Slightly Foxed Issue 32

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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: Sue Gee marvels at the magic of the Raj Quartet • Charles Elliott meets the good soldier Švejk • Ysenda Maxtone Graham goes to Vanity Fair • Henry Jeffreys raises a glass to wine books • Victoria Neumark falls in love with Lord Peter Wimsey • Antony Wood turns Pooterish • Valerie Grove celebrates Dodie Smith • Andrew Hall goes dictionary-hunting • Simon Brett climbs with Whymper • Sarah Crowden admits to a liking for smut . . .

At Home with the Pewters • ANTONY WOOD on George and Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody

Dear Dodie • VALERIE GROVE on Dodie Smith, Look Back with Love

The Man Who Climbed the Matterhorn • SIMON BRETT on Edward Whymper, Scrambles amongst the Alps

Vanity Fear • YSENDA MAXTONE GRAHAM on William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

Sky Writing • RICHARD KNOTT on the memoirs of wartime pilots

Some Kind of Edwardian Sunlight • SUE GEE on Paul Scott, The Raj Quartet

Diamond Bombs • DEREK PARKER on Charles Causley, Collected Poems, 1951–2000

The Library in Knightsbridge • ANDREW BROWNLIE on the Harrods Library

‘Humbly report, sir’ • CHARLES ELLIOTT on Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

Laura, Louisa and Me • DAISY HAY on childhood reading

‘By God, I’m going to spin’ • PAUL ROUTLEDGE on the novels of Winifred Holtby

Extra-ordinary Cricketers . . . • ANDREW HALL on the maps, dictionaries and small books of J. L. Carr

High Adventure • DEREK ROBINSON on Lionel Davidson, The Rose of Tibet

Vane Hopes • VICTORIA NEUMARK on the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers

A Lot of Bottle • HENRY JEFFREYS on Kermit Lynch, Adventures on the Wine Route & Patrick Matthews, The Wild Bunch

Something for the Weekend • SARAH CROWDEN 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 32: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

We’re sitting here in the office today, looking out at the leaden sky and wondering what next year’s going to be like. It’s rather a ruminative time we find, these last dark months before...

At Home with the Pewters

Antony Wood on George & Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody

I’m bound to admit that some of the experiences, and also, for heavens’ sake, the attitudes of the ‘pathetic ass who records his trivial life’ (as William Emrys Williams put it in his...

Laura, Louisa and Me

Daisy Hay on her childhood reading

The Child that Books Built is the title of a memoir by Francis Spufford which explores the impact of books read in childhood by interspersing an account of Spufford’s own reading with excursions...

Dear Dodie

Valerie Grove on Dodie Smith, Look Back with Love

Dodie Smith said she never felt ‘quite grown-up’. This may sound like an excuse for tiresome behaviour, but Dodie did retain all her life a childlike charm, being under five feet tall with a...

The Man Who Climbed the Matterhorn

Simon Brett on Edward Whymper, Scrambles amongst the Alps

I have known three mountaineers, but I feel funny standing on a chair to wind the clock if I have nothing to hold on to. Given my fear of heights, it may seem surprising that, as a teenager, I read...

Some Kind of Edwardian Sunlight

Sue Gee on Paul Scott, The Raj Quartet

This is Daphne Manners, the young woman who comes out to India in 1942 as a VAD nurse and falls in love with Hari Kumar, an Indian journalist educated at an English public school, brought up from...

Diamond Bombs

Derek Parker on Charles Causley, Collected Poems, 1951–2000

When Charles Causley’s first collection of poems came out in 1951 – Farewell, Aggie Weston, the first in Eric Marx’s elegant series of ‘Poems in Pamphlet’ from the Hand and Flower Press –...

The Library in Knightsbridge

Andrew Brownlie on the Harrods Library

Forty or so years ago, Harrods was still a place of considerable eccentricity. The Lending Library, with its attached Secondhand Book Department, hardly fitted with the high mark-up merchandise in...

‘Humbly report, sir’

Charles Elliott on Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

On 3 January 1923 a rackety Czech ex-Communist, ex-anarchist, exeditor, ex-soldier named Jaroslav Hašek died in straitened circumstances in the village of Lipnice, east of Prague. He was not yet 40...

‘By God, I’m going to spin’

Paul Routledge on the novels of Winifred Holtby

Winifred Holtby wrote South Riding, a grand sweep of 1930s life in Yorkshire’s sea-facing flatlands, quite literally against a deadline. She completed the novel only weeks before her death, and the...

Extra-ordinary Cricketers . . .

Andrew Hall on the maps, dictionaries and small books of J. L. Carr

In July 1967 the schoolmaster and part-time novelist J. L. Carr took two years’ leave of absence to see if he could make a living as a publisher of illustrated maps and booklets of poetry. Both...

High Adventure

Derek Robinson on Lionel Davidson, The Rose of Tibet

Publishing can be a dangerous game. On my shelves I keep, as a warning to myself, a non-fiction book – perhaps the only surviving copy – which was written by a respected author, published by a...

Vane Hopes

Victoria Neumark on the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers

I always wanted to marry Peter Wimsey. Lord Peter Wimsey, that is. Me and Dorothy L. Sayers, both. Perhaps that’s where our love lives (separately) went wrong. However, I can say that Wimsey has...

A Lot of Bottle

Henry Jeffreys on Kermit Lynch, Adventures on the Wine Route & Patrick Matthews, The Wild Bunch

It is received opinion among publishers that wine books don’t sell. Don’t even try to suggest a book with the word wine in the title to a publisher – he will recoil as if from a corked claret...

Something for the Weekend

Sarah Crowden on smut

Humour is a funny thing. Something which causes a seizure in one person will leave another inexplicably stony-faced. However, there is a small coterie for whom a certain type of humour resonates....

Vanity Fear

Ysenda Maxtone Graham on William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

John Sutherland: ‘I’d take Vanity Fair, which I think is the greatest novel in England.’ Sue Lawley: ‘Not Middlemarch?’ JS: ‘It’s more fun than Middlemarch. And you don’t feel...