Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Taylor, Elizabeth

Taylor, Elizabeth

At Mrs Lippincote’s, [13] 33; A Game of Hide and Seek, [58] 46; Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, [83] 25

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20240901093057 Posy Fallowfield on Elizabeth Taylor, SF Issue 83

The Smell of Lavender Water

Posy Fallowfield on Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

If you, dear reader, should happen to be the wrong side of 70, should perchance have lost your life partner, should occasionally in the small hours have slippery thoughts about what life might hold in store for you, if you should ever wonder, however fleetingly, ‘what next?’ or even ‘how?’ – then maybe Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1971) by Elizabeth Taylor is not for you.
20070301152428 Cover Art: Slightly Foxed Issue 13, Susan Leiper, ‘Spring Garden’ Susie Leiper is a freelance calligrapher in Edinburgh. Oriental, especially Chinese, art influences most of her work: the poetry on the cover is by the 20th-century Chinese poet Mu Dan, and the garden is inspired by Japanese paste-resist textiles. Susie is a Fellow of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators.

There for the Duration

Juliet Gardiner on Elizabeth Taylor, At Mrs Lippincote’s

‘It changed my life!’ people sometimes exclaim about a book. While I am fairly certain that has never happened to me, a book certainly changed my book. In the summer of 2004 I had finished writing a history of the home front in the Second World War. The manuscript was overdue and overlong, but at last it was in production and making a lot of work for everyone to ensure that it could be published in time for Christmas. Then one evening, sitting in the garden, I began to read At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor. And I knew I’d found what I didn’t know I was looking for,
20180601163220 Rodrigo Moynihan, Elizabeth Taylor - Sue Gee, Game of Hide and Seek, SF Issue 58

Hands across the Tea-shop Table

Sue Gee on Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek

The novel is set in the 1920s and 1940s. Both world wars are elided, the one before it opens, the other between one chapter and the next, but in the background is the fierce struggle of the suffragettes, when Lilian, Harriet’s mother, had been sent to prison. A clever, principled woman, widowed young, she despairs of her daughter, who has left school without an exam or an ambition, and sends her to help look after the two children of Caroline Macmillan, one-time fellow suffragette, still dearest friend. It is in this worthy, book-lined, vegetarian household that Harriet falls for Vesey, nephew of Caroline’s husband.

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