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: Justin Marozzi joins Norman Lewis on the road to Mandalay • Melissa Harrison returns to Suffolk with Adrian Bell • David Rain is touched by Platero the Donkey • Michael Holroyd meets The Smith of Smiths • Sophie Breese discovers a mysterious book room in Marrakesh • Anthony Gardner revisits A Town like Alice • Helena Drysdale reads her Murray Handbook • Gordon Bowker goes in search of Baron Corvo, and much more besides . . .
Grecian Hours • HELENA DRYSDALE on the Murray Handbooks
From the Farmhouse Window • MELISSA HARRISON on Adrian Bell, Silver Ley
A Bonza Town • ANTHONY GARDNER on Nevil Shute, A Town like Alice
Three Girls in a Boat • PAUL ATTERBURY on Emma Smith, Maidens’ Trip
Adrift in LA • TRAVIS ELBOROUGH on Alison Lurie, The Nowhere City
Great Scott! • ROGER HUDSON on The Journal of Walter Scott
Amber Hits Back • SAMANTHA ELLIS on Amber Reeves, A Lady and Her Husband
Fired by a Canon • MICHAEL HOLROYD on Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths
Having the Last Laugh • JOANNA KAVENNA on Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End to Paris
The Semi-invisible Man • JUSTIN MAROZZI on Norman Lewis, A Dragon Apparent & Golden Earth
Last of the Old Guard • MICHAEL BARBER on Louis Auchincloss, A Writer’s Capital
A Dream of Boyhood • LINDA LEATHERBARROW on Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes
In Search of the Biographer • GORDON BOWKER on A. J. A. Symons, The Quest for Corvo
A Man and His Donkey • DAVID RAIN on Juan Ramón Jiménez, Platero and I
Waugh on the Warpath • RANJIT BOLT on Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One
Mustapha’s Room • SOPHIE BREESE on a Room full of Books in Marrakesh
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.
‘A heartfelt celebration of writing that has stood the test of time . . . committedly eclectic’ Gaby Wood, Telegraph
‘One of the very best moments of each new season: when the new Slightly Foxed arrives.’ Melissa Harrison
- Murray Handbooks, The
- Shute, Nevil
- Smith, Emma
- Symons, A. J. A.
- Holroyd, Michael
- Hudson, Roger
- Vila-Matas, Enrique
- Waugh, Evelyn
- Jiménez, Juan Ramón
- Kavenna, Joanna
- Leatherbarrow, Linda
- Lewis, J. Weston
- Lewis, Norman
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Barber, Michael
- Auchincloss, Louis
- Atterbury, Paul
- Alain-Fournier
- Bell, Adrian
- Bolt, Ranjit
- Bowker, Gordon
- Breese, Sophie
- Drysdale, Helena
- Elborough, Travis
- Ellis, Samantha
- Gardner, Anthony
- Lurie, Alison
- Harrison, Melissa
- Marozzi, Justin
- Pearson, Hesketh
- Rain, David
- Reeves, Amber
Slightly Foxed Issue 46: From the Editors
Now the long summer days are here we like to get out of the city, to meet subscribers and get to know some of the many independent local bookshops which, in spite of difficult times, are still very...
Read moreFrom the Farmhouse Window
The middle volume of Adrian Bell’s inter-war farming trilogy, Silver Ley (1931), is, in its quiet, unassuming way, the most poignant memoir I think I have ever read. Picking up where his first book...
Read moreMustapha’s Room
I had been book-starved for some years. It didn’t help that I was a literary snob and this was the pre-digital age. Earning a living by travelling around the world was extraordinary but I had...
Read moreWaugh on the Warpath
Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One is not one of his ‘big name’ books. It doesn’t rank with, say, Scoop, Vile Bodies or Brideshead Revisited in the reading consciousness. I came across it only by...
Read moreA Man and His Donkey
The name Platero in Spanish means ‘silversmith’ and is frequently given to grey-coloured donkeys. The relationship between Platero and the ‘I’ of the book is evoked with extraordinary...
Read moreA Dream of Boyhood
The novel has sometimes been compared to James Barrie’s Peter Pan, and there are obvious parallels; in both books there are boys who are either unwilling or unable fully to grow up. However, this...
Read moreIn Search of the Biographer
The pioneering work in question, The Quest for Corvo (1934), was written by an author who published little else of note. It broke all the rules but established a literary sub-genre of its own by...
Read moreLast of the Old Guard
Many years ago the novelist Alison Lurie assured me that while there was an upper class in the United States, it played very little part in the lives of most Americans: that was why Louis Auchincloss...
Read moreThe Semi-invisible Man
Published in 1952, Golden Earth remains one of the most timeless guides to Burma. It is classic Lewis, crammed with incident, humour, observation and detail. There is no mistaking the poise of his...
Read moreFired by a Canon
This unlikely clergyman turned out to be an ideal biographical subject. But it took Pearson seven difficult years to find him and then write The Smith of Smiths. It was published in 1934 when he was...
Read moreHaving the Last Laugh
‘Infinity is no big deal, my friend; it’s a matter of writing. The universe only exists on paper,’ said Paul Valéry. I first found this ironic phrase as the epigraph to Historia abreviada de...
Read moreAmber Hits Back
I came to A Lady and Her Husband via H. G. Wells, which is all the wrong way round. I’d been seeking suffragettes. I wanted some fictional feminists in my life. Already on my team I had Mira Ward,...
Read moreAdrift in LA
Thomas More’s original ideal society, the island of Utopia, is really ‘nowhere’ or ‘no place’, though a ‘nowhere’ quite specifically somewhere in the New World. I only learned this a...
Read moreGreat Scott!
There is a greater accretion of literary anecdote attached to the old John Murray premises at No. 50 Albemarle Street than perhaps to any other building. At times, when working there in the 1970s and...
Read moreA Bonza Town
I first heard of Nevil Shute’s A Town like Alice (1950) when I was a schoolboy, and long before I read it I was fascinated by the title. How, I wondered, could a town possibly be like a person?...
Read moreThree Girls in a Boat
In 1969, a friend and I rather rashly accepted a commission to produce from scratch a new set of guides to Britain’s inland waterway network. We were young, naïve, confident and in need of the...
Read moreGrecian Hours
Published in 1854, it’s the world’s first guidebook to Greece, by which its author, the mysterious GFB, meant classical and historical Greece, many of these places ‘not yet reunited to...
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