Slightly Foxed Issue 20

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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: David Spiller rereads a remarkable correspondence • Rohan Candappa meets the Wild Things • Maggie Fergusson raises three cheers for Mrs Harris • Trevor Fishlock takes the train to Pakistan • Frances Wood makes a statement • Michele Hanson pursues love • Richard Hughes recalls a Knight to remember • Ariane Bankes does some housekeeping, and much more besides . . .

Shrieks and Floods • MICHELE HANSON on Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love; Love in a Cold Climate

Putting up Useful Shelves • SUE GEE on Richard Kennedy, A Boy at the Hogarth Press & A Parcel of Time

Life with Aunt Sylvie • ARIANE BANKES on Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Nobody Ever Writes to Me • DAVID SPILLER on Rupert Hart-Davis & George Lyttleton, The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters

Orders from Swaledale • ROGER HUDSON on Rupert Hart-Davis & George Lyttleton, The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters

The Magic of Max and Mickey • ROHAN CANDAPPA on the works of Maurice Sendak

Travels with the Father of History • JUSTIN MAROZZI on Herodotus, Histories

The Temptation of Mrs Harris • MAGGIE FERGUSSON on Paul Gallico, Flowers for Mrs Harris

Do You Mind Me Just Asking? • LINDA LEATHERBARROW on The Paris Review

A Visit from God • WILLIAM PALMER on Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

Unparliamentary Words • TREVOR FISHLOCK on Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan

Umbrellas at Dawn • RICHARD HUGHES the novels of Hugh Walpole

Jeremy Makes a Stand • HAZEL WOOD on Hugh Walpole, the Jeremy books

A Noble Cause • JOHN SAUMAREZ SMITH on Iris Origo, War in Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943–1944

Freudful Myth-Information • JEREMY NOEL-TOD on W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, And Now All This

Saying It with Books • FRANCES WOOD on book titles

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 20: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

This issue marks a bit of a celebration for us – Slightly Foxed’s fifth we birthday. It seems no time ago – certainly not twenty issues – that we we’re sitting round the kitchen table,...

The Temptation of Mrs Harris

Maggie Fergusson on Paul Gallico, Flowers for Mrs Harris

It was astonishing to me that a grown-up could cry, and more than astonishing that anyone should cry for joy. The memory came back to me a few weeks ago, as I reread, with my 9-year-old daughter,...

Putting up Useful Shelves

Sue Gee on Richard Kennedy, A Boy at the Hogarth Press & A Parcel of Time

In 1922, Richard Kennedy’s formidable grandmother pulled a well-connected string and got him a scholarship to Marlborough. To say that Kennedy’s education up to this point had been patchy is an...

A Boy at the Hogarth Press | Orlando is selling like hot cakes

Richard Kennedy, A Boy at the Hogarth Press & A Parcel of Time

The leaves are starting to pile up in the Square. Pinker scurries about in them. Maynard Keynes and Lopokova are being blown along – a vast ship accompanied by a trim little tug. LW showed me how...

A Noble Cause

John Saumarez Smith, Iris Origo, War in Val d’Orcia

War in Val d’Orcia consists of the diary Iris Origo kept between the end of January 1943 and July 1944. The Origos were based throughout at La Foce, south of Montepulciano in central Italy, though...

Shrieks and Floods

Michele Hanson on The Pursuit of Love; Love in a Cold Climate

It’s been hard to avoid the Mitfords recently. A collected edition of the letters of Jessica (‘Decca’) was published in 2006. The following year another collection, this time of the letters...

Life with Aunt Sylvie

Ariane Bankes on Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Once in a blue moon an encounter with a new book can be like falling in love – you just know, instinctively, that you’ve found a voice that’s entirely sympathetic, and that you want to spend...

Nobody Ever Writes to Me

David Spiller on Rupert Hart-Davis & George Lyttleton, The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters

Readers of the published letters between George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis are like members of a club to which access is provided by introduction. My own introduction came in Delhi from my...

Orders from Swaledale

Roger Hudson on Rupert Hart-Davis & George Lyttleton, The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters

Rupert Hart-Davis retired to Swaledale from the London publishing world two years before I joined it in 1965, so it was on the shelves of second-hand bookshops that his name first really registered...

The Magic of Max and Mickey

Rohan Candappa on the works of Maurice Sendak

For me it all started the night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or another. But then again, that’s how it started for most of us who’ve read Maurice Sendak. Max is the hero...

Saying It with Books

Frances Wood on book titles

One of my favourite books is Wolfgang Kohler’s The Mentality of Apes. I haven’t actually read more than a couple of paragraphs at a time because the contents are of less significance to me than...

Do You Mind Me Just Asking?

Linda Leatherbarrow on The Paris Review

There are some questions that you should never ask a writer – they are instant death to any hoped-for conversation. But at every literary party or book launch I’ve ever attended, the worst of...

Unparliamentary Words

Trevor Fishlock on Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan

In the summer of 1980 The Times sent me to Delhi. My first foreign posting, it rewarded all my hopes of adventure. India and Pakistan were at the heart of my reporting. I also wrote from Afghanistan,...

A Visit from God

William Palmer on Kingsley Amis, The Green Man

I have always liked reading and pubs, and reading in pubs. By reading I mean sitting alone in a corner of the pub with a pint of bitter and a good book, not the Good Book – that might attract...

Jeremy Makes a Stand

Hazel Wood on Hugh Walpole, the Jeremy books

I’m not sure how old I was when I first read Hugh Walpole’s Jeremy, but I think I was 9 or 10, for I had just gone away to boarding school, and I can remember the stab of longing that that...

Freudful Myth-Information

Jeremy Noel-Tod on W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, And Now All This

As in 1066 and All That, what carries the best jokes of And Now All This into something like poetry is an excess of wit. When the ‘Absolutely General Editors’ speak of sleepers entering ‘the...

Umbrellas at Dawn

Richard Hughes on the novels of Hugh Walpole

It is hard today to appreciate the extent of Hugh Walpole’s success. Not only did his novels – which had appeared annually since his first triumph, Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, in 1911 –...