Slightly Foxed Issue 15

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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: Wim d’Haveloose goes walkabout • Josie Barnard visits Oxfam • Jon Stallworthy recalls a golden warrior • Bevis Hillier remembers the Pre-Raphaelites • Ariane Bankes joins the rag trade • Hazel Wood presents a Posy • Peter Gill heads for the hills • Gregory Norminton mourns Keats • Richard Platt talks to a Guernseyman, and much more besides . . .

Underwear Was Important • HAZEL WOOD on the cartoons of Posy Simmonds

A Guernsey Lad • RICHARD PLATT on G. B. Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

Inside the Brotherhood • BEVIS HILLIER on William Gaunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy

Illumination and Shadow • KAREN ROBINSON on Alan Furst, The Foreign Correspondent

A Landscape without Figures • WIM D’HAVELOOSE on Patrick White, Voss

Large Busts and Slim Margins • ARIANE BANKES on Eric Newby, Something Wholesale

Chronicle of Loss • JOHN DE FALBE on the novels of Gregor von Rezzori

In Flight from Fitchville • KATE DUNN on Lorrie Moore, Anagrams

Heading for the Hills • PETER GILL on the works of John Keay

England’s Epic • JON STALLWORTHY on Hope Muntz, The Golden Warrior

Rescued by the Milkman • LUCY LETHBRIDGE on the memoirs of Margaret Powell

A Too-Early Death • GREGORY NORMINTON on Anthony Burgess, Abba Abba

Bottoms Up • MATTHEW J. REISZ on Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-century London

After the Anschluss • JESSICA MANN on the novels of Sarah Gainham

Impossible Love • PATRICIA CLEVELAND-PECK on Andrea di Robilant, A Venetian Affair: A True Story of Impossible Love in the Eighteenth Century

Transports of Delight • JOSIE BARNARD on Charity bookshops

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 15: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Time and tide, as they say, wait for no man, and the past few months have seen some significant changes in the office of Slightly Foxed. Our marketing manager Kathleen, who did wonderful work in...

Underwear Was Important

Hazel Wood on the cartoons of Posy Simmonds

Posy’s dialogue is as good as her draughtsmanship, and she has a talent for names (an area in which so many writers fall down) which is as good as that of Evelyn Waugh or Anthony Powell. What...

A Guernsey Lad

Richard Platt on G. B. Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

I have just returned from a long holiday in the Channel Islands visiting with Ebenezer Le Page, an old and valued friend, at Les Moulins, Ebenezer’s cottage by the sea. It is built of the same blue...

Inside the Brotherhood

Bevis Hillier on William Gaunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy

I first read the book when I was 16; later, Gaunt became a recurring figure in my life, cropping up unexpectedly like one of the incidental characters in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of...

Illumination and Shadow

Karen Robinson on Alan Furst, The Foreign Correspondent

‘It is Europe that is dying, my friends.’ This gloomy observation is, his devoted fans will recognize, the very essence of Alan Furst. It is delivered, in this case, by an anti-fascist Italian...

A Landscape Without Figures

Wim D'Haveloose on Patrick White, Voss

I first read Voss about forty years ago and didn’t pick it up again until very recently. A few years later I was somewhat disappointed by one or two of White’s other books and this must have...

Large Busts and Slim Margins

Ariane Bankes on Eric Newby, Something Wholesale

It remains one of the more surprising facts of life that the intrepid traveller Eric Newby, who by the time I knew him had the weatherbeaten cragginess of a man only happy when halfway up the Hindu...

Chronicle of Loss

John de Falbe on the novels of Gregor von Rezzori

‘I myself – pampered by my Jewish friends – was a steadfast anti-Semite.’ There are enough reflections from [von Rezzori's] autobiographical work to show that he was intimately acquainted...

In Flight from Fitchville

Kate Dunn on Lorrie Moore, Anagrams

The shelves in my study are crammed with books that I only quite like, to the extent that I think they barely represent my taste in reading, largely because I have pressed all my favourites on...

Heading for the Hills

Peter Gill on the works of John Keay

The focus of John Keay’s two books is the evolving imperial game that British India played on its north-west frontier. The Khyber Pass was one of the great invasion routes of history, and for all...

England’s Epic

Jon Stallworthy on Hope Muntz, The Golden Warrior

The Golden Warrior is not ‘an ordinary historical novel’ in any sense. These, and even extraordinary historical novels like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, tend to be written by novelists who have...

Rescued by the Milkman

Lucy Lethbridge on the memoirs of Margaret Powell

When I began to research the lives of twentieth-century domestic servants, I was surprised by the number of servants’ memoirs that had been published in the second half of the century. It seemed...

A Too-Early Death

Gregory Norminton on Anthony Burgess, Abba Abba

I am one of those fastidious individuals who, before travelling, has to draw up a reading list suited to the place he is to visit. For this reason, on a recent trip to Rome, I reread Abba Abba (one...

Bottoms Up

Matthew J. Reisz on Vic Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-century London

Vic Gatrell’s book City of Laughter paints a compelling, seductive picture of London in a lost Golden Age – the Golden Age revealed in the hundreds of satirical prints that poured from the...

After the Anschluss

Jessica Mann on the novels of Sarah Gainham

It takes a special sort of long-term determination and courage to risk one’s life for someone else’s sake. Would the friends who protected Anne Frank’s family in their secret annexe have...

Impossible Love

Patricia Cleveland-Peck on Andrea di Robilant, A Venetian Affair: A True Story of Impossible Love in the Eighteenth Century

As I make my way through narrow passages and over numerous little bridges, I am trying to imagine a Venice of two and a half centuries ago, the Venice of A Venetian Affair by Andrea di...

Transports of Delight

Josie Barnard on Charity bookshops

I have a pocketful of change. Around me, there’s the sound of clothes hangers on rails. Beyond a bin of old toys there’s a clink of crockery. The flooring’s worn, the smell is musty. I can...