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A selection of photos posted on Instagram by the Slightly Foxed staff.

🌟📚INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY📚🌟⁠ .⁠ ‘

🌟📚INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY📚🌟⁠
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‘Travelling round India any time in the 1970s meant reading a Narayan; and reading a Narayan anywhere else meant being transported to India. An Indian train journey was unthinkable without one. In a sense it was one, for the Narayan experience began as soon as you ventured on to railway property. This was his world.’ John Keay on the novels of R. K. Narayan in Issue 22 of Slightly Foxed magazine.⁠
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This week we’ve teamed up with Lodestars Anthology, the independent travel magazine-meets-journal for inquisitive travellers, to give away some of our favourite issues to you bookish folk. You can never have too much to read, particularly over the summer, and how better to safely travel around the world than by delving into these pages from the comfort of your favourite chair . . .⁠
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🌟THE INDIA PRIZE🌟⁠
*Lodestars India⁠
*Lodestars Postcards⁠
*Slightly Foxed Issue 26, featuring Leon Morrocco’s cover art, ‘Blue Temple, Madurai’⁠
*Slightly Foxed Issue 22, featuring John Keay on the novels of R. K. Narayan⁠
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🌟HOW TO ENTER🌟⁠
1. Follow @lodestarsanthology⁠
2. Follow us @foxedquarterly⁠
3. Like this post and the equivalent post on the @lodestarsanthology Instagram feed⁠
4. Tag a fellow print lover in a comment on this post⁠
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🌟RULES 🌟📑⁠
International. Ends on Wednesday 5 August at 11.00 a.m. BST. No giveaway or spam accounts. The winner will be announced in comments and/or in posts or stories. Not endorsed by or affiliated with Instagram.⁠
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🌟ABOUT LODESTARS 🌟⁠
Lodestars Anthology is an independent magazine-meets-journal for curious travellers who long to be inspired, see the world and meet interesting characters along the road. Focusing on one country per issue, Lodestars is a scrapbook of place, a magazine that goes deep into the heart of a location and uncovers its quirks, flavours and splendour, taking a truly personal, beautifully crafted and slow approach to the art of travel journalism.

‘Thrilled to receive the Summer issue – the pi

‘Thrilled to receive the Summer issue – the picture on the front conjures up everything that’s special about summer and summer reading – and the contents don’t disappoint, either!’ M. M.⁠
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This particular cover, Tsugumi Ota’s ‘Bathers’, from Issue 2 of Slightly Foxed certainly captures that late summer feeling. This cover is unique in many ways but most of all because it is the only one in the whole run of issues that doesn’t feature a fox. Luckily the contents of Issue 2 are thoroughly foxy and most desirable, perfect for summer reading!

If the idea of an armchair adventure appeals, we s

If the idea of an armchair adventure appeals, we suggest tuning in to the Slightly Foxed podcast. The latest episode – all about writing on North Africa and the Middle East – was released on 15 July and, if you haven’t yet heard it, you might like to catch up with some lively conversation and eclectic suggestions for your next read.⁠
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Justin Marozzi, a travel writer, historian and journalist who’s lived in Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Darfur, joins the Slightly Foxed editors on a journey through North Africa and the Middle East. His discovery of a nineteenth-century account of an expedition to Libya in a bookshop in Tripoli led to his crossing of the Sahara by camel, against the advice of Wilfred Thesiger. From dual chronicles of the desert penned by Rosita Forbes and Ahmed Hassanein Bey and tales of books hurled into the Tigris to the picaresque life of Ibn Battutah and travels with a Tangerine, the conversation ranges far and wide, and there are the usual recommendations for reading off the beaten track too.⁠
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Our bookish podcast is free for all to listen, and you can do so on our website or by searching for Slightly Foxed on @iTunes, @applepodcasts, @spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public or your favourite podcast app.⁠ Happy listening!

Both a comic masterpiece and a glorious portrait o

Both a comic masterpiece and a glorious portrait of an unapologetic but irresistible old rogue . . .’⁠
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Our latest Slightly Foxed Edition, The Empress of Ireland by Christopher Robbins, is a perfect relaxing summer read. It’s subtitled ‘A Chronicle of an Unusual Friendship’ and it’s difficult to imagine a more unlikely relationship than that between the eccentric 80-year-old Irish film director Brian Desmond Hurst and the very English and very innocent young journalist Robbins. One key thing they had in common was that they were both broke, though this was not immediately obvious to Robbins when, to his surprise, he was taken on as scriptwriter for the great religious epic that was, apparently, to crown Hurst’s career – a commission for which he was spectacularly ill-suited. Robbins’s account of what followed as together they lived out this fantasy is both a comic masterpiece and a glorious portrait of an unapologetic but irresistible old rogue.⁠
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The Empress of Ireland is available to buy from the Slightly Foxed website • foxedquarterly.com • From £17

