Header overlay
Slightly Foxed Issue 22
  • ISBN: 9781906562106
  • Pages: 96
  • Dimensions: 210 x 148mm
  • Illustrations: B/W
  • Publication date: 1 June 2009
  • Producer: Smith Settle
  • Cover artist: Simon Laurie, ‘Greek Boat’
  • ISSN: 1742-5794
Made in Britain

Slightly Foxed Issue 22

‘Don’t Give up the Day Job’

From£15

SF Subscriber Prices

UK & Ireland £15 *save £0.50
Overseas £17 *save £0.50

Non-Subscriber Prices

UK & Ireland £15.50
Overseas £17.50
  • Gift wrap available
  • In stock
  • All prices include P&P. Overseas rates & subscriber discounts will be applied once you have selected a shipping type for each item during the checkout process.
  • Special price only available when ordering directly from Slightly Foxed
● If you are a current subscriber to the quarterly your basket will update to show any discounts before the payment page during checkout ● If you want to subscribe now and buy books or goods at the member rate please add a subscription to your basket before adding other items

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

Richard Ingrams delights in fictitious elephants • Christian Tyler dons his corduroys • Frances Donnolly takes a train to Istanbul • John Keay celebrates the Indian novels of R. K. Narayan • Jonty Driver watches things fall apart • Clive Unger-Hamilton runs a rogue male to earth • Rowena Macdonald jumps the fence with Riddley Walker • Charles Elliott unmasks some book crooks, and much more besides . . .


Don’t Give up the Day Job • FRANCES DONNELLY

Graham Greene, Stamboul Train

Another Country • CHRISTIAN TYLER

Adrian Bell, Corduroy

Belief in the Blood • ALEXANDER LUCIE-SMITH

Antoine François Prévost, Manon Lescaut

Uncle and the Badfort Crowd • RICHARD INGRAMS

On the novels of J. P. Martin

Slow Train to Malgudi • JOHN KEAY

On the novels of R. K. Narayan

Gone to Earth • CLIVE UNGER-HAMILTON

Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male

A Taker of Heads • C. J. DRIVER

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

On the Shores of the Mediterranean • JOHN DE FALBE

Barry Unsworth, Land of Marvels

Too Much Clevverness • ROWENA MACDONALD

Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker

Settling the Bill • JAMES FERGUSSON

David Hughes, The Pork Butcher

From Cheltenham to Lochiel • URSULA BUCHAN

On the novels of D. K. Broster

Mr Pye’s Dilemma • MICHAEL MARETT-CROSBY

Mervyn Peake, Mr Pye

Written in the Stars • ANNE SEBBA

Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus

Round and Round and Round • LAWRENCE SAIL

Bettina Ehrlich, Cocolo

Sound Nonsense • CHRISTOPHER ROBBINS

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Book Crooks • CHARLES ELLIOTT

On book forgery and theft


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.



‘It has been a great pleasure . . .’

‘It has been a great pleasure to read your summer edition of Slightly Foxed. To meet so many old friends over my early morning cup of tea has been a lasting stimulus throughout the day. Although...

Read more

‘A wonderful review . . .’

‘I am just leaving to go on holiday and the post has arrived. I am delighted that I can take SF No. 22. It is a wonderful review and I thoroughly enjoy it. Thank you all so much.’

Read more

From Cheltenham to Lochiel

Rereading The Flight of the Heron, I recaptured something of the uncomplicated delight and excitement that I had felt first timeround. The story of Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, a minor chieftain of the...

Read more

Another Country

Bell’s first book has the virtues which allow it to transcend its times: acute observation, sincerity and that simplicity of style which does not date. Published in 1930, it portrays a way of life...

Read more

Too Much Clevverness

Hoban started writing Riddley Walker in 1974 and finished it five years later. It is a masterpiece. Those who know it love it, and whole websites are devoted to it, with chapter-by-chapter...

Read more

Don’t Give up the Day Job

I first read Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train when I was 12, and the set-up was instantly recognizable – a disparate group of English people thrown together on a rail journey across a snowy Europe...

Read more

Belief in the Blood

If it had not been for Puccini’s opera, I would never have heard of Manon Lescaut. As it was, finding a copy of the novel behind the opera wasn’t easy: it was not kept on the open shelves in my...

Read more

Uncle and the Badfort Crowd

One of the great advantages of acquiring a stepson in my sixties was the excuse it gave me to reread aloud all those children’s books which I had so much enjoyed the first time around – Beatrix...

Read more

Slow Train to Malgudi

I’m not sure whether it was India that introduced me to R. K. Narayan or R. K. Narayan who introduced me to India. Each superimposed itself on the other so that they became indistinguishable....

Read more

Gone to Earth

There’s a classic type of resourceful, unassuming hero that they just don’t make any more (think Richard Hannay), and the narrator of Geoffrey Household’s novel Rogue Male, a ‘bored and...

Read more

A Taker of Heads

Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), was an early and spectacular part of the flowering of West African literature after independence from colonial rule. It seemed, perhaps...

Read more

Settling the Bill

Ernst Kestner has smoked 846,756 cigarettes. A butcher from Lübeck in his sixties, he is driving to France, doing the sums in his head. He has been a 40-a-day man since the middle of the Second...

Read more

Mr Pye’s Dilemma

Our boat journey from Jersey to Sark passes through a dangerous past. The rocks between the two islands are called in Jersey slang the Pater Nosters, for it is said that if a ship were to get too...

Read more

Slightly Foxed Issue 22: From the Editors

The Slightly Foxed office hasn’t changed much over the years, apart from the fact that, as we’ve already mentioned, it’s got more crowded, what with the increasing number of back issues and the...

Read more

Comments & Reviews

Similar Items

Sign up to our e-newsletter

Sign up for dispatches about new issues, books and podcast episodes, highlights from the archive, events, special offers and giveaways.