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: Lyall Watson encounters some helpful fellow-travellers • Sue Gee follows the tale of Orlando the Marmalade Cat • Stephen Glain revisits Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria • Charlie Lee-Potter remembers springtime in Paris • Linda Leatherbarrow enjoys a peak experience • Hilary Macaskill tackles the Cévennes with several donkeys • Richard Platt meets a Kentucky barber • Jim Ring admires the view from a periscope • Ysenda Maxtone Graham goes Ladybird-hunting, and much more besides . . .
Major Problems • CHARLES ELLIOTT on Peter Fleming, Brazilian Adventure
Fellow-Travellers, or The Trouble a Book Can Cause • LYALL WATSON on Michael Andrews, The Life that Lives on Man
Twilight of a Golden Age • STEPHEN GLAIN on Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet
Studying Revenge • JOHN SAUMAREZ SMITH on Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
A Rum Do • LINDA LEATHERBARROW on W. E. Bowman, The Ascent of Rum Doodle
A Kinder, Gentler Thoreau • RICHARD PLATT on Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
The Pencil and the Plough • CHRISTIAN TYLER on Wendell Berry
Always a Healthy Bugger • DENNIS SILK on Sheila Stewart, Lifting the Latch: A Life on the Land
On the Broad Shoulders of a Eunuch Cat • SUE GEE on Kathleen Hale, the Orlando books
A Balkan Adventure • MALCOLM GLUCK on Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Rites of Passage • JIM RING on Edward Young, One of Our Submarines
Travels with Several Donkeys • HILARY MACASKILL on Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
Flight of the Ladybird • YSENDA MAXTONE GRAHAM on the Ladybird Books
Pernod and Gitanes • CHARLIE LEE-POTTER on Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
Flowering Passions • TIM LONGVILLE on James Hamilton-Paterson, Griefwork
Face to Face • NICHOLAS CLEE on interviewing
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.
- Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
- Silk, Dennis
- Smith, John Saumarez
- Stevenson, Robert Louis
- Stewart, Sheila
- Tyler, Christian
- Watson, Lyall
- West, Rebecca
- Young, Edward
- Leatherbarrow, Linda
- Lee-Potter, Charlie
- Parasites and bacteria
- Travel writing
- Ladybird Books
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Andrews, Michael
- Berry, Wendell
- Bowman, W. E.
- Clee, Nicholas
- Dorrell, Simon
- Durrell, Lawrence
- Elliott, Charles
- Fleming, Peter
- Gee, Sue
- Glain, Stephen
- Gluck, Malcolm
- Graham, Ysenda Maxtone
- Hale, Kathleen
- Hamilton-Paterson, James
- Longville, Tim
- Macaskill, Hilary
- Platt, Richard
- Ring, Jim
- Sagan, Françoise
Slightly Foxed Issue 14: From the Editors
No doubt you’ve noticed, as we have, how smartly the press has jumped on to the ecological bandwagon. Over the past twelve months we’ve received special ‘green’ issues of various magazines,...
Read morePernod and Gitanes
One afternoon last summer I splashed along Piccadilly with the rain spray-painting the back of my tights, thinking how much nicer Paris in the sunshine would be. And then, from nowhere, a neglected...
Read moreMajor Problems
I’ve never been to Brazil, and to tell the truth I’m not much interested in going. Even reading about South America doesn’t thrill me. I’m not sure why this should be since I found Central...
Read moreFellow-Travellers, or The Trouble a Book Can Cause
Florence Nightingale steadfastly refused to believe in bacteria, but she was wrong. The horrid truth is that every one of us carries billions of fellow-travellers, and no amount of bathing can ever...
Read moreStudying Revenge
On page 1 he noted the omission of Lord Acton (‘power corrupts etc’) and ten pages later he criticized the sparseness of John Aubrey’s entry, which might be explained by the absence of Brief...
Read moreA Rum Do
Mountaineers can obviously take a joke. In 1981, four years before W. E. Bowman died and a quarter of a century after the publication of his spoof mountaineering book, The Ascent of Rum Doodle, he...
Read moreThe Pencil and the Plough
Wendell Berry is a man who refuses to be categorized, because every label attached to him is a distortion of his views. Or so he feels. This lean and lanky, six-foot-something Kentucky farmer is...
Read moreAlways a Healthy Bugger
It all began in a butcher’s shop in Shipston-on-Stour. In 2000 Sheila Stewart had written an excellent little book about her old daily help, Country Kate, to record for posterity ‘the richness of...
Read moreOn the Broad Shoulders of a Eunuch Cat
In 1917, Kathleen Hale arrived in London, fresh out of art school, ‘with only a few shillings in my pocket, my pince-nez delicately chained to one ear and no qualifications whatsoever for earning a...
Read moreA Balkan Adventure
Contemplating diving into Rebecca West’s great Balkan travel adventure, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, is like contemplating a long bungee jump. It offers both compulsion and revulsion, but once it is...
Read moreRites of Passage
The man from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate was very insistent. On the bucking deck of the tender in Plymouth Sound he engaged me in conversation so closely as to quite obscure my view. She...
Read moreTravels with Several Donkeys
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, Robert Louis Stevenson’s account of his walk through the mountains in 1878, was my mother’s favourite book, which automatically made it one of mine. The...
Read moreFlight of the Ladybird
Quick: bring something to read to him on the train! This last-minute thought, just before setting the burglar alarm, sends me rushing to the pair of small bookshelves outside the bathroom which...
Read moreFlowering Passions
I’ve never had anything you could call A Career. I’ve always either gone where interest suggested and opportunity allowed or just Micawberishly waited for something to turn up. Despite the...
Read moreFace to Face
For fifteen years, I had one of the best jobs in the world. I was book news editor at The Bookseller, and most weeks I included in my pages an interview with an author. I talked to celebrated...
Read more
