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: Robin Blake discovers the revolutionary world of Molesworth • Karen Robinson meets an American hero • Jennie Erdal finds the perfect antidote to the current gloom • Dan Jacobson sees darkness at noon • Tim Longville minds his own business • Penelope Lively celebrates a late beginner • Christopher Robbins washes the dishes • Daisy Hay embarks on a brilliant career, and much more besides . . .
All Washed Up • CHRISTOPHER ROBBINS on George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Before the Sun Set • PENELOPE LIVELY on Priscilla Napier, A Late Beginner
A Husband and Wife Team • BRIAN WOOD on C. N. and A. M. Williamson, The Lightning Conductor; The Lightning Conductor Discovers America
The Brick of Fate • JENNIE ERDAL on the novels of Peter de Vries
Doing the Right Thing • VICTORIA NEUMARK on the novels of Antonia Forest
We’ve Been Here Before • ROBERT BRUCE on the literature of financial crises
Unsuitable Jobs for Unsuitable Girls • DAISY HAY on Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career
They Made It • TIM LONGVILLE on Charlotte Paul, Minding Our Own Business
A Serial Offender • DAN JACOBSON on Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
The Prunes Are Revolting • ROBIN BLAKE on Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle, the Molesworth chronicles
A Blazing Talent • DIANA RAYMOND on the works of Pamela Frankau
American Hero • KAREN ROBINSON on Lee Child, the Jack Reacher novels
All about Love • LESLEY DOWNER on Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Going for the Thing • DEREK PARKER on the novels of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
On the Lost Isle • PEGRAM HARRISON on Marguerite Yourcenar, Two Lives and a Dream
Sugar Dreams • JOHN CONYNGHAM on the history of South Africa
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.
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Shikibu, Murasaki
- Jacobson, Dan
- Williamson, C. N. & A. M.
- Wood, Brian
- Koestler, Arthur
- Yourcenar, Marguerite
- South Africa
- Lively, Penelope
- Blake, Robin
- Bruce, Robert
- Child, Lee
- Conyngham, John
- De Vries, Peter
- Downer, Lesley
- Erdal, Jennie
- Farmar, Francis
- Forest, Antonia
- Frankau, Pamela
- Franklin, Miles
- Galbraith, J. K.
- Longville, Tim
- Harrison, Pegram
- Hay, Daisy
- Napier, Priscilla
- Neumark, Victoria
- Orwell, George
- Parker, Derek
- Paul, Charlotte
- Quiller-Couch, (Sir) Arthur
- Raymond, Diana
- Robbins, Christopher
- Robinson, Karen
- Schwed, Fred
- Searle, Ronald & Willans, Geoffrey
Slightly Foxed Issue 21: From the Editors
It’s bitterly cold today – frost on the London roofs, and the spires of the City churches rising sharp and white against an ice-blue sky. For a lot of us it feels internally pretty cold too. Talk...
Read moreA Blazing Talent
How well is Pamela Frankau remembered? She was born on 3 January 1908, so last year was her centenary. But . . . no garlands? No memorials? No flourish in the literary pages? Well, Pamela would be...
Read more‘I look forward to a summer of great reading . . .’
‘I am thrilled with my subscription to SF. A kind friend lent me a copy of your Spring 2009 Issue and it’s fantastic: affectionate and beautifully written reviews of great books previously...
Read moreBefore the Sun Set
This wonderful recreation of a time and a climate of mind – a hundred years ago, one realizes, startled – is not just an evocation of place but also of the child’s eye view. A Late Beginner...
Read moreAll Washed Up
Many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I lived in Copenhagen where I was registered with the Foreign Ministry as correspondent for The Times. But I made my living washing dishes. The paper...
Read moreA Husband and Wife Team
I call them ‘also published by’ lists. Everyone who collects secondhand books knows them; hopeful publishers used to put them at the end of a volume. There you can find the memoirs of...
Read moreThe Brick of Fate
In the 1970s student grants went a long way. After paying for all the prescribed texts, there was still money left over for a good rummage in the second-hand bookshops. On a whim one day, I bought...
Read moreDoing the Right Thing
How many children’s books have characters that not only discuss literature but also give you a reading list? That is just one of the things that put Antonia Forest’s novels at the top of mine....
Read moreWe’ve Been Here Before
When Northern Rock first ran into trouble in the autumn of 2007, worried customers queued outside branches from the early hours in an attempt to get their money out. ‘This is the first run on a...
Read moreUnsuitable Jobs for Unsuitable Girls
On my thirteenth birthday, a friend’s mother gave me a present which changed the way I thought about reading. It was books, four of them: Regency Buck and The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer, The...
Read moreThey Made It
My nearest second-hand bookshop is in a small town five or six miles away. Like many traditional small-town shops it wears many hats. Downstairs at the front are stationery and artists’ materials,...
Read moreA Serial Offender
Some books carve themselves immediately and irrevocably into the minds of their readers. I must have been no more than 16 or 17 years old when I first read Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon....
Read moreThe Prunes Are Revolting
In Slightly Foxed, No. 17, I wrote of my childhood addiction to Anthony Buckeridge’s stories about Jennings and Darbyshire, pupils at the agreeable but not very realistic prep school of Linbury...
Read moreAmerican Hero
I first met Jack Reacher in 1997 – and I was instantly smitten. A lone figure, downing coffee and eggs in a diner on the edge of a small American town, he remains as cool as an Inuit’s deep...
Read moreGoing for the Thing
One day in May 1944, with the harbour of Fowey packed with vessels of all shapes and sizes ready for the invasion of France, Mr Spreadbury, our history master, turned up in a gown with very...
Read moreOn the Lost Isle
Some months ago I became a British citizen. This wasn’t such a stretch for a native of the States, but it put me in mind of other transplanted people and I have been rereading some old favourites...
Read moreSugar Dreams
Even if the south-eastern seaboard of Africa has never been a Bloomsbury, it has had its moments. Angus Wilson’s mother was a Durban girl, and Fernando Pessoa spent his schooldays there. But given...
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