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Leith, Sam

Sam Leith is the literary editor of the Spectator and the author of You Talkin’ to Me? Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama and Write to the Point: How to be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page.

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, [61] 84; [68] 49; [78] 75; [80] 13

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20231201093031 Sam Leith on Nicholas Fisk, Pig Ignorant, Slightly Foxed 80, James Nunn

The In-Between Years

Sam Leith on Nicholas Fisk, Pig Ignorant

Nicholas Fisk (1923–2016) is a half-forgotten name now, and his memoir Pig Ignorant is a wholly forgotten book. It deserves not to be, and he deserves not to be. Fisk was a bestselling children’s writer through my own ’70s and ’80s childhood and was described by one critic as ‘the Huxley-Wyndham-Golding of children’s literature’. But if he is remembered now, it’s for his science fiction and only vaguely, and only by people about my age. There’s the Bradburyesque alien invasion horror Grinny (see SF no.78) and its sequel You Remember Me , the disconcerting genetic-engineering story A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair , and Trillions , in which tiny, collectively intelligent alien particles fall to earth like snow. In his most memorable stories the surface appearance of the world masks something darker and stranger. There’s a world behind the world.
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The Stuff of Nightmares

Sam Leith on Nicholas Fisk, Grinny

‘You remember me . . .’ Whoosh. Those three words still send a little thrill of terror down my spine. I don’t think I’m the only adult for whom, when they look back on their childhood reading, the books that scared them are remembered with a particular intensity. Just as childhood nightmares stay with us, so do stories – some of them seeming quite innocent to adults – which wobbled some fragile pillar of childhood security.
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Oh Nancy, Nancy!

Sam Leith on the Nancy Drew mysteries

The Nancy Drew mysteries (I didn’t know, then, that ‘mystery’ is what Americans call a detective story) were the first series of books to which I became completely addicted. And, since there were dozens of them, it seemed as if I could never run out – useful, for a child who weekly exhausted his borrowing limit at Dorking Library. My grandfather got into the habit, for a bit, of buying me one a week. Whenever I had a book token, it was into the bookshop at the top of the main street (I can’t for the life of me remember its name) that I would go. Oh! the anticipation of a fresh one, a fresh mystery, smelling of new paperback, picked off the long shelf of Nancy Drew books in the children’s section and taken home in a crisp paper bag.

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