Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Fleming, David

Fleming, David

David Fleming used to be a Customs Officer and is now a freelance writer. He lives in Broughty Ferry.

The numbers in square brackets refer to the issue of the quarterly in which the article appears.
The unbracketed numbers refer to the starting page of the article.
For entries in multiple issues of the quarterly, the occurrences are separated by semi-colons.

articles by, [67] 45; [75] 37; [77] 71; [79] 20; [83] 84

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20240901093013 David Fleming on A. E. Housman, SF Issue 83

The Land of Lost Content

David Fleming on A. E. Housman, Collected Poems

Nineteen twenty-two was a good year for poetry. It saw the publication of two very different works which would prove to be of lasting popularity – A. E. Housman’s Last Poems, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. I love that bizarre conjunction, Housman’s traditional, rhyming, apparently artless verse jostling for shelf space with the arch-modernist exciting and outraging the world with his wilful obscurities and cunning vulgarities. None of the doomed country lads who inhabit Housman’s poetic world were ever to ‘wash their feet in soda water’ as Eliot’s Mrs Porter and her daughter did, let alone dry their ‘combinations touched by the sun’s last rays’.
20230301100025 David Fleming on Robin Knox-Johnston, A World of My Own, map, Slightly Foxed 77

Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

David Fleming on Robin Knox-Johnston, A World of My Own

Stirring tales of true-life adventure are, I suspect, most enjoyed by the unadventurous. Those of us content with a quiet and fairly uneventful life take great delight in reading books by those other impossibly intrepid souls who canoe their way up the Amazon, set off with nothing but a rucksack to explore India by train, or march away into the frozen Antarctic wastes dragging a heavy sledge behind them.
20220901105247 David Fleming on F. W. Holiday, The Great Orm of Loch Ness, Slightly Foxed 75

Monster-hunting

David Fleming on F. W. Holiday, The Great Orm of Loch Ness

As a child I had three great ambitions. The first was to go to the South Pole – I practised wandering off to die in a storm like Captain Oates whenever snow fell in the local park. Then there was my wish to roam the London sewers having had a tantalizing glimpse of them in a Doctor Who episode. Finally, I longed to see the Loch Ness Monster and to know for sure that it existed. Now somewhat older, I find the thought of sub-zero temperatures has put me off polar exploration, and my zest for sewers is lessened by the prospect of bad smells and rodents. It would, however, still be exciting to behold across the peaty waters of Loch Ness something strange and wonderful, but I rarely give the matter much thought.
20200901104156 RMS Titanic in Southampton Water, 10 April 1912 - David Fleming on Walter Lord, A Night to Remember

Worse Things Happen at Sea

David Fleming on Walter Lord, A Night to Remember

Every child who enjoys reading will sooner or later begin to explore the world of grown-up books. The first ones I ever read were bought in an antique shop in the picturesque town of Cromarty on the Black Isle. I can’t recall my exact age or the year – about thirteen, around 1975 – but the second-hand paperbacks I found there and devoured over that three-week family holiday are very clear in my mind.

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