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Richard Hillary | The Last Enemy *30 copies left*

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

‘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

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.
Life in Our Hands | *New* from the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Life in Our Hands | *New* from the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

It is three o’clock in the morning, ‘the very bottom of time’ as Pamela Bright describes it, and her ward is filled with wounded men. So overstretched is she that she barely knows where she is, but as her gut-wrenchingly vivid account progresses, we begin to understand that she is in a Casualty Clearing Station attached to the British Second Army in Normandy, which had landed a week after D-Day in June 1944. Pamela is one of the young nurses working heroically to tend to the wounded in impossible conditions a few miles from the front line.
Celtic Charm and Champagne | Empress of Ireland

Celtic Charm and Champagne | Empress of Ireland

‘The Empress of Ireland is not enjoyable because it does something cliched like “capturing a lost world”; it entertains wildly because the author, purely by chance, encountered a truly original character that even the finest novelist could not have invented.’ – Gustav Temple, The Chap The subtitle to this delicious book is ‘A Chronicle of an Unusual Friendship’, and it would indeed be difficult to imagine two more unlikely companions than its author and his subject, the 80-year-old gay Irish film-maker Brian Desmond Hurst.
A Cab at the Door *Last 50!* | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

A Cab at the Door *Last 50!* | From the Slightly Foxed bookshelves

Greetings from Hoxton Square where we are gearing up for the arrival of the summer offerings from Tracey and the team at Smith Settle. Whilst floor-sweeping, shelf-shuffling and stock-checking, we noticed that we have just one box (50 copies) of our smart little Slightly Foxed paperback edition of V. S. Pritchett’s A Cab at the Door left in stock. We won’t be reprinting this title so if you are yet to add this classic memoir to your Slightly Foxed collection, please take this last opportunity to do so!
Supper with the sun in our eyes | A Countryman’s Summer Notebook

Supper with the sun in our eyes | A Countryman’s Summer Notebook

Greetings from Hoxton Square where we have already begun posting out pre-orders of Adrian Bell’s A Countryman’s Summer Notebook. In this, the third volume of our seasonal quartet, Bell takes us into the summer countryside, to smell the may blossom in hedges which ‘suddenly become cliffs of white’, to linger in quiet churches, wander through country towns, and hear the voices of the craftsmen and women, the farmers and farm labourers whose lives are rooted in the Suffolk soil.
Coppery haws and scarlet hips | The girl who grew up to be Rosemary Sutcliff

Coppery haws and scarlet hips | The girl who grew up to be Rosemary Sutcliff

We much enjoyed reading Slightly Foxed contributor Laura Freeman’s spread on Rosemary Sutcliff in The Times a few weekends ago. We feel bound to confess that the article was inspired by another publisher’s forthcoming paperback edition of Blue Remembered Hills but, as Laura herself wrote as a footnote to her piece, ‘I feel a sneak for saying it but this isn’t the prettiest of editions and there is a nicer one published by Slightly Foxed in clothbound covers.’ ‘Either way’, she goes on to say, ‘Blue Remembered Hills is a perfect period piece: beautifully written, brave, forbearing and sublimely entertaining.’

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