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
Robert Macfarlane follows the drove roads • Sue Gee admires the darling buds • Anthony Gardner salutes Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy • Daisy Hay takes to the stage • Juliet Gardiner claps hands with Osbert Sitwell • John Keay dives into Hobson-Jobson • Bruce Hunter visits the Asterisk Club • Ysenda Maxtone Graham culls her bookshelves . . .
Attics with Attitude • ELISABETH RUSSELL TAYLOR
Rachel Khoo, The Little Paris Kitchen
Sherry Wine and Roses • HAZEL WOOD
Denis Constanduros, My Grandfather & Father, Dear Father
Along the Old Ways • ROBERT MACFARLANE
A. R. B. Haldane, The Drove Roads of Scotland
Perfick Wevver • SUE GEE
H. E. Bates, The Darling Buds of May
A Late Victorian Afternoon • MARK JONES
Mollie Panter-Downes, At the Pines
The Tortoise of Total War • ANTHONY GARDNER
Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour trilogy
Castles in the Air • DAISY HAY
Pamela Brown, The Swish of the Curtain
Muddy Boots and a Slouch Hat • CHRISTOPHER ROBBINS
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs
Mother’s Familiar • LAURENCE SCOTT
D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Comfortable Words • ANTHONY WELLS
The 1662 Book of Common Prayer
Woon, Wordy-Major and Wootz • JOHN KEAY
On the definitions of Hobson-Jobson and Hanklyn-Janklin
Shelf Life • YSENDA MAXTONE GRAHAM
On decluttering
The Asterisk Club • BRUCE HUNTER
On the novels of Pamela Branch
How to Enjoy the Blackout • RUTH A. SYMES
Howard Thomas and Marjorie A. Banks, Brighter Blackout Book
A Glorious Contradiction • JULIET GARDINER
On the works of Osbert Sitwell
Summer Sunrise, Winter Twilight • ANTHONY LONGDEN
On the books of J. H. B. Peel
Flouting Destiny • ROGER JONES
On why we write
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.
- Wells, Anthony
- Wood, Hazel
- Jones, Mark
- Jones, Roger
- Keay, John
- Sitwell, Osbert
- Khoo, Rachel
- Symes, Ruth A.
- Lawrence, D. H.
- Taylor, Elisabeth Russell
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Thomas, Howard & Banks, Marjorie A.
- Book of Common Prayer (1662)
- Hunter, Bruce
- Burnell, A. C. & Yule, Henry
- Waugh, Evelyn
- Hankin, Nigel B.
- Bates, H. E.
- Banks, Marjorie A. & Thomas, Howard
- Branch, Pamela
- Brown, Pamela
- Constanduros, Denis
- Gardiner, Juliet
- Gardner, Anthony
- Gee, Sue
- Graham, Ysenda Maxtone
- Grant, Ulysses S.
- Haldane, A. R. B.
- Longden, Anthony
- Harding, Angela
- Macfarlane, Robert
- Hay, Daisy
- Panter-Downes, Mollie
- Peel, J. H. B.
- Robbins, Christopher
- Scott, Laurence
Slightly Foxed Issue 36: From the Editors
It seems, as they say, only yesterday that we were telling you Slightly Foxed would be moving – in fact it was in 2004 that we moved from our original ‘office’ round the kitchen table of...
Read moreAlong the Old Ways
For many years of my life, I was fascinated by mountains and their tops: drawn upwards by what Joe Simpson nicely calls ‘the inverted gravity’ that peaks exert upon certain people. I climbed and...
Read moreAttics with Attitude
I am sometimes asked which writers have changed my life. Next time I shall not answer ‘Proust’ but ‘Rachel Khoo’. For five years, since the death of my husband, I had all but given up cooking...
Read moreSherry Wine and Roses
Not long after we launched the Slightly Foxed Editions, we came across a little gem of a book, first published in 1948 and long out of print, which we decided we must reissue. My Grandfather, as its...
Read moreA Late Victorian Afternoon
They seemed reasonable enough requests. Don’t lie on the bed naked in case passing servants catch an eyeful. Also, in mixed company, could he try to swear only in French? Modest pleas made by...
Read moreShelf Life
‘You must be cruel to be kind,’ gardeners tell you, about pruning roses. ‘The more you cut them down, the more they love it.’ This might be true of roses but is it true of book collections? I...
Read morePerfick Wevver
Herbert Ernest Bates was born in 1905, in Northamptonshire, the son of a cobbler, and his schooldays were spent in a brick-terraced industrial town dominated by factories where he dreaded he would...
Read moreThe Tortoise of Total War
I don’t suppose anyone who buys Slightly Foxed can forget the sheer, joyful, all-absorbing intensity with which we read as adolescents; but it took a remark of T. S. Eliot’s to bring home to me...
Read moreCastles in the Air
What do an incarcerated minister, an old dressing-up box and a tin of blue paint have in common? They are all central to the plot of The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown, a magical children’s...
Read moreMuddy Boots and a Slouch Hat
American presidential memoirs have tended to be self-serving tomes, designed to massage reputations and secure their authors a fat windfall on retirement. This was not the case with the first,...
Read moreWoon, Wordy-Major and Wootz
Dictionaries, encyclopaedias and the like are best browsed at leisure; approach them with an open mind and prepare for the unexpected. The entry sought may confirm or confound one’s expectations...
Read moreMother’s Familiar
My parents had no interest in books. Having survived the Second World War, they found everything they needed in each other, and in their north London suburban home with doors they could lock, in a...
Read moreFlouting Destiny
British publishers, we’re told, turn out around 200,000 new titles every year. That is not a trivial number. In fact, it’s so large a number that one can’t really think any useful thoughts...
Read moreSummer Sunrise, Winter Twilight
Numbed with despair over the threat to the fragile beauty of the Chilterns and the villages of Buckinghamshire posed by the new high-speed rail link, I went in search of solace. I badly needed a dose...
Read moreA Glorious Contradiction
Writing one’s autobiography involves a certain audacity: the presumption that one has a story to tell, that one can tell it engagingly, that there will be publishers willing to publish, readers...
Read moreHow to Enjoy the Blackout
My father used to say that one of the most dispiriting things about his childhood during the Second World War was the boredom. The very real fear of being bombed was one thing, but being cooped up in...
Read moreThe Asterisk Club
I met Pamela Branch only once, at a dinner party given by the literary agent David Higham and his wife. Pamela was strikingly beautiful, with large eyes, curious as a cat’s. The talk turned to an...
Read more
