. It is this moment, with the battle almost spent and the narrator reduced to helpless dependence on others, which marks the starting point of the book – for I Was a Stranger is not so much a tale of derring-do (though its descriptions of the fighting are vivid) as a story of friendship. The heroism it celebrates is not that of soldiers, but of a household run by three women in a town under German occupation.
Nella Last’s War | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Nella Last’s War | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Introducing the latest addition to the Slightly Foxed Editions list, No. 60: Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 In 1937 the social research group Mass Observation launched a project to record the lives of ordinary people in Britain by recruiting 500 volunteer diarists. One of these was Nella Last, a housewife living in Barrow-in-Furness with a husband and two grown-up sons, one a trainee tax-inspector and one in the army. So far, so seemingly ordinary, but there was nothing ordinary about Nella. She left us an unrivalled account of life in wartime Britain that is not only a piece of social history but also the portrait of a woman you feel could have run the country, given half a chance.

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