‘I have shocked quite a lot of people by saying

‘I have shocked quite a lot of people by saying “To hell with nature!”. Nature is made to be used, not to be dictator, as far as the dyed-in-the-wool artist is concerned.’ C. F. Tunnicliffe in an interview with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds magazine having been awarded their Gold Medal in 1975.⁠
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C. F. Tunnicliffe is renowned for his captivating depictions of the natural world, particularly British birds and fauna, and several of his wood engravings have appeared in Slightly Foxed magazine alongside articles by various contributors inspired by books which celebrate the natural world. Tunnicliffe’s vast collection of work is celebrated in this extraordinary book, Charles Tunnicliffe Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné, produced by @royalacademyarts. It’s full of exceptional etchings, wood engravings and woodcuts by one of the best-known wildlife illustrators of the twentieth century.⁠
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Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe was born in Macclesfield in 1901. He grew up on a farm in Sutton around the wildlife which would later influence his work, and studied at the Macclesfield School of Art before gaining a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Tunnicliffe worked with several media, including watercolour, oil painting, etching and wood engraving. He is best known for his closely observed depictions of birds and wildlife, which he portrayed within their natural settings as part of the landscape. His illustrations have been used in over 250 books by various publishers including @faberbooks, @cambridgeuniversitypress and @harpercollinsuk.

‘It’s just full of interesting observations ab

‘It’s just full of interesting observations about the relationship between author and editor . . .’⁠
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‘I must recommend a book called Stet by Diana Athill which is really about her apprenticeship as an editor. She was of course very well known as an editor and she’s written other autobiographical books. Stet is a term that editors write when they’ve perhaps had a second thought about something; they’ve taken something out and then they think, ‘Actually, I think I better leave that in . . .’ They put dotted lines under it and in the margin they write ‘stet’ which means ‘let it stand’. And I suppose it’s her way of recapturing her life.⁠
It’s full of wonderful stories. She went to work for Andre Deutsch who was a fun person, not all together likeable, and very, very strict. He started up in that post-war period when small publishers were still small publishers, and she stayed with Andre Deutsch on some pittance of a salary . . . She edited Jean Rhys, Molly Keane, V.S. Naipaul, and it’s just full of interesting observations about the relationship between author and editor. She said in Jean Rhys’s case it was impossible to imagine really how someone whose life was totally shambolic and disarranged yet when it came to words, she was absolutely on the mark . . .⁠
I just highly recommend this book for anybody who wants to know about the process of editing and relations between editors and writers.’⁠
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Slightly Foxed editor Hazel Wood on Diana Athill’s Stet in Episode 3 of the Slightly Foxed podcast. Stet was published 20 years ago and is still as brilliant an insight into the world of editing as it was when it was published by @grantabooks two decades ago.

‘The Cornish landscape and the artistic traditio

‘The Cornish landscape and the artistic tradition of the area is a continual source of inspiration . . .’⁠
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Emma McClure trained as a painter at Winchester and Chelsea Schools of Art and now lives and works in London and Cornwall. Her paintings are in Private collections in the UK, Hong Kong, USA and Europe and she exhibits regularly and has had several successful exhibitions at the Cadogan Contemporary Gallery, Thompsons Gallery and Cornwall Contemporary.⁠
The Cornish landscape and the artistic tradition of the area is a continual source of inspiration, in particular the artists associated with St Ives. Her mother is the renowned Cornish painter Daphne McClure. See more of Emma’s work on Instagram @emmamcclure_artist or on her website: emmamcclure.co.uk⁠
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Emma McClure’s ‘Chickens’ appeared on the cover of Issue 9 of Slightly Foxed magazine.

‘George Eliot, Russian folk tales, the art of dr

‘George Eliot, Russian folk tales, the art of drinking, bibliomania, a couple of spine-chilling murders . . .’⁠
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‘With all this activity in fields and garden, it’s been hard to concentrate on work, especially since Hazel and I are now trying to turn our thoughts to the winter issue and put ourselves in the right mood for a cosy, cheering, festive season which must be reflected in the articles we choose. So far we’ve picked articles on bell-ringing, George Eliot, Russian folk tales, the art of drinking, bibliomania, a London childhood, a couple of spine-chilling murders, some unputdownable thrillers and a beautifully written novel by William Trevor. But have we got the balance right? Only time and the first proof will tell.’ Gail, Manaton, 24 July 2020⁠
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Head over to the blog on the Slightly Foxed website (foxedquarterly.com) to read more of Gail and Hazel’s escapades this month including walks in the wilderness of Abney Park Cemetery and grappling with cucumbers in the greenhouse . . .

