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Slightly Foxed Issue 60
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  • ISBN: 9781910898246
  • Pages: 96
  • Dimensions: 210 x 148mm
  • Illustrations: B/W
  • Publication date: 1 December 2018
  • Producer: Smith Settle
  • Cover artist: Chris Wormell, ‘The Fox’, wood engraving
  • Inside Cover artist: Posy Simmonds, 'Office Life'
  • ISSN: 1742-5794
Made in Britain

Slightly Foxed Issue 60

A Dickens of a Riot

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‘A vibrant and stimulating literary diamond’ Dovegrey Reader

Open up a world of new reading with Slightly Foxed, the quarterly magazine for booklovers. Companionable, entertaining and elegantly produced, it’s more like a well-read friend than a literary review.

In this issue

Daisy Hay runs riot with Dickens • Alan Bradley stands up for purple prose • Hazel Wood meets an uncommon reader • Frances Donnelly finds a gap in the alphabet • Justin Marozzi is charmed by a modest mountaineer • Anne Boston gets the shivers in Cold War Siberia • Nigel Andrew wonders what happened to Elizabeth Jenkins • Sue Gaisford is seduced by a wicked Earl • Laurence Scott gets out his guitar • Sue Gee meets the man who drew Pooh • Richard Platt is gripped by the story of a lost will •  Victoria Neumark goes in search of unicorns • Alastair Glegg says a belated thank you, and much more besides . . .


A Dickens of a Riot • DAISY HAY

Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

Between the Lines • SUE GEE

E. H. Shepard, Drawn from Memory & Drawn from Life

From Bloomsbury . . . • ALAN BRADLEY

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

. . . to Buckingham Palace • HAZEL WOOD

Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

Rock, Root and Bird • JUSTIN MAROZZI

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain

Keeping Ahead of the Game • CHRISTOPHER RUSH

Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Russian Roulette • ANNE BOSTON

Lionel Davidson, Kolymsky Heights

Incorrigible and Irresistible • SUE GAISFORD

The letters of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

A Modern Pied Piper • MAGGIE FERGUSSON

An interview with Michael Morpurgo

Histories of the Soul • CHRISTIAN TYLER

The works of Svetlana Alexievich

Whatever Happened to Elizabeth Jenkins? • NIGEL ANDREW

The novels of Elizabeth Jenkins

In Search of Unicorns • VICTORIA NEUMARK

Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse & Linnets and Valerians

Grave Expectations • RICHARD PLATT

Charles Palliser, The Quincunx

Kinsey Makes a Difference • FRANCES DONNELLY

Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone Alphabet novels

The Next Bob Dylan • Laurence Scott

Bert Weedon, Play in a Day

Unsung Heroes • ALASTAIR GLEGG

Learning to read at prep school


About Slightly Foxed

The independent-minded quarterly that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it’s more like a well-read friend than a literary magazine. Read more about Slightly Foxed.

‘It ranks as one of the more unusual publications I have ever come across and manages to be both literary and easily readable. I consider myself fairly well-read but Slightly Foxed never fails to dazzle me upon its arrival. ’ Bookslut

‘Slightly Foxed’s best offering is its quarterly, in which a dozen or so elegant essays make a case for various amusing but neglected books. A subscription would make an inspired gift for a hungry reader.’ Telegraph

‘A highly diverting antitode to the gloom of winter’ The Tablet



Slightly Foxed Issue 60: From the Editors

Well, this issue is our 60th, and it’s making us feel a bit ruminative – emotional even – remembering the little group (four plus a baby) who sat round Gail’s kitchen table, discussing an...

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Between the Lines

It is hard to know whether it is the featherlight words of A. A. Milne or the airy ‘decorations’ of E. H. Shepard that everyone has ever since loved the more, so perfect was their partnership ....

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Whatever Happened to Elizabeth Jenkins?

When she died in 2010, at the astonishing age of 104, the novelist and biographer Elizabeth Jenkins was all but forgotten, her name known only to a few aficionados, her books mostly long out of...

