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
Tim Mackintosh-Smith wanders in Greece with Patrick Leigh Fermor • Harriet Sergeant discovers what makes a good diary • Karen Robinson hangs loose in California • Justin Cartwright uncovers the lost world of William Maxwell • Julia Keay finds The Everest Hotel in Dehra Dun • Lyall Watson is delighted by a most unusual museum • Annette Kobak sees England afresh with Karel Čapek • John Saumarez Smith remembers a book-trade character • Ursula Buchan gets dug in with The Potting Shed Papers • Nicholas Bagnall takes to the road with George Borrow • Mary Sullivan meets some refugees from Lilliput in Mistress Masham’s Repose • Andrew Wall discovers retail therapy, and much more besides . . .
An Odd Source of Comfort • HARRIET SERGEANT
Alan & Irene Taylor (eds.), The Assassin’s Cloak
Off All the Standard Maps • TIM MACKINTOSH-SMITH
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Roumeli
Maxwell’s World • JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT
The novels of William Maxwell
Oedipus Schmoedipus • MICHELE HANSON
Ian Dishart Suttie, The Origins of Love and Hate
Mightier than the Sword • ANNETTE KOBAK
Karel Čapek, Letters from England; The Gardener’s Year
Hanging Loose • KAREN ROBINSON
Cyra McFadden, The Serial
The Museum of Jurassic Technology • LYALL WATSON
Lawrence Weschler, Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder
Prang Wizard • MIKE PETTY
Derek Robinson, Goshawk Squadron
The Wind on the Heath • NICHOLAS BAGNALL
George Borrow, Lavengro
My Dear Maggotty Sir • ROGER HUDSON
John Hayes (ed.), The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough
Retail Therapy • ANDREW WALL
Émile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise
An Attraction of Opposites • ANTHONY SATTIN
Diana Athill, After a Funeral
Hadrian to the Life • CAROLINE CHAPMAN
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
Doing a Runner • JOHN SAUMAREZ SMITH
On bookshops and bookselling
Well Dug In • URSULA BUCHAN
Charles Elliott, The Potting Shed Papers
Advice from My Father • JONATHAN SELF
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The Parson and the Squire • BRENDAN LEHANE
Owen Chadwick, Victorian Miniature
Extremely Small People • MARY SULLIVAN
T. H. White, Mistress Masham’s Repose
In Dehra Dun • JULIA KEAY
Allan Sealy, The Everest Hotel
Embarrassing but Inspiring • JOHN URE
John Buchan, The Complete Richard Hannay
Books Under the Piano • HAZEL WOOD
On Maia Press
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.
- Watson, Lyall
- Lehane, Brendan
- Weschler, Lawrence
- Lewis, C. S.
- Wood, Hazel
- American chain bookstores
- White, T. H.
- Bookshops and bookselling
- Smith, John Saumarez
- Keay, Julia
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Sullivan, Mary
- Kobak, Annette
- Suttie, Ian Dishart
- Yourcenar, Marguerite
- Taylor, Irene & Alan
- Zola, Émile
- Ure, John
- Maia Press
- Hudson, Roger
- Lawrence, John
- Wall, Andrew
- Museum of Jurassic Technology, The
- Bagnall, Nicholas
- Athill, Diana
- Borrow, George
- Brett, Simon
- Buchan, John
- Buchan, Ursula
- Capek, Karel (Čapek)
- Cartwright, Justin
- Chadwick, Owen
- Chapman, Caroline
- Elliott, Charles
- Fermor, Patrick Leigh
- Haltiner, Jeff
- Hanson, Michele
- McFadden, Cyra
- Mackintosh-Smith, Tim
- Hayes, John
- Maxwell, William
- Ota, Tsugumi
- Petty, Mike
- Robinson, Derek
- Robinson, Karen
- Sattin, Anthony
- Sealy, Allan
- Self, Jonathan
- Sergeant, Harriet
Slightly Foxed Issue 2: From the Editors
Slightly Foxed was officially launched on 11 March at Daunt Books in Marylebone High Street, w1. Daunt’s was a perfect setting, embodying everything you would hope for in a bookshop – helpful,...
