Slightly Foxed Issue 30

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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: Andy Merrills follows in the footsteps of the fell walker Alfred Wainwright • Annabel Walker is enchanted by Marghanita Laski’s Little Boy Lost • Christopher Robbins takes to the skies with St-Exupéry • Adrian Thorpe recalls how he learnt to read with Homer • Christian Tyler visits the last bookshop in Europe • Oliver Pritchett discovers Hand-grenade Practice in Peking . . .

A Personal Landscape • ANDY MERRILLS on the books of Alfred Wainwright

Too Much of a Good Thing • OLIVER PRITCHETT on Frances Wood, Hand-Grenade Practice in Peking

Little Boys Lost • ANNABEL WALKER on Marghanita Laski, Little Boy Lost

Tilting at Windmills • SIMON HUMPHREYS on Nicholas Wollaston, Tilting at Don Quixote; My Father, Sandy

Mountain, Sea and Storm • CHRISTOPHER ROBBINS on Antoine de St-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

Time Travel • ELISABETH INGLES on Elizabeth Goudge, The Dean’s Watch

Love Letters to Italy • DAVID GILMOUR on the works of Marie-Henri Beyle Stendhal

On the Randy Again • WILLIAM PALMER on Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

Strolling about on an Elephant • ROGER HUDSON on Emily Eden, Up the Country

How Homer Taught Me to Read • ADRIAN THORPE on Homer, Odyssey; Iliad

A Rare Veld-flower • JOHN CONYNGHAM on Pauline Smith, The Beadle

Ghosts in the Dust • HUGH FARMAR on John Reed, Insurgent Mexico

A Fur Coat and a Typewriter • ANNE SEBBA on Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble

Inhabiting a Character • MARY SULLIVAN on the novels of Mary Lavin

Under the Desert Sun • RICHARD PLATT on Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

The Last Bookshop in Europe • CHRISTIAN TYLER on Dingle Bookshop, Ireland

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 30: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

At this time of year, one can’t help noticing, the population of London changes. In the centre of town the buses and tubes are filled with overseas visitors and a Babel of foreign voices. But the...

A Personal Landscape

Andy Merrills on Alfred Wainwright

Every reader of Wainwright will have his or her favourite passages: if nothing else the sequence is a monument to the self-effacing whimsy of a modest man. Enthusiasts point to the dedications of the...

Too Much of a Good Thing

Oliver Pritchett on Frances Wood, Hand-grenade practice in Peking

I see Frances Wood in that great tradition of intrepid British women explorers, like Mary Kingsley and Gertrude Bell. She sets out for China in 1975, when the Cultural Revolution is still going...

Little Boys Lost

Annabel Walker on Marghanita Laski, Little Boy Lost

Being a lover of books and beautiful things, my teenage daughter usually discovers a Persephone paperback in the contents of her Christmas stocking. Last year, it was Little Boy Lost, by Marghanita...

Tilting at Windmills

Simon Humphreys on Nicholas Wollaston, Tilting at Don Quixote and My Father, Sandy

Literary posterity is a fragile, arbitrary affair. Fashions and tastes change; the Zeitgeist moves on. For most writers little more than obscurity beckons; even for those acclaimed within their own...

Mountain, Sea and Storm

Christopher Robbins on Antoine de St-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

The most unorthodox branch of the American Legion, the United States’s organization of war veterans, is ‘China Post One, Shanghai – Soldiers of Fortune in Exile’. Founded in 1919, it...

Time Travel

Elisabeth Ingles on Elizabeth Goudge, The Dean’s Watch

You must have had the experience of finding yourself so absorbed by the world conjured up in a book that you read it ever more slowly – battling the urgent desire to find out what happens next –...

Love Letters to Italy

David Gilmour on the works of Marie-Henri Beyle Stendhal

When André Gide was asked to name his favourite novel, he dithered over the merits of Stendhal’s works before plumping for The Charterhouse of Parma. Giuseppe di Lampedusa also hesitated,...

On the Randy Again

William Palmer on Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

My father looked up from his Daily Express and said to my mother, ‘Dylan Thomas is dead.’ Why he announced this and why I took any notice and remember it now, I don’t know. I was only 8 and the...

How Homer Taught Me to Read

Adrian Thorpe on Homer, Odyssey; Iliad

She was reading and I asked her what she was doing. After a moment’s hesitation she asked if I would like to hear the story. Of course I said yes, so she turned back to the first page and began. I...

A Rare Veld-flower

John Conyngham on Pauline Smith, The Beadle

If a case could be made that writers look like their work, then Pauline Smith would be a good example. In her girlhood and youth there was about her a refinement of feature that recalls, at a...

Ghosts in the Dust

Hugh Farmar on John Reed, Insurgent Mexico

John Reed is best known for Ten Days that Shook the World (1917), his classic account of the Bolshevik revolution. But where Ten Days rata-tat-tats like a telegram tapped out under gunfire, Insurgent...

A Fur Coat and a Typewriter

Anne Sebba on Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble

As yet another fearless female reporter in a flak jacket flashes on to our television screens to tell us in rapid bursts how British troops came under fire that day, I often think of the handful of...

Inhabiting a Character

Mary Sullivan on the novel of Mary Lavin

Years ago, travelling in Sri Lanka, I gave my copy of Mary Lavin’s Tales from Bective Bridge (1942), long out of print, to someone who had helped me, and immediately regretted it – where would I...

Under the Desert Sun

Richard Platt on Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Abbey was born in 1927 on a family farm in the mountains of Appalachia, in western Pennsylvania, but before he was 20 he had travelled to the American south-west and fallen in love with the...

The Last Bookshop in Europe

Christian Tyler on Dingle Bookshop, Ireland

The white van was seen one morning to draw up in the little car park overlooking Clogher beach, a stormy inlet of the Dingle peninsula in south-west Ireland. Four men in black suits climbed out,...