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‘What a delightful 60th issue of Slightly Foxed . . . ’

‘What a delightful 60th issue of Slightly Foxed, especially the art work by Posy Simmonds. Enjoyable to see the dogs portrayed, Stanley looks to be a dog with attitude. I also enjoyed and can...

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Unsung Heroes

The library at Fonthill Preparatory School was just what I imagined a Gentlemen’s Club to be like: shiny brown leather armchairs with velvet cushions, long oak tables, panelled walls, a coal fire...

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Grave Expectations

The leitmotiv of The Quincunx is the interplay of Chance and Design – do we perceive Design in our lives, or merely impose it? – underscored by the recurrence of those Dickensian coincidences...

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A Dickens of a Riot

Last year I decided that I felt like reading Dickens at Christmas. Resisting the temptation to turn to old and reliable fireside favourites, I alighted instead on Barnaby Rudge. It seemed a choice...

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From Bloomsbury . . .

Notoriously, Woolf doesn’t write about the women on whom she herself depended for home comforts but, mostly, about those who were educated and wealthy enough to write diaries or letters. But she...

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. . . to Buckingham Palace

How Bennett must have enjoyed writing this book. The Palace setting, with its hierarchies and snobberies and constipated bureaucracy, and the shrewd no-nonsense voice of his central character, allow...

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Rock, Root and Bird

The Living Mountain, thankfully, is a treasure that, rather like the Cairngorms it describes so wondrously, stands alone in space and time. Happening on it at any point in one’s reading life brings...

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Keeping Ahead of the Game

Most of us can respond with deep childhood memories to the line ‘I’m going to tell you a story’, words which we repeat to our own children and grandchildren; and this is the formula applied by...

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Russian Roulette

I met Davidson in 1994 when Kolymsky Heights, his last and arguably his finest, was published. He was slight and unassuming, with expressive dark eyes that widened when I showed him my early proof...

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Incorrigible and Irresistible

On our course we were studying Rochester, as published in the Muses Library edition, and while we were certainly impressed by the rage and ingenuity of his satires, most of us had fallen slightly in...

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A Modern Pied Piper

For generations of children, Michael Morpurgo has been a kind of Pied Piper. No one is sure exactly how many books he’s written, but there are over 150 of them, and they are said to have sold, in...

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Histories of the Soul

Alexievich was not interested in conventional responses, the kind of thing people say to journalists when they are shy, afraid of controversy or anxious to please. Since this was Russia, she had also...

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In Search of Unicorns

Like Traherne Goudge was an ardent Anglican. But although religion can be an oppressive presence in her adult novels, in her children’s books it manifests itself merely as a sense of embracing...

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Kinsey Makes a Difference

There are authors’ deaths, announced casually on the radio, that provoke an involuntary cry of loss. The recent death of Sue Grafton, author of the alphabetically themed Kinsey Millhone detective...

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The Next Bob Dylan

In 1950 guitars were rare in the UK and sales barely touched 5,000, but Elvis, Cliff and British rock ’n’ roll changed all that. In 1957, when Play in a Day was first published, annual UK guitar...

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Comments & Reviews

Leave your review

  1. Michael Palin says:

    Slightly Foxed is a very civilised way to appreciate books and writers. No shouting, no hype, just beautifully presented enthusiasms, most of which are irresistible. Happy 60th!

  2. Adam Foulds says:

    Slightly Foxed is a perfect readers’ periodical and every issue is a joy. In its pages, books you don’t yet know come to light and books you already love come to life.

  3. Hilary Mantel says:

    The business of reading should please the hand and eye as well as the brain, and Slightly Foxed editions – books or quarterly – are elegant creations. Content follows form, offering new discoveries and old favourites to curious and discriminating readers.

  4. Damian Barr says:

    I adore Slightly Foxed. It should be made available in every school as it challenges the idea of the canon. The quarterly is full of impassioned pleas and raves about curious obsessions and literary passions, and to read of these passions is a real privilege.

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