In this issue
Rachel Campbell-Johnson recalls her Wilder moments • Christopher Robbins anatomizes courage • Anne Boston does a midnight flit • Richard Ingrams meets an early ecologist • Grant McIntyre examines the eyesight of wasps • Oliver Pritchett walks the London streets • Ruth Symes captures the castle • Jeff Nicholl finds an eagle in his attic • David Platzer outdoes James Bond . . .
A Lonely Furrow • RICHARD INGRAMS
The writings of John Stewart Collis
The Eyesight of Wasps • GRANT MCINTYRE
Niko Tinbergen, Curious Naturalists; The Herring Gull’s World
Avid to Live and Learn • ANNE BOSTON
V. S. Pritchett, A Cab at the Door
Strolling with Dickens • OLIVER PRITCHETT
On walking in London with with Dickens
The Man from Department K • DAVID PLATZER
James Munro’s John Craig thrillers
The Tricks War Plays • CHRISTOPHER ROBBINS
Lord Moran, The Anatomy of Courage
Southern Comfort • JOSIE BARNARD
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying; The Sound and the Fury
Inside the Aunt Heap • TIM HEALD
Robin Eakin, Aunts up the Cross
An Eagle in the Attic • JEFF NICOLL
Stephen Bodio, Querencia
Tutu Wonderful • SARAH CROWDEN
Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes
A Spiritual Affinity • JOHN SHEPPARD
On the letters of Raymond Chandler
Great Escapes • PAUL ATTERBURY
On the life and writings of George Millar
Brother Juniper’s Inquisition • RACHEL CAMPBELL-JOHNSTON
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Growing up American • JONTY DRIVER
Mary McCarthy, Birds of America
The Making of a Writer • RUTH SYMES
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Recognizing an Imagination Need • CONSTANCE VIDOR
On storytelling
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. More . . .
- Atterbury, Paul
- Barnard, Josie
- Bodio, Stephen
- Boston, Anne
- Campbell-Johnston, Rachel
- Collis, John Stewart
- Crowden, Sarah
- Driver, C. J.
- Eakin, Robin
- Faulkner, William
- Gardiner, Dorothy & Walker, Katherine Sorley
- Heald, Tim
- Hiney, Tom & MacShane, Frank
- Ingrams, Richard
- Macklin, Daniel
- MacShane, Frank & Hiney, Tom
- McCarthy, Mary
- McIntyre, Grant
- Millar, George
- Moran, Lord
- Munro, James
- Nicoll, Jeff
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Platzer, David
- Pritchett, Oliver
- Pritchett, V. S.
- Robbins, Christopher
- Smith, Dodie
- Storytelling
- Streatfeild, Noel
- Symes, Ruth A.
- Tinbergen, Niko
- Vidor, Constance
- Walker, Katherine Sorley & Gardiner, Dorothy
- Wilder, Thornton
Avid to Live and Learn
I shall always be grateful to A Cab at the Door. I read most of it one Sunday evening in a Victoria line tube train which was stuck for two hours outside King’s Cross station. The train lights...
Read moreA Lonely Furrow
John Stewart Collis hated to be referred to as ‘a neglected writer’. He said that if people read that a writer is neglected their natural response is to say, ‘Well, let’s neglect him some...
Read moreThe Eyesight of Wasps
I discovered Niko Tinbergen’s Curious Naturalists as a student. I was reading psychology and the course had just begun with a look at animal behaviour, which involved a grasp of scientific method...
Read moreStrolling with Dickens
When I was a child in the late 1940s and early 1950s I believed that my father was a close personal friend of Charles Dickens. They must, I thought, have met at various inns in London and shared...
Read moreThe Man from Department K
I might never have discovered James Munro’s John Craig thrillers had I not seen the film of the last of them, The Innocent Bystanders, in early 1973. Christina Foyle remarked at the time of...
Read moreThe Tricks War Plays
One day early in the First World War, an inexperienced young doctor serving with the Royal Fusiliers examined a sergeant who was ‘out of sorts’. The man had a reputation for being imperturbable...
Read moreSouthern Comfort
When I sat down to start this piece, I nearly got tangled up in theory. William Faulkner was so brilliantly experimental with form, and consequently captured the interests of literary critics over...
Read moreInside the Aunt Heap
Aunts up the Cross begins and ends with the death of the author’s great-aunt Juliet, aged 85 and frankly pretty eccentric if not down-right mad. She was run over by a bus which was travelling...
Read moreAn Eagle in the Attic
The epigraph to Querencia, by my friend Stephen Bodio, explains that the title is a term taken from the bullring, denoting the imagined, and illusory, sanctuary sought by a bull entering the ring,...
Read moreTutu Wonderful
Noel Streatfeild’s children’s classic Ballet Shoes, published in 1936, remains a favourite for anybody interested in theatre. Whenever one mentions a first-class book of this kind, if the adult...
Read moreA Spiritual Affinity
I don’t know about you, but I have a number of books on the go at any one time. There’s one in the downstairs loo, one in the bathroom, a couple by my armchair in the living-room, and two or...
Read moreGreat Escapes
At various times in my life, from my twenties to my fifties, I planned to travel through France by boat. As real life gradually rendered the achievement of this ambition ever more unlikely, I took to...
Read moreBrother Juniper’s Inquisition
Sometimes, confessing to a favourite book can bring a flush of embarrassment to the cheeks. We tend to make such selections at a susceptible age and they don’t necessarily stand up to the test of...
Read moreGrowing up American
Birds of America is supposed to be Mary McCarthy’s weakest novel, though it was her own favourite. Yet it is a fine book – a brilliant study of a clever, odd teenager growing into a man. And like...
Read moreThe Making of a Writer
Something half-remembered involving a writer locked in a tower, and a conviction that my first encounter – literary or otherwise – with the drink crème de menthe took place within its pages:...
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