Slightly Foxed Issue 12

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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.

In this issue: David Gilmour recalls the Pax Britannica • Barnaby Rogerson haunts Gormenghast . . . and Sebastian Peake describes growing up with a genius • Kate Berridge delights in the Heptaplasiesoptron • Ariane Bankes goes to the wars • P. D. James meets a tragedy at law • Derek Robinson discovers the pitfalls of plagiarism • Travis Elborough says goodbye to Hollywood • William Palmer witnesses Soames’s second coming • John Saumarez Smith remembers a real reader, and much more besides . . .

The Irresistible Heptaplasiesoptron • KATE BERRIDGE on Ricky Jay, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women; Extraordinary Exhibitions

The Judge’s Progress • P. D. JAMES on Cyril Hare, Tragedy at Law

Possessed by Peake • BARNABY ROGERSON on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels

The Call of Sark • SEBASTIAN PEAKE on Mervyn Peake, Mr Pye

Mortality and Uncle Mort • MARCUS BERKMANN on the novels of Peter Tinniswood

Dominion over Palm and Pine • DAVID GILMOUR on Jan Morris, the Pax Britannica trilogy

French without Tears • KAREN ROBINSON on Sébastien Japrisot, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun

Beyond the Wardrobe • SARAH CROWDEN on the works of C. S. Lewis

A Real Reader • JOHN SAUMAREZ SMITH on Sandra Raphael

Goodbye to Hollywood • TRAVIS ELBOROUGH on the novels, memoirs and film scripts of Gavin Lambert

Brothers in the Abruzzi • ARIANE BANKES on John Verney, Going to the Wars; A Dinner of Herbs

Memory and Lost Time • ANNE BOSTON on Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Oddballs in New York • LUCY LETHBRIDGE on Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

The School Magazine and Me • SOPHIE MASSON on The School Magazine

Soames’s Second Coming • WILLIAM PALMER on Max Beerbohm, Seven Men and Two Others

Occupational Hazard • DEREK ROBINSON on plagiarism

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.

Slightly Foxed Issue 12: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Well, it’s Christmas again. We’re glad to report that as the year ends Slightly Foxed is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with subscriptions coming in, the direct debit system up and running, and an...

The Irresistible Heptaplasiesoptron

Kate Berridge on Ricky Jay, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women; Extraordinary Exhibitions

Ricky Jay’s Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women is an enchantingly idiosyncratic overview of popular entertainments, including those of the title. It also exposes many of the scams on the circuit, my...

The Judge’s Progress

P. D. James on Cyril Hare, Tragedy at Law

Cyril Hare is the pseudonym of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, who was born in 1900 and died in 1958. He was a barrister who became a county court judge and took his writing name from his London home,...

Possessed by Peake

Barnaby Rogerson on the Gormenghast novels of Mervyn Peake

For a young adult setting out into the world, however, leaving behind either college or close-knit community, I would instinctively choose Mervyn Peake. Not any Peake, mind; it has to be Titus Groan...

The Call of Sark

Sebastian Peake on Mervyn Peake, Mr Pye

In the summer of 1933, after leaving the Royal Academy Schools where one of his paintings had just been accepted for the Summer Exhibition, my father Mervyn Peake abandoned London for Sark in the...

Mortality and Uncle Mort

Marcus Berkmann on the novels of Peter Tinniswood

Dominion over Palm and Pine

David Gilmour on Jan Morris, the Pax Britannica trilogy

When people ask me what they should read about the Empire, I suggest they go to the five volumes of the Oxford History of the British Empire, where they will find a mass of recent research...

French without Tears

Karen Robinson on Sébastien Japrisot, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun

Sébastien Japrisot is a name that sounds thoroughly French, though it snags awkwardly on the hinges of the surname. Which is because it’s actually an anagram of the author’s real name, the more...

Beyond the Wardrobe

Sarah Crowden on the works of C. S. Lewis

A Real Reader

John Saumarez Smith on Sandra Raphael

In the end we decided against opening an American branch of the shop but I was reminded of the discovery of Parnassus on Wheels last July when I was asked to buy the books of someone who had been...

Goodbye to Hollywood

Travis Elborough on the novels, memoirs and film scripts of Gavin Lambert

Lambert had been the editor of Sight and Sound from 1949 to 1955 and was almost single-handedly responsible for transforming it from, in his words, ‘an intolerably boring magazine’ into one of...

Brothers in the Abruzzi

Ariane Bankes on John Verney, Going to the Wars; A Dinner of Herbs

John Verney, painter, illustrator, author and inventor of the invaluable maverick desk diary, the Dodo Pad (‘to stop one becoming extinct from the pressures of modern life’), loomed large in my...

Memory and Lost Time

Anne Boston on Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

Oddballs of New York

Lucy Lethbridge on Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

When I went to live for a short time in New York in the mid-1990s, a friend gave me a copy of Up in the Old Hotel, a selection of the 1940s and ’50s New Yorker writings of Joseph Mitchell. I shall...

The School Magazine and Me

Sophie Masson on The School Magazine

I came to Australia as a French-speaking child, without a word of English, and started school in Sydney within only a few weeks of arriving. Today, I am an author of children’s books, and English...

Soames’s Second Coming

William Palmer on Max Beerbohm, Seven Men and Two Others

I bought my copy of Seven Men in the late Sixties in a secondhand bookshop in Sutton Coldfield. The town had two second-hand bookshops, which both closed years ago, but I can recall every shelf and...

Occupational Hazard

Derek Robinson on plagiarism

As the recent Da Vinci Code spat demonstrated, complaints of plagiarism reach far beyond Aussie mapmakers. When Arthur Halliwell created his hefty film guide, he added a non-existent movie which in...