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Slightly Foxed Issue 56
  • ISBN: 9781910898093
  • Pages: 96
  • Dimensions: 210 x 148mm
  • Illustrations: B/W
  • Publication date: 1 December 2017
  • Producer: Smith Settle
  • Cover artist: Clare Curtis, ‘The Thought Fox’, linocut
  • ISSN: 1742-5794
Made in Britain

Slightly Foxed Issue 56

‘Making the Best of It’

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‘A great present for someone who likes books, and for who you can never think of a remotely suitable present … the magazine is rather like that voice you always hope to hear behind you in old bookshops … “Ah now that’s an interesting one”.’ Miles Kington, Independent


Open up a world of new reading with Slightly Foxed, the quarterly magazine for booklovers. Companionable, entertaining and elegantly produced, it’s more like a well-read friend than a literary review.

In this issue

Anthony Wells goes in search of Proust • Ysenda Maxtone Graham mourns the passing of a great Children’s Encyclopedia • Brandon Robshaw introduces the real George Orwell • Morag MacInnes has a laugh with Frank Reynolds • Daisy Hay admits to being a Chalet girl • Michael Holroyd wonders why he became a biographer • Sue Gee meets the author of Emil and the Detectives • William Palmer gets to know Mr Lear • Matt Huber takes off with Gavin Lyall . . .


Contents

Making the Best of It • WILLIAM PALMER

Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer

48 Königsbrücker Strasse • SUE GEE

Erich Kästner, When I Was a Little Boy

Introducing M. Swann • ANTHONY WELLS

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Secrets of the Hive • NICHOLAS ASPREY

Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee

Aerobatics • MATT HUBER

The aviation thrillers of Gavin Lyall

A Writer in Hiding • KATE JONES

The novels of A. L. Barker

Sixty Years On • MICHAEL BARBER

The Dragon Book of Verse

No Coward Soul • CHRISTOPHER RUSH

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Packing a Punch • MORAG MACINNES

The cartoons of Frank Reynolds

An Extraordinary Ordinary Bloke • BRANDON ROBSHAW

The essays of George Orwell

Well-Salted • YSENDA MAXTONE GRAHAM

The Oxford Junior Encyclopedia

A Different Kind of Wealth • CHRIS SAUNDERS

Robert Francis, Travelling in Amherst

Brief Encounters • HORACE ANNESLEY

Spencer Somers, Tea at Florian’s

Chalet Girls • DAISY HAY

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books

Harvey Learns the Ropes • ANDREW JOYNES

Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

Lives and Letters • MICHAEL HOLROYD

On becoming a biographer


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.

‘‘One of the very best moments of each new season: when the new Slightly Foxed arrives.’’ Melissa Harrison

‘‘Hurrah for Slightly Foxed – a truly independent small publishing house that flourishes while eschewing the lure of Amazon.’’ Arabella Friesen, John Sandoe Books

‘‘A heartfelt celebration of writing that has stood the test of time . . . committedly eclectic’’ Gaby Wood, Telegraph



Slightly Foxed Issue 56: From the Editors

From the start, we were keen that Slightly Foxed should feature not only contributors familiar from other book pages but also the voices of people who could write but who didn’t think of themselves...

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‘It brought back to me all the magical delight that my mother and I shared . . .’

‘I have just opened my newly delivered Slightly Foxed and gone straight to the article about The Little Grey Men and Down the Bright Stream. It has brought back to me all the magical delight that...

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‘Like a child in a sweet shop . . .’

‘I recently bought four books from you with the intention of giving them away for Christmas. That will still happen but rather like a child in a sweet shop I have read them all myself first....

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‘A fascinating book . . .’

‘I was thrilled to read Country Boy as I have been researching my family in Hardwick-cum-Weedon for about forty years – and had no idea that the book existed! I enjoyed the book hugely . . .’

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‘A joy to read, to look at and handle’ . . .

'When I got my last polite subscription reminder from you before Christmas . . . not only did I renew but I ordered two of your beautiful limited editions – 84, Charing Cross Road and The Real Mrs...

