Slightly Foxed Issue 26

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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: P. D. James visits a house in Flanders • Peter Hobday crosses the desert • Ben Hopkinson primes his outboard motor • Rowena Macdonald tries self-sufficiency • John Keay goes up the Nile • Frances Donnelly learns about survival • Christopher Gibson remembers Mr Simmons, and much more besides . . .

A Nightmare on Wheels • OLIVER PRITCHETT on Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy

One Golden Summer • P. D. JAMES on Michael Jenkins, A House in Flanders

On the Beach • ROGER GOURD on the novels of Leo Walmsley

Something Marvellous to Tell • JOHN KEAY on Alan Moorehead, The White Nile; The Blue Nile

Redeemed by Muriel • FRANCES DONNELLEY on Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

Dog Days • PENELOPE LIVELY on Alethea Hayter, A Sultry Month

Briar Pipes v. Balkan Sobranies • CHRISTOPHER HAMILTON on John Buchan, Greenmantle; John Macnab

The Diary in the Attic • JAMES FERGUSSON on Raleigh Trevelyan, A Hermit Disclosed

First Love • ADAM KAY on Longus, Daphnis and Chloe

Always Carry a Spare, Good Plug • BEN HOPKINSON on The British Seagull Co. Ltd., Operating Instructions for Models 40 & 100

The Only Thing that Matters • SARAH HARRISON on Theresa de Kerpely, Arabesque

Cheddaring, Sparging and Gaffing • ROWENA MACDONALD on John Seymour, The Fat of the Land; Self-Sufficiency

Comfort in Desolation • ANNABEL WALKER on Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

In the Empty Quarter • PETER HOBDAY on Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

Left Bank Mermories • WILLIAM PALMER on Shusha Guppy, A Girl in Paris

Cold Cure from a Warm Climate • TIM LONGVILLE on Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery under Arms

Sunsets and Suburbia • LINDA LEATHERBARROW on Shena Mackay, The Atmospheric Railway

Remembering Mr Simmonds • CHRISTOPHER GIBSON on the bookshop at Number 16, Fleet Street

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 26: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Our bookshop is truly up and running now under its new banner ‘Slightly Foxed on Gloucester Road’. Renovations have been modest – fresh paint, new carpet, some moveable shelving to allow us to...

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 26, Leon Morrocco, ‘Blue Temple, Madurai’

February News: Collar as Dawn. Back as Snowdrop.

Meteorologically speaking, we are still deep in mid-winter, but here at Slightly Foxed the new quarter waits not for the weather, so we are delighted to announce that it is now, officially, spring....

A Golden Summer

A Nightmare on Wheels

Oliver Pritchett on Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy

I have a horror of scenes. I hate rows about money and I’m in misery when an Englishman abroad goes on about bloody foreigners and turns into a bully. So there is no reason for me to love Tobias...

On the Beach

Roger Gourd on the novels of Leo Walmsley

I first became aware of Leo Walmsley at the age of 11, when my brother introduced me to his novel Foreigners (1935), which I read with tremendous enjoyment. Surprisingly one of the boys in my...

Something Marvellous to Tell

John Keay on Alan Moorehead, The White Nile and The Blue Nile

The generation that survived two world wars seemed to like nothing better than to go on reading about them. Well into the 1950s bookshops in the UK awarded pride of place to covers featuring...

Redeemed by Muriel

Frances Donnelly on Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

There are books I admire but don’t read again and books I reread compulsively. The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler falls into the latter category. It was only a recent seventh rereading that...

Dog Days

Penelope Lively on Alethea Hayter, A Sultry Month

Alethea Hayter’s clever, innovative book of 1965 turned a searchlight on a time, a place, a circle of people; it has surely inspired the subsequent fashion for group biographies, most brilliantly...

Briar Pipes v. Balkan Sobranies

Christopher Hamilton on John Buchan, Greenmantle and John Macnab

In the early 1960s my boyhood was enlivened by the novels of John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir, 1875–1940) and Dornford Yates (1885–1960). Their ‘clubland heroes’ were clean-cut ex-soldiers who...

The Diary in the Attic

James Fergusson on Raleigh Trevelyan, A Hermit Disclosed

From the outside it looks like a children’s book. Indeed, the dust-jacket drawing is by Charles Stewart, well known for his illustrations for Barbara Leonie Picard and Nicholas Stuart Gray. A...

First Love

Adam Kay on Longus, Daphnis and Chloe

I can recall precisely where I was when Daphnis and Chloe opened in my hands like a flower: sitting on my father’s couch, my back to the window and the sun all around. Suddenly I felt the force of...

Always Carry a Spare, Good Plug

Ben Hopkinson on The British Seagull Co. Ltd., Operating Instructions for Models 40 & 100

Instruction manuals as literature? Surely not; they belong to the category of things that drive people to extremes of fury and madness. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make follow the...

The Only Thing that Matters

Sarah Harrison on Theresa de Kerpely, Arabesque

Thirty years ago, when I was in a state of nervous over-excitement about the publication of my first novel, my editor gave me a copy of Theresa de Kerpely’s Arabesque to read. Her husband had...

Cheddaring, Sparging and Gaffing

Rowena Macdonald on John Seymour, The Fat of the Land and Self-Sufficiency

I live in east London in a second-floor flat with no garden. My groceries come from the local corner shop and, when I feel strong enough to face it, from the hellhole of a supermarket in Whitechapel....

Comfort in Desolation

Annabel Walker on Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

There’s no shortage of fiction that might serve as an introduction to South Africa, as I discovered when I travelled there last October. I opted for the book that claimed to be the country’s...

In the Empty Quarter

Peter Hobday on Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

As a young reporter in the 1970s I travelled in what the Romans called Arabia Felix – through the Gulf sheikhdoms and emirates, into Muscat and down to the southern tip of the peninsula. I saw...

Cold Cure from a Warm Climate

Tim Longville on Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery under Arms

Snobbery never pays. Certainly not in relation to books: not even in relation to their mere appearance. Have you ever, like me, sneered at those identikit sets of ‘great works’ bound in imitation...

Sunsets and Suburbia

Linda Leatherbarrow on Shena Mackay, The Atmospheric Railway

Shortly after I began teaching on the creative writing programme at Middlesex University, Shena Mackay was appointed as our Honorary Visiting Professor. Her inaugural lecture in 2001 was titled A...

Remembering Mr Simmonds

Christopher Gibson on The bookshop at Number 16, Fleet Street

Louis Simmonds was not a tall man. Although I was still at school when I was first introduced to him by my father (and, like my father, I have never achieved more than medium height), my recollection...

Left Bank Memories

William Palmer on Shusha Guppy, A Girl in Paris

It wasn’t at first sight the sort of book I would choose, but there was nothing else remotely interesting on the single shelf in the charity shop. The dust-jacket showed a number of vapidly drawn ...