‘Issue No. 66 is just as good as I’d hoped . .

‘Issue No. 66 is just as good as I’d hoped . . .’⁠
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‘Thank you so much for the lovely warm welcome you gave me when I became a subscriber recently. I’ve been a subscriber in the past, starting from the first issue, and I’m delighted to be back. Thank you also for the attractiveness of the quarterly, particularly the cover illustration. This was one of the things I most remember from my previous membership and Summer Issue No. 66 is just as good as I’d hoped. I’m finding the Slightly Foxed atmosphere very calming and therapeutic in these troubled times.’ P. W.⁠
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We’ve received many cheerful and heartening messages since our return to the Slightly Foxed office and are so grateful for all the support we’ve received over the last few months.⁠
The quarterly is at the centre of the Slightly Foxed publishing enterprise and we’re so pleased that our readers have been enjoying the current issue during lockdown. Many thanks to @paulcleden for his wonderful contribution to this quarter’s offering: ‘Boats and Coots’, the cover artwork for Issue 66.⁠
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Subscriptions from £48 • Single Issues from £12 • foxedquarterly.com

‘One summer’s morning, as I toiled unhappily i

‘One summer’s morning, as I toiled unhappily in the stifling office, Brian called. ‘You have an office! And you’re in it! How very peculiar.’ ⁠
‘Working on a big historical series,’ I said importantly. ‘Buried in work. Deadlines. Pressure. You know how it is in Fleet Street.’ ⁠
‘I can imagine. But this lunchtime forego your usual three hour session at El Vino’s and get over here.’ ⁠
‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ I said, laughing indulgently. ‘I’m lucky these days to get away for a half-pint and a sandwich in the Blackfriars.’ ⁠
‘Bugger the Blackfriars! Get over here! It’s important. Sir Michael’s coming to lunch.’ ⁠
Herod the Great – himself! Finally. Brian was right, this was important. I took the bus to Knightsbridge, a journey that seemed endless, but I was excited to be meeting the man who was to play Herod . . .’⁠
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Haughty, outrageous, infuriating, manipulative, director Brian Desmond Hurst was all those things, yet he was also witty, spirited, clear-eyed, often generous and always entertaining. In The Empress of Ireland Christopher Robbins produced a comic masterpiece, a picture of a particular kind of gay life in the 1970s, and of a wickedly unapologetic old rogue it’s impossible not to like.⁠
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The Empress of Ireland is available to buy on the Slightly Foxed website: foxedquarterly.com. From £17

‘It’s absolutely essential to go on learning a

‘It’s absolutely essential to go on learning and exploring . . .’⁠
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‘There is an element of the journalist in me. I love the idea of recording things in society. It has been very fruitful and unexpected and it has also helped me to rethink colour. I’d been to India too. I think I was forcing the thing. It was getting a bit too easy, too decorative. I needed to step out of my comfort zone. I don’t think artists do that often enough. I think we need a bit of an edge.’ Leon Morrocco reflects on his work in @scottishfieldmag.⁠
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Leon Morrocco’s ‘Blue Temple, Madurai’, oil on canvas, appeared on the cover of Issue 26 of Slightly Foxed magazine.⁠
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Leon was born in Edinburgh and studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, The Slade, Edinburgh College of Art and the Accademia di Brera in Milan. His work can be found in many notable public and private collections, including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the Scottish Arts Council, the Leeds Art Gallery, the Nuffield Foundation and the Queensland Art Gallery. For more information contact the John Martin Gallery (@johnmartingallery): jmlondon.com

It starts when a tollbooth magically appears in Mi

It starts when a tollbooth magically appears in Milo’s room . . .⁠
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‘One of the first things Milo encounters is a sign that reads ‘WELCOME TO EXPECTATIONS’. When he asks a man who appears near the sign what kind of place Expectations is he gets the reply, ‘Expectations is the kind of place you must always go to before you get to where you’re going.’⁠
In the context of the story that is a logical answer. But in the context of the wider world, it is also a deeply profound one. And the fact that the man giving the answer has been drawn as a short, plump, balding semi-lunatic in a toga makes the whole encounter delightfully comic too.⁠
That Norton Juster can do so much, with so few words, is in itself a wonder. That he can sustain this level of inventiveness throughout the whole book is, frankly, incredible. Read any chapter and within it you will find more ideas than you can discover in whole books, or even series of books, written for children today.’⁠
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In this week’s free article from the archives, we welcome you to Dictionopolis, the realm of words ruled by King Azaz in Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth.⁠
Follow the link in our bio and tap on this illustration to read the full article by Rohan Candappa from Slightly Foxed Issue 29 on our website. We do hope you enjoy travelling beyond the tollbooth.