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‘May I say how delighted I am . . .’

‘I have just received the three volumes that I ordered, Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School, Terms & Conditions and The Real Mrs Miniver. May I say how delighted I am with both the production and the...

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Making the Best of It

‘One day there appeared at luncheon sitting opposite to us a rosy, gray-bearded, bald-headed, gold-spectacled old gentleman who captivated my attention . . . Something seemed to bubble and sparkle...

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Introducing M. Swann

The first time my wife-to-be invited me round for a meal, and sat me down in her book-lined dining-room, my eye was caught by three thick volumes in a slipcase, in decorative blue, white and red...

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48 Königsbrücker Strasse

Erich Kästner was born in Dresden on a snow-filled February day in 1899, the adored only child of Emil and Ida Kästner: he a master saddler fallen on pinched times, she – eventually – a...

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Secrets of the Hive

The Life of the Bee is not a scientific study or a treatise on practical beekeeping but a study of the bees and their culture written by a man who had observed them during twenty years of beekeeping....

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Aerobatics

Gavin Lyall was not the first pilot to take to fiction – Nevil Shute, Ernest K. Gann and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry navigated the skies creatively before him – but Lyall’s thrillers of the 1960s...

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A Writer in Hiding

I first saw A. L. Barker’s books lined up in a row on a shelf in the University of East Anglia library, their dust covers removed, their red, blue and green cloth bindings faded, their pages clean...

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Sixty Years On

Nestling in a box full of bric-à-brac was her father’s copy of The Dragon Book of Verse, a book I had last opened about sixty years ago at my prep-school, where it was used for a weekly exercise...

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No Coward Soul

Emily Brontë is the greatest woman novelist of all time. That is my personal opinion, though it is one which happens to be shared by many others, including highly respected scholars. That in itself...

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Packing a Punch

Pictures came before words. And as soon as there were pictures, there were funny pictures. I’ve always felt sanguine about the future of funny pictures, partly because they’re also...

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An Extraordinary Ordinary Bloke

The Orwell of the essays has a pungent literary personality. He’s dauntingly knowledgeable, decided in his views and trenchant in their expression, a non-sufferer of fools, an enemy of pretension...

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Well-Salted

Did we all have someone in our childhood who was The Best Giver of Presents? In my case, it was a family friend called Vere Guilford. She entered deeply enough into the person you were to get...

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A Different Kind of Wealth

As a rather romantic young man in my early twenties, I longed for a retreat, a cabin by a lake where I could learn to understand nature and write reams of lapidary poetry. Of course this never came...

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Brief Encounters

An account of a life deeply devoted to celebrity-chasing, it is both comic and rather pathetic, because though he describes his victims with enthusiasm and a considerable talent for characterization,...

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Chalet Girls

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was a teacher from South Shields who visited Pertisau in the early 1920s. The first of her school stories set at the Alpenhof Hotel, which she transformed into the setting for...

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Harvey Learns the Ropes

When he gave Captains Courageous to me, my father described the opening episode of the book: a teenage boy falls overboard from a transatlantic liner at night and is hauled into a dory by a deckhand...

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Lives and Letters

Most people do not encourage members of their family to become biographers. There is no telling what trouble they will get into. If you write fiction any member of your family who appears on the...

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Comments & Reviews

Leave your review

  1. Melissa Harrison says:

    ‘One of the very best moments of each new season: when the new Slightly Foxed arrives.’

  2. Erik Heywood, Book/Shop, Oakland says:

    ‘Think of it as Reading Rainbow for adults with a high literary standard and strong preference for books that delight rather than depress. The magazine is beautifully made, and it’s one of the few quarterlies we read cover-to-cover the moment it arrives.’

  3. Damian Barr says:

    ‘I love Slightly Foxed. It’s a real hit with visitors, and it usually ends up in the loo.’

  4. Arabella Friesen, John Sandoe Books says:

    ‘Hurrah for Slightly Foxed – a truly independent small publishing house that flourishