Slightly Foxed Issue 47

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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: Justin Cartwright remembers John Updike and the small town world of ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom • Maggie Fergusson finds romance in Broadmoor • Richard Mabey cultivates his library • Bel Mooney discovers a wartime heroine • Galen O’Hanlon runs wild with the young Gavin Maxwell • Frances Wilson describes the one book she’d never lend • Anthony Wells marvels at the story behind The Gulag Archipelago • Sarah Perry pays tribute to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs • Derek Parker finds Don Juan excellent company • Sarah Crowden settles into the suburbs with R. F. Delderfield • Henry Jeffreys follows the erratic career of Reginald Perrin, and much more besides . . .

Curiouser and Curiouser • BRANDON ROBSHAW on the Stories of Robert Aickman

Mowgli with a Gun • GALEN O’HANLON on Gavin Maxwell, The House of Elrig

Romance in Broadmoor • MAGGIE FERGUSSON on Patrick McGrath, Asylum

An Unexpected Gift • JULIAN HOFFMAN on Robin Jenkins, The Cone-Gatherers

The American Dostoevsky • JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT on John Updike’s Rabbit Novels

A Light to Live by • SARAH PERRY on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: Select Narratives

Joining the Grown-ups • MATTHEW ADAMS on Ronald Welch, Escape from France & Nicholas Carey

From Chicago to the Western Front • BEL MOONEY on Mary Borden, The Forbidden Zone

Modern Life Is Rubbish • HENRY JEFFREYS on David Nobbs, The Death of Reginald Perrin

The Green Notebook • AMY LIPTROT on Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

A Terrible Hidden Country • ANTHONY WELLS on Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

My Most Precious Book • FRANCES WILSON on Anne Wilson, Traditional Romance and Tale

Down-to-Earth in Over Stowey • ANTHONY LONGDEN on The Diary of William Holland, Somerset Parson, 1799-1818

The Dean and the Don • DEREK PARKER on Lord Byron, Don Juan

Gaiety and Magic • RICHARD DAVIES on Maurice O’Sullivan, Twenty Years A-Growing

Behind the Net Curtains • SARAH CROWDEN on R. F. Delderfield’s Avenue Novels

More Capability Brown • RICHARD MABEY on the arrangement of libraries

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 47: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s hard to believe autumn is here already. But the days are shortening, the air is growing brisker, and gradually the city is coming to life again as people trickle back after the long summer...

Mowgli with a Gun

Galen O’Hanlon on Gavin Maxwell, The House of Elrig

A few months before his thirteenth birthday, the young and miserable Gavin Maxwell crept out of St Wulfric’s prep school to send a ‘thoroughly hysterical’ letter to his mother. At the end of...

Curiouser and Curiouser

Brandon Robshaw on the stories of Robert Aickman

All of Aickman’s tales (he wrote 48 in all) include some kind of supernatural element. ‘Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal’ is a vampire story, ‘Ringing the Changes’ is a zombie story,...

Slightly Foxed Issue 47: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

It’s hard to believe autumn is here already. But the days are shortening, the air is growing brisker, and gradually the city is coming to life again as people trickle back after the long summer...

Romance in Broadmoor

Maggie Fergusson on Patrick McGrath, Asylum

Over lunch one day in the autumn of 1996, I mentioned my fascination with Broadmoor to the novelist David Hughes. Had I read Patrick McGrath’s Asylum, he asked in response. No? I must! McGrath had...

An Unexpected Gift

Julian Hoffman on Robin Jenkins, The Cone-Gatherers

I’m continually amazed by how many remarkable writers can pass you by, even when you think you read a lot. My friend had sent me a copy of The Cone-Gatherers (1955) by Robin Jenkins. I’d never...

The American Dostoevsky

Justin Cartwright on John Updike’s Rabbit Novels

I have read so much Updike, so many articles, so many collections of his criticism and journalism, and virtually all his many novels, that I sometimes think I know more about his thought processes...

A Light to Live by

Sarah Perry on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

On the cover was a drawing of a slender wrist held by a gloved hand; beneath the wrist was a candle held close. I began to read a story familiar to me: the account given in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs...

Joining the Grown-ups

Matthew Adams on Ronald Welch, Escape from France & Nicholas Carey

Revisiting the Carey novels today, I am struck by how fresh and magnetizing they have remained, and by how much there is in these books – as there is in all good children’s literature – that...

From Chicago to the Western Front

Bel Mooney on Mary Borden, The Forbidden Zone

Borden begins The Forbidden Zone with a surprisingly bald statement: ‘I have not invented anything in this book.’ She explains that the sketches and poems were written between 1914 and 1918 but...

Modern Life Is Rubbish

Henry Jeffreys on David Nobbs, The Death of Reginald Perrin

It was eerie the first time I watched The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin because it all felt so familiar. I’d bought a DVD box-set on a whim. Suddenly my parents’ baffling banter made sense....

The Green Notebook

Amy Liptrot on Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

It might be irresponsible to recommend Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy (1964) to youngsters today, with its sulky, unrepentant heroine who snoops on neighbours and whose notebook entries result...

A Terrible Hidden Country

Anthony Wells on Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

If there were quiz questions about the subtitles of books, this – ‘An Experiment in Literary Investigation’ – might be among the trickier ones, offering as it does no hint of the book’s...

My Most Precious Book

Frances Wilson on Anne Wilson, Traditional Romance and Tale

In general, I’m cavalier about books. I lend them and therefore lose them, scribble in them, festoon them in pink Post-it notes, share baths with them and pile them up on shelves and tables in no...

Down-to-Earth in Over Stowey

Anthony Longden on The Diary of William Holland, Somerset Parson, 1799-1818

I have always had a weakness for diaries and memoirs, especially those written by men of the cloth. It’s generally quite gentle observational stuff, cataloguing the daily round, usually in a...

The Dean and the Don

Derek Parker on Lord Byron, Don Juan

Back in 1968, when I was editing Poetry Review, published by the Poetry Society, I started a campaign to have a memorial to Byron placed in Poets’ Corner. I was tentative in my first approach to...

Gaiety and Magic

Richard Davies on Maurice O’Sullivan, Twenty Years A-Growing

Perhaps some of the best moments in a book-lover’s life are when you chance upon something that turns out to be a real find. The first of many such discoveries for me was a well-used Penguin...

Behind the Net Curtains

Sarah Crowden on R. F. Delderfield’s Avenue Novels

The maxim ‘write what you know’ has been drummed into aspiring novelists on creative writing courses for years and it aptly sums up the varied career of R. F. Delderfield, whose writing life was...

More Capability Brown

Richard Mabey on the arrangement of libraries

I like to think we run an open-door policy in our library at home in Norfolk. That is to say, on warm days in summer the door to the garden is actually open. Anyone’s welcome to come in for a...