Slightly Foxed Issue 18

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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: Sue Gee goes to a party • Clive Unger-Hamilton discovers one helluva hotel • Dervla Murphy returns to the Hindu Kush • Tim Mackintosh-Smith visits a Crimean pet shop • Jeremy Lewis travels without maps • Linda Leatherbarrow praises grandmothers • Jim Ring discovers Swallows and Amazons are for ever • David Spiller switches on his tape-recorder • Chris Bird celebrates a Pole, and much more besides . . .

The Sensation of Crossing the Street • SUE GEE on Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

Swallows and Amazons for Ever! • JIM RING on Arthur Ransome, The Swallows and Amazons books

How Not to Be a Grandmother • LINDA LEATHERBARROW on Diana Holman-Hunt, My Grandmothers and I

Helluva Hotel • CLIVE UNGER-HAMILTON on Ludwig Bemelmans, Hotel Bemelmans

Listening to the Heartbeat • CHRIS BIRD on the works of Ryszard Kapuscinski

Birds, Bees and Scorpions • NICHOLAS MURRAY on Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

Dog Days • JEREMY NOEL-TOD on W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

Ad Hoc through Afghanistan • DERVLA MURPHY on Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

The Tape-recorder Man • DAVID SPILLER on Tony Parker, The People of Providence

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind • DIANA PRESTON on the works of William Dampier

A Cat’s Life • SOPHIE MASSON on the works of Nicholas Stuart Gray

Greene but Colourful • JEREMY LEWIS on Graham Greene, Journey without Maps

Vatican Evasions • JOHN DE FALBE on Branko Bokun, Spy in the Vatican

The Siren Call • PATRICK EVANS on Ernle Bradford, Ulysses Found

Confessions of a TV Tie-in • TIM MACKINTOSH-SMITH on Ibn Battutah, The Travels of Ibn Battutah

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 18: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

One of the things we’ve learned during the four plus years we’ve been going is that you, our subscribers, are the kind of people who like to keep in touch. You write to us (such heart-warming...

Salisbury Watermeadows

Howard Phipps

This woodcut by Howard Phipps, 'Salisbury Watermeadows' from Bemerton Rectory, home of the poet George Herbert, first appeared on the contents page of Slightly Foxed Issue 18 in Summer 2008, but more...

Swallows and Amazons for Ever!

Jim Ring on Arthur Ransome, The Swallows and Amazons books

The train from the south drew in to the junction with the line that led to the hills. We changed, and already there was freshness in the air on a day of azure skies and deep shadows. I went to admire...

Dog Days

Jeremy Noel-Tod on W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

‘In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk.’ My copy of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn – of which these are the opening words...

The Sensation of Crossing the Street

Sue Gee on Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

I remember thinking clearly: what a momentous day this is, and here I am, reading a novel set in London on a single day. What a chime, what an echo! These were not the words I used to myself, as I...

How Not to Be a Grandmother

Linda Leatherbarrow on Diana Holman-Hunt, My Grandmothers and I

My grandmother’s idea of cooking was cracking open a raw egg and hurling the contents straight down her throat. She was a poet, deeply religious, immersed in the world of the spirit, never the...

Helluva Hotel

Clive Unger-Hamilton on Ludwig Bemelmans, Hotel Bemelmans

The Ritz Carlton/Splendide was to be Bemelmans’s home for many years, and his book about it, which first appeared in 1956, has now been reissued in a slightly truncated form together with other...

Listening to the Heartbeat

Chris Bird on the works of Ryszard Kapuscinski

Ryszard Kapuscinski understood the pitfalls of news reporting perfectly. He eschewed any pretence of being a dashing correspondent and wrote of the strange drive that propelled him to dangerous,...

Birds, Bees and Scorpions

Nicholas Murray on Gerald Durrell My Family and Other Animals

If one were searching for the perfect antidote to Mis-lit one would find it triumphantly in Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals. First published in 1956 and in print ever since, the book...

Ad Hoc through Afghanistan

Dervla Murphy on Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

Which century are we in? Which country? Nicolas Bouvier’s vignette in The Way of the World won’t puzzle those of us (a rapidly dwindling cohort) who can remember Afghanistan during the reign of...

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind

Diana Preston on the works of William Dampier

We found William Dampier by chance. He was a small footnote in a book about buccaneers – those ‘original pirates of the Caribbean’ – which mentioned that there was a painting of him in the...

The Tape-recorder Man

David Spiller on Tony Parker, The People of Providence

In the mid-twentieth century a new device came into common use, enabling every Tom, Dick and Harry to record and play back sounds stored on magnetic tape. Arriving some 500 years after Gutenberg, the...

A Cat’s Life

Sophie Masson on the works of Nicholas Stuart Gray

If you were a bookworm as a child, your memories are measured not only in family and school and public events, but also in the stories you read. You remember vividly the smell, the touch, the sight...

Greene but Colourful

Jeremy Lewis on Graham Greene, Journey without Maps

For the past couple of years I’ve been researching a book about the Greene family. The Greene King brewery, on which its fortunes are based, dates back to the Napoleonic period, but since I’m...

Vatican Evasions

John de Falbe on Branko Bokun, Spy in the Vatican

In 1986, when I had just started at the bookshop where I still work, I was given a book by a tall, amiable man in late middle age. He was the book’s author and he had just reprinted it himself. He...

The Siren Call

Patrick Evans on Ernle Bradford, Ulysses Found

In 1963, with twenty years’ cruising the Mediterranean in destroyers and small yachts under his belt, an ex-naval officer and historian named Ernle Bradford sat down to trace the geography of the...

Confessions of a TV Tie-in

Tim Mackintosh-Smith on Ibn Battutah, The Travels of Ibn Battutah

I’m no lover of rats. At various times I’ve shot, bludgeoned and poisoned them (Warfarin Creams work best: take a standard Bourbon biscuit and mix the poison with the chocolate filling). I’d...