Slightly Foxed Issue 51

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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: Michael Barber hangs out on the Maginot Line • Ursula Buchan follows Montrose to the Borders • Patrick Welland explains the Singapore Grip • Amanda Theunissen meets a revolutionary with a sense of fun • Henry Jeffreys relives his university days with David Lodge • Daisy Hay finds Mary Wollstonecraft very contemporary • Derek Collett sits in on some psychiatric sessions • Victoria Neumark asks ‘Goodbye to all what?’ • Derek Parker goes backstage with some extremely old actors and much more besides . . .

A Cheerful Revolutionary • AMANDA THEUNISSEN on the memoirs of Alexander Herzen

Hanging Out on the Maginot Line • MICHAEL BARBER on Anthony Rhodes, Sword of Bone

Strindberg’s Island • KARIN ALTENBERG on August Strindberg, The People of Hemsö

The Rummidge Chronicles • HENRY JEFFREYS on David Lodge’s university novels

A Battersea Childhood • JEREMY LEWIS on Richard Church, Over the Bridge

Collapse in the Colony • PATRICK WELLAND on J. G. Farrell, The Singapore Grip

Love and Miss Lotti • SUE GEE on Penelope Fitzgerald, Charlotte Mew and Her Friends

Hero Ahead of His Time • URSULA BUCHAN on John Buchan, Montrose and Witch Wood

Goodbye to All What? • VICTORIA NEUMARK on Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That

Mostly in the Mind • DEREK COLLETT on Nigel Balchin, Mine Own Executioner

Letters from the Heart • DAISY HAY on Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden . . .

Raising the Dead • REBECCA WILLIS on Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

A Purple Gentian • TANIA HERSHMAN on Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

Land of Lost Content • MARTIN SORRELL on Ted Walker, The Last of England

Not-so-gay Paree • ROWENA MACDONALD on Jean Rhys, Quartet and Voyage in the Dark

Caught in the Act • DEREK PARKER on obscure books

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.

‘Sparky and independent’ The Times

‘Opening Slightly Foxed triggered one of those moments when you have to ask yourself, “How it is possible that I did not know this existed until now?” Slightly Foxed features short pieces by authors and contributors who each write about a book or author they enjoy. It’s kind of like Nick Hornby’s column in the 'Believer' – it will likely give you a lot of ideas of things you’d like to read someday, but it’s also enjoyable to just read someone’s description and stories about a book they love.’ Books, The Universe & Everything

Slightly Foxed Issue 51: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

After the events of the past few months, we must admit that, though extremely cheerful and optimistic, we’re also feeling a bit ruminative here in the office. Somehow the timeless and civilizing...

‘A tonic of inspiration and pleasure . . .’

M. Wren, Ely

‘Autumn Slightly Foxed received as ever a tonic of inspiration and pleasure. Thank you!’

Hanging Out on the Maginot Line

Michael Barber, Preface to Anthony Rhodes, Sword of Bone

In 1989 I was commissioned to write and present a programme about the Phoney War for BBC Radio 4. My research took me to the Imperial War Museum’s sound archives and the testimony of a Dunkirk...

Slightly Foxed Issue 51: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

After the events of the past few months, we must admit that, though extremely cheerful and optimistic, we’re also feeling a bit ruminative here in the office. Somehow the timeless and civilizing...

A Cheerful Revolutionary

Amanda Theunissen on Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts

Alexander Herzen was a nineteenth-century Russian political reformer and philosopher who wrote five volumes of what he described as ‘memoirs in progress’. Alexander Herzen was a...

Strindberg’s Island

Karin Altenberg on August Strindberg, The People of Hemsö

One early autumn, when life wasn’t going exactly to plan, I joined two friends sailing around the Stockholm archipelago, the 20,000 islands and skerries that protect the approach to the Swedish...

The Rummidge Chronicles

Henry Jeffreys on David Lodge’s university novels

Some fellow English literature students took refuge in drink, drugs or promiscuity. My escape was the novels of David Lodge. Between 1975 and 1988 he wrote Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work,...

A Battersea Childhood

Jeremy Lewis on Richard Church, Over the Bridge

Richard Church is remembered, if at all, as a late-flowering Georgian poet and a busy man of letters who contributed reviews to such long-forgotten periodicals as John O’London’s Weekly, and who...

Collapse in the Colony

Patrick Welland on J. G. Farrell, The Singapore Grip

With two prize-winning novels – Troubles and The Siege of Krishnapur (see SF nos. 49 and 50) – behind him, J. G. Farrell felt sufficiently confident to paint his next exploration of the decline...

Love and Miss Lotti

Sue Gee on Penelope Fitzgerald, Charlotte Mew and Her Friends

Was anyone ever as singular as Charlotte Mew? Mannish, gruffish, diminutive, she ranged about London in her tailor-mades and cropped hair and rolled her own cigarettes, possibly with the discarded...

Hero Ahead of His Time

Ursula Buchan on John Buchan, Montrose and Witch Wood

One day I found a copy of Montrose, written by my grandfather, John Buchan, and published in 1928. Despite having been taught at university to be pretty sniffy about any history that made...

Goodbye to All What?

Victoria Neumark on Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That

Now I found myself asking: what was Robert Graves saying ‘goodbye’ to? When he published Goodbye to All That (1929), his startling memoir of his youth and his experiences on the Western Front in...

Mostly in the Mind

Derek Collett on Nigel Balchin, Mine Own Executioner

I watched a lot of television in my twenties and I doubt whether it did me much good. But it did lead, indirectly, to my discovering the fascinating novels of Nigel Balchin. In 1990 I saw a TV drama...

Letters from the Heart

Daisy Hay on Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark

Over the past few months I’ve been immersed in a feast of late-eighteenth-century reading as I’ve meandered through the foothills of a new book project. I’ve had the delight of reacquainting...

Raising the Dead

Rebecca Willis on Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

Someone must have recommended it. Otherwise there’s no way, twenty years ago, I’d have picked up an 880-page book about the French Revolution. Even a novel. But I did pick up Hilary Mantel’s A...

A Purple Gentian

Tania Hershman on Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

I read Einstein’s Dreams (1992), by Alan Lightman, not long after it was published. I was in my mid-20s, freshly released from a degree in maths and physics I had understood very little of, and...

Land of Lost Content

Martin Sorrell on Ted Walker, The Last of England

One afternoon sometime in the early 1950s, the lad who by a country mile was my father’s ablest pupil in his sixth-form French and Spanish class rang our doorbell, and announced that the schoolgirl...

Not-so-gay Paree

Rowena Macdonald on Jean Rhys, Quartet and Voyage in the Dark

I first read Jean Rhys in my mid-teens; a copy of Quartet from my parents’ bookshelf, which drew me with its undemanding slimness and its cover featuring the beautiful face of Isabelle Adjani in...

Caught in the Act

Derek Parker on obscure books

I waited until my wife was looking the other way, nipped quickly in and bought it. Admittedly, it weighed six pounds, its heavy leather binding was rather battered and, as the label said, it ‘lacks...