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: Ronald Blythe inherits a library • Maggie Fergusson celebrates Edwin Muir • Robin Blake does detention with Jennings • Rohan Candappa praises Saki • Annabel Walker ponders Pevsner • Christopher Rush revisits Treasure Island • Hazel Wood reflects on the truth of the heart • Simon Heafield goes up in smoke • Derek Robinson falls in love with modern verse • Sue Gee returns to Warsaw, and much more besides . . .
Light Reading • RONALD BLYTHE on pocket-size volumes
The Truth of the Heart • HAZEL WOOD on Rosemary Sutcliff, Blue Remembered Hills
J. C. T. Jennings and the Problem of Evil • ROBIN BLAKE on Anthony Buckeridge, the Jennings books
Going Back • SUE GEE on Radek Sikorski, The Polish House: An Intimate History of Poland
Murder Most Civilized • EMMA HOGAN on Agatha Christie, the Miss Marple books
Islands of the Mind • CHRISTOPHER RUSH on Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Love versus Science • COLIN MARTIN on Carrie Tiffany, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living
Not Getting on with Aunts • ROHAN CANDAPPA on the short stories of Saki
Pevsner’s Great Project • ANNABEL WALKER on Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England
Going up in Smoke • SIMON HEAFIELD on Benoît Duteurtre, The Little Girl and the Cigarette
Gray’s Anomaly • DEREK ROBINSON on the poetry of Billy Collins
One Foot in Eden • MAGGIE FERGUSSON on Edwin Muir, An Autobiography
The Spyglass of Tranquil Recollection • GORDON BOWKER on James Joyce, Dubliners
Between Soft Covers • PATRICK COLDSTREAM on the writing of memoirs
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.
- Gray’s Anatomy
- Sikorski, Radek
- Stevenson, Robert Louis
- Sutcliff, Rosemary
- Tiffany, Carrie
- Walker, Annabel
- Wood, Hazel
- Joyce, James
- Memoirs, the writing of
- Pocket-size volumes
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Blake, Robin
- Blythe, Ronald
- Bowker, Gordon
- Buckeridge, Anthony
- Candappa, Rohan
- Christie, Agatha
- Coldstream, Patrick
- Collins, Billy
- Duteurtre, Benoît
- Fergusson, Maggie
- Gee, Sue
- Heafield, Simon
- Martin, Colin
- Muir, Edwin
- Hogan, Emma
- Nunn, James
- Pevsner, Nikolaus
- Robinson, Derek
- Rush, Christopher
- Saki [Hector Hugh Munro]
Slightly Foxed Issue 17: From the Editors
Well, Spring again, and with it the start of a fresh venture. As we mentioned in the last issue, for some time now we’ve been becoming increasingly aware of the number of excellent books that have...
Read moreLight Reading
When my old friend the artist John Nash died I inherited his books. I imagined him reading them by lamplight, just as I read when I was a boy, the twin wicks faintly waving inside the Swan glass...
Read moreThe Truth of the Heart
I grew up in a house on the edge of a cliff, looking out over a bay. There was an upstairs drawing-room which was never used, and in the evenings when I was a little girl, I would go up there and...
Read moreJ. C. T. Jennings and the Problem of Evil
My first parting of ways came fifty years ago, when I was 8. In September 1957 I was to be sent away to prep school. I could hardly wait. A brand-new brown trunk, inscribed with my name and school...
Read moreGoing Back
Read moreMurder Most Civilized
When I was at school I tried to start an Agatha Christie Club. Number of members (including the Chairman – myself ): three. Number of meetings: zero. This somewhat unenthusiastic response has not...
Read moreIslands of the Mind
I was not aware when I read Treasure Island of the affinities between its famous author and my obscure self: Calvinism, a hellfire-breathing female, a father problem, a terrorized mind and a fevered...
Read moreLove versus Science
Given this personal history, Carrie Tiffany’s quirkily titled first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, struck an immediate chord when the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist was...
Read moreNot Getting on with Aunts
Second-hand copies of The Penguin Complete Saki can be bought on Amazon for a very reasonable £5.60. The book contains 135 short stories, 3 novels and 3 plays. There’s also a foreword by Noël...
Read morePevsner’s Great Project
The forty-six volumes in Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England series were originally intended as guides you could slip into your pocket. I don’t think I’ve ever actually carried one...
Read moreGoing up in Smoke
The dogmatic persecution of those whose unhealthy lifestyle falls below the high standards of the lawmakers is vividly and terrifyingly dramatized in Benoît Duteurtre’s novel The Little Girl and...
Read moreGray’s Anomaly
For years, then, I skipped modern poetry – until I discovered Billy Collins. Cue thunder and lightning! Now I’d walk backwards across town in a blizzard to buy the latest book of Billy...
Read moreOne Foot in Eden
Writing her diary one evening in January 1951, Edwin Muir’s wife Willa reflected that her husband’s poems would live on, but ‘of himself, only a legend’. Why? Contemporary poets united in...
Read moreThe Spyglass of Tranquil Recollection
There are books which sit on our bookshelves for years, getting slightly more foxed as time passes. My Dubliners has followed me to five different addresses and, although a rather flimsy paperback...
Read moreBetween Soft Covers
About a year ago now a smiling vanman delivered twenty-six heavy brown-papered packages from a trolley and stacked them along the side of the hall. I scrabbled one parcel open and there they were:...
Read more