‘In 2005 I was astonished by my first encounter

‘In 2005 I was astonished by my first encounter with the original text of The Water-Babies, and I have just reread it in 2019 with more care and even more astonishment. It is one of the strangest stories ever written allegedly for children, even stranger than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which it predates by a couple of years. Ever since it first appeared, published by Macmillan in 1863, with two illustrations by the popular Scottish ‘fantasy’ artist Joseph Noel Paton, critics have debated as to whether it was intended for children (Kingsley claimed to have written it for his little boy Grenville Arthur) or whether it was really aimed, in a knowing way, at adults.’⁠
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Dame Margaret Drabble on Charles Kingsley’s classic children’s (or indeed adult) novel, The Water-Babies in Issue 66 of Slightly Foxed magazine.

Tales of books hurled into the Tigris and travels

Tales of books hurled into the Tigris and travels with a Tangerine . . .⁠
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Justin Marozzi, a travel writer, historian and journalist who’s lived in Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Darfur, joins the Slightly Foxed editors on a journey through North Africa and the Middle East. His discovery of a nineteenth-century account of an expedition to Libya in a bookshop in Tripoli led to his crossing of the Sahara by camel, against the advice of Wilfred Thesiger. From dual chronicles of the desert penned by Rosita Forbes and Ahmed Hassanein Bey and tales of books hurled into the Tigris to the picaresque life of Ibn Battutah and travels with a Tangerine, the conversation ranges far and wide, and there are the usual recommendations for reading off the beaten track too.⁠
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💫Out now! Episode 21 of the Foxed Pod: ‘A Bookshelf in Tripoli’💫 We think it makes for excellent listening and hope our fellow #booklovers will agree!⁠⠀⁠
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Our bookish podcast is free for all to listen, and you can do so on our website (link in bio 🔗) or by searching for Slightly Foxed on @iTunes, @applepodcasts, @spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Radio Public or your favourite podcast app.⁠⠀⁠
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Happy listening good bookworms, and please let us know what you think by leaving a review or comment. And if you know a fellow bibliophile who would enjoy the #FoxedPod why not tag them or share this post with them so they can listen for themselves? 🎧📚⁠

‘There were curious gaps in the slender library

‘There were curious gaps in the slender library at Elrig . . .’⁠⠀
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If you like Gavin Maxwell have noticed any curious gaps in your Slightly Foxed library, then our Last Call Bundle might come to your rescue. We’ve cobbled together the last remaining copies of the earliest four available hand-numbered Slightly Foxed Editions for readers to buy together for a special price.⁠⠀
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The bundle includes:⁠⠀
- My Grandfather & Father, Dear Father by Denis Constanduros⁠⠀
These delightfully funny and affectionate portraits of the two most influential male figures in the author’s life conjure up two strongly defined characters and the times in which they lived.⁠⠀
- Marrying Out by Harold Carlton⁠⠀
Though light-heartedly written, Marrying Out is a brilliantly observed study of family dynamics, and of a certain kind of Jewish life in 1950s North London.⁠⠀
- Basil Street Blues by Michael Holroyd⁠⠀
Well-known for his frank biographies of such controversial figures as Augustus John and Lytton Strachey, Holroyd teases out the story of his own distinctly problematic family in this delightful and original book. The result is a very personal detective story, subtle, funny and poignant.⁠⠀
- The House of Elrig by Gavin Maxwell⁠⠀
The writer and naturalist Gavin Maxwell is best known for Ring of Bright Water, his moving account of raising otters on the remote west coast of Scotland. In his childhood memoir The House of Elrig he describes, with the same lyrical power that made that earlier book a classic, how it all began.
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#bookcollection #slightlyfoxed #memoirs #bookbundle #bookcollector #alwaysreading #bookpost #bookworld #bookish #bookaesthetic #bookishfeature #booktag #readerforlife #bookishlife #bookstagramit #readmorebooks #avidreader #classicbooks #bookhoarder #searchwandercollect #bookobsession #bookishfeatures #visualcrush #bibliophilelife #createcultivate #rarebooks #booksaremagic #bookreview #foxedquarterly #literarymagazine

Toni McGreachan, ‘Refreshment’ ‘My fascinati

Toni McGreachan, ‘Refreshment’ ‘My fascination with the figure in water began over ten years ago when I realized that I could combine many of my artistic concerns in one subject; movement, the figure, abstraction, light, feelings and mark making. A residency at Tooting Bec Lido in 1999 was the starting point for several different bodies of work.’⁠
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@tonimcgreachan is a practising and exhibiting artist based in London. This artwork appeared on the cover of Issue 10 of Slightly Foxed magazine and is a detail from a painting entitled ‘Refreshment’ made during her residency at Tooting Bec Lido. To see further works by Toni and for contact details visit www.toni-mcgreachan.co.uk. Toni’s works are available to buy via @notonthehighstreet 🏊‍♀️

‘It can only be of value if you don’t tell any

‘It can only be of value if you don’t tell anybody about it . . . ‘ ‘Noel, low-flying down the Severn, came to the bridge and flew under it. He came back and told me. From then on the bridge fascinated and frightened me. I had to fly under it. I said as much to Peter Pease. He gave me a long quizzical stare.⁠
‘Richard,’ he said, ‘from now on a lot of people are going to fly under that bridge. From a flying point of view it proves nothing: it’s extremely stupid. From a personal point of view it can only be of value if you don’t tell anybody about it.’⁠
He was right of course.⁠
To fly under the bridge now simply to come back and say that I had done so would be sheer exhibitionism. It would prove nothing. Yet I knew I would fly under it. I had to for my own satisfaction, just as many years before I had had to stand on a 25-foot board above a swimming-pool until I dived off.’⁠
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The Last Enemy by Richard Hillary is one of the great classic memoirs of the Second World War. 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.⁠
With its raw honesty, lack of self-pity and its gripping and terrifying accounts of aerial combat and the psychological aftermath, his book is a wartime classic. Its title is taken from an Epistle of St Paul: ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Frontier Wolf and The Lanter

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Frontier Wolf and The Lantern Bearers have landed . . . A van from our wonderful printers arrived this morning full to bursting with bookish joy. The next two titles in our series of SF Cubs are due to be published on 1 September 2020 and we can’t wait to start packing up these handsome books to be shipped to readers all over the world.⁠⠀
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Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels are primarily read by children, but she never talks down to her readers, and adults too find her Roman books impossible to put down. All of them are based on historical fact but it’s Sutcliff’s imaginative brilliance that makes you smell the burning cherry log warming old Uncle Aquila’s cosy study, feel the tension in the air at the Saturnalia Games, and shiver in the icy winds howling round the bleak frontier forts along Hadrian’s Wall. Her protagonists, young Romans who have come to love their adopted country and strive to keep its values alive, are no cardboard cut-outs but flesh-and-blood people with understandable weaknesses and beset by recognizable human dilemmas, and it is they who drive the plots.⁠⠀
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A perfect gift for children, grandchildren and godchildren – or for those who are still children at heart. Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman novels can purchased on the Slightly Foxed website foxedquarterly.com⁠⠀
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#rosemarysutcliff #slightlyfoxed #romanhistory #theeagleoftheninth #thesilverbranch #frontierwolf #thelanternbearers #historicalfiction #bookseries #beautifulbooks #illustratedbooks #indiepublishing #yabooks #booksofig #childrensbooks #prettybooks #childrensliterature #cornersofmyworld #verilymoment #readingtogether #lovetoread #neverenoughbooks #stillwithstories #raisingreaders #childrensclassics #bookcollector #readersofig #booksbooksbooks #readmorebooks #booksofinstagram

‘We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply

‘We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.’ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations⁠
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We understand the value of good stationery at Slightly Foxed. Our website has a section dedicated to our postcards, bookplates, greetings cards and notebooks (if you haven’t seen our wares already, you’re in for a treat!). This beautiful blotter wouldn’t look out of place in a Victorian study, accompanied by quill and ink of course. We’re certain Pip would approve 🖋️

‘It’s clear from Two Middle-Aged Ladies that s

‘It’s clear from Two Middle-Aged Ladies that she preferred horses to human . . .’ ‘Airily dismissing the concerns of friends and family, she ‘thanked God for a plain middle age’ which would stave off unwanted attentions. Her mount, the Marquesa, on loan from the Duke of Wellington, a family friend, is described as ‘equivalent in horse age’ to her rider, not beautiful but ‘a good doer . . . the greatest blessing on a ride of this kind’, and blissfully unperturbed by strange stables and strange company. It was she who turned out to be the object of endless attention from Andalusian men, natural horsemen all.’⁠
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Sarah Crowden on Penelope Chetwode’s Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia in Issue 66 of Slightly Foxed magazine.

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