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
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Swallows and Amazons for Ever! • JIM RING
Arthur Ransome, The Swallows and Amazons books
How Not to Be a Grandmother • LINDA LEATHERBARROW
Diana Holman-Hunt, My Grandmothers and I
Helluva Hotel • CLIVE UNGER-HAMILTON
Ludwig Bemelmans, Hotel Bemelmans
Listening to the Heartbeat • CHRIS BIRD
On the works of Ryszard Kapuscinski
Birds, Bees and Scorpions • NICHOLAS MURRAY
Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
Dog Days • JEREMY NOEL-TOD
W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
Ad Hoc through Afghanistan • DERVLA MURPHY
Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World
The Tape-recorder Man • DAVID SPILLER
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
Graham Greene, Journey without Maps
Vatican Evasions • JOHN DE FALBE
Branko Bokun, Spy in the Vatican
The Siren Call • PATRICK EVANS
Ernle Bradford, Ulysses Found
Confessions of a TV Tie-in • TIM MACKINTOSH-SMITH
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
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...
Read moreSalisbury Watermeadows
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...
Read moreSwallows and Amazons for Ever!
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...
Read moreDog Days
‘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...
Read moreThe Sensation of Crossing the Street
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...
Read moreHow Not to Be a Grandmother
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...
Read moreHelluva Hotel
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...
Read moreListening to the Heartbeat
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,...
Read moreBirds, Bees and Scorpions
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...
Read moreAd Hoc through Afghanistan
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...
Read moreA Pirate of Exquisite Mind
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...
Read moreThe Tape-recorder Man
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...
Read moreA Cat’s Life
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...
Read moreGreene but Colourful
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...
Read moreVatican Evasions
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...
Read moreThe Siren Call
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...
Read moreConfessions of a TV Tie-in
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...
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