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: John Walsh meets Mr Enderby and his creator • Alberto Manguel messes about with Mole and Ratty • Michele Hanson goes way down in New Orleans • Laurence Scott steps out with Uncle Sidney • Ralph Harrington meets the birdman of Singapore • Tim Mackintosh-Smith travels the road to Oxiana with Robert Byron • Anthony Gardner plays tennis with the Masai • Annabel Walker goes on safari . . .
Return to Arcadia • ALBERTO MANGUEL on Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
A Child in Africa • ANNABEL WALKER on Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika
Desert Wisdom • JUSTIN MAROZZI on Ahmed Hassanein Bey, The Lost Oases
I’ll Be Gloria • LAURENCE SCOTT on Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Of Love and Lentils • ROBIN BLAKE on Peter Russell, The Elegies of Quintilius
The Bird Man of Singapore • RALPH HARRINGTON on C. A. Gibson-Hill, British Sea Birds; Birds of the Coast
Ignatius against the World • MICHELE HANSON on John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
You Won’t Look Back • RICHARD CONYNGHAM on The London Library
Potentate of the Polysyllable • JOHN WALSH on Anthony Burgess, The Complete Enderby
Artless but not Heartless • PATRICK WELLAND on William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake
Iced Tea and Hospitality • MARIE E. WICKS on Jan Karon, The Mitford Years
From Harry’s Bar to Delhi • TIM MACKINTOSH-SMITH on Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana
Blight, Mildew and Smut • NICHOLAS MURRAY on Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
The Liquid Plains of the Sea • ANDY MERRILLS on Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
A Term at Haggard Hall • ANTHONY GARDNER on Nicholas Best, Tennis and the Masai
Fitting Memorials • ARIANE BANKES on lettering and commemorative engraving
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.
- London Library, The
- Toole, John Kennedy
- Walker, Annabel
- Walsh, John
- Welland, Patrick
- Wicks, Marie E.
- Karon, Jan
- Kluz, Ed
- Lettering and Commemorative Arts Trust, The
- Linnane, Fergus
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Bankes, Ariane
- Best, Nicholas
- Bey, Ahmed Hassanein
- Blake, Robin
- Braudel, Fernand
- Burgess, Anthony
- Byron, Robert
- Conyngham, Richard
- Gardner, Anthony
- Gibson-Hill, C. A.
- Grahame, Kenneth
- Hanson, Michele
- Harrington, Ralph
- McCoy, Horace
- Mackintosh-Smith, Tim
- Manguel, Alberto
- Marozzi, Justin
- Merrills, Andy
- Murray, Nicholas
- Hickey, William
- Pirenne, Henri
- Russell, Peter
- Scott, Laurence
Slightly Foxed Issue 34: From the Editors
Summer: the season of literary festivals, and Slightly Foxed is on the road. Our travels began early with an appearance, with author and contributor Penelope Lively, at the Words by the Water...
Read moreReturn to Arcadia
Several times, during a long life of reading, I’ve been tempted to write an autobiography based solely on the books that have counted for me. Someone once told me that it was customary for a...
Read moreA Child in Africa
Most people have some memories of early childhood that remain vividly with them through life. Sometimes they are impossible to describe, being chiefly a quite indefinable feeling prompted by opening...
Read moreDesert Wisdom
I first came across Ahmed Hassanein Bey when bumping across the Libyan Sahara by camel with a friend. This was long before Kindles and iPads helped the bibliophile traveller lighten his load. Between...
Read moreOf Love and Lentils
Alone among the ancient classical verse forms the elegy endures as a modern one. In Augustan Rome – the world of Caesar and Cicero, but also of the elegists Catullus, Propertius and Ovid – the...
Read moreThe Bird Man of Singapore
Some bird books, the ones you take with you across mountains, into bogs or through jungles, are small in size, compact and easy to stuff into backpack or pocket, offering ready reference in all...
Read moreIgnatius against the World
I came upon John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces in the early Eighties, and was at once rather taken by its main protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly. I had never come across such a repulsive...
Read moreYou Won’t Look Back
Who are they, I wonder, these elderly gentlemen fast asleep in the red leather armchairs? Retired brigadiers whiling away their autumn years in a room full of books, or eminent scholars dreaming of...
Read morePotentate of the Polysyllable
Logorrhoeac, polymagisterial, omniglottal, panchromatic, Anthony Burgess was the most wordy literary figure I have ever met. I use those faintly ludicrous terms of praise because, before I met him, I...
Read moreArtless but not Heartless
In May 1797, the 33rd Regiment of Foot Officers arrives in Calcutta. A round of parties ensues, one at Colonel Sherbrooke’s ‘small mansion’ in the village of Alypore three miles from the city....
Read moreIced Tea and Hospitality
At certain times in my life, I have opened a book and discovered a friend. I have chuckled with Anne Shirley over her comical escapades in the quiet town of Avonlea. I have stood under the watchful...
Read moreFrom Harry’s Bar to Delhi
‘What Ulysses is to the novel between the wars and what The Waste Land is to poetry, The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book.’ So says Paul Fussell in the first puff on the back cover of my...
Read moreBlight, Mildew and Smut
One of the consequences of being Aldous Huxley’s biographer was that I was invited to Eton, where a 17-year-old schoolboy with the bearing of a middle-aged barrister extended a hand and told me he...
Read moreA Term at Haggard Hall
Over the years I have been sent many proof copies of books, but very few that I have bothered to keep. They are, in general, unattractive creatures, with their misprints and vainglorious boasts of...
Read moreFitting Memorials
As soon as I could hold a pen I was taught copperplate script by my splendidly bossy elder sister, who was determined to pre-empt any teacher’s pernicious influence. I can still remember the thrill...
Read more
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