Read moreAn Odd Source of Comfort
Books that have a profound effect on your life are usually books that you read young, but I only recently discovered The Assassin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists....
Read moreOff All the Standard Maps
The only time I have been to Greece as it appears on the modern map was when I was barely out of short trousers. I went with that indispensable aid to travel, an aunt, and with the idea that I knew...
Read moreMaxwell’s World
A curious thing: the New York literary world is smaller than the London literary world. It also has a strange feeling of being more old-fashioned. I was edited there by the legendary Joe Fox. I...
Read moreOedipus Schmoedipus
Eighty years ago Ian Suttie, a Scottish psychiatrist, wrote The Origins of Love and Hate, in which he fiercely criticized Freud’s theories. Freud saw human beings as ‘isolates wrestling with...
Read moreMightier than the Sword
There’s an esprit de l’escalier peculiar to the writer, when your book has just gone to the printer and you hit upon something so crucial to it that you hop about for days cursing at the loss. So...
Read moreHanging Loose
The time is the mid-1970s, the place is Marin County, an affluent Bohemian suburb of San Francisco, the desired state of mind is ‘mellow’. And so the scene is set for a delicious comedy of...
Read moreThe Museum of Jurassic Technology
I blame my grandmother. She was a great beach walker, scouring the coast for seashells thrown up by the Indian Ocean. She had eyes like a hawk, even at 60, finely tuned to any hint of a polished...
Read morePrang Wizard
Goshawk Squadron, a story of the war in the air over the Western Front, is the missing link between Catch-22 and Blackadder. It was Derek Robinson’s first novel, published in 1971, and it was...
Read moreThe Wind on the Heath
‘What’s that book that’s making you laugh so much?’ said my wife. It was my old Everyman Lavengro, still for some reason in its bright red dust jacket, now tattered and torn. It’s a reprint...
Read moreMy Dear Maggotty Sir
If the figures of history are paraded before the mind’s eye, century by century, once the 1750s are reached one seems suddenly to be looking through a zoom lens. The procession of more-or-less...
Read moreRetail Therapy
When I was a small boy, a holiday treat would be to visit my father who, for several decades, was the advertising manager of Pontings department store, the least glamorous if most worthy of its...
Read moreAn Attraction of Opposites
Ghali wrote his novel while living in poverty in Germany. The book was published in 1964 by André Deutsch and, as a result, Ghali met Diana Athill, who worked at Deutsch and is now best known for...
Read moreHadrian to the Life
My first encounter with Memoirs of Hadrian was during a brief holiday in Andalusia. As I drove north from Málaga into the snow-covered hills, my husband turned to the first page. Within a sentence...
Read moreDoing a Runner
In 2002 Anthony Rota, a fourth-generation bookseller, published his memoirs of the antiquarian trade. He has known it for most of his life whereas I only came into it in 1965 after graduating from...
Read moreWell Dug In
Once upon a time, or until about 1960 that is, there existed a genre of horticultural literature called, colloquially, ‘the chatty gardening book’. In fact, the phrase did these books less than...
Read moreAdvice from My Father
‘Everything he wrote was total bilge. Apart, that is to say, from A Grief Observed. The man was a genius when it came to describing grief. I have to give him that. If you are coming to terms with a...
Read moreThe Parson and the Squire
Ten years ago I found myself glancing through a shelf of Canto paperbacks (in Cambridge, where the University Press publishes them), all nicely and cleanly produced, with an appealing colour picture...
Read moreExtremely Small People
I suppose Tom Thumb in the fairy story is usually the first extremely small live person we come across. Early on we’re charmed by the miniature world of dolls’ houses, but the people in them are...
Read moreIn Dehra Dun
I found a copy of Allan Sealy’s The Everest Hotel in a small bookshop in Dehra Dun in northern India. It was the dust jacket that caught my eye – a pen-and-ink drawing of a pair of large gnarled...
Read moreEmbarrassing but Inspiring
We all remember the first novels we read of our own volition, unprompted by parents or schoolmasters: in my case these were John Buchan’s stories of the adventures of Richard Hannay. We were in the...
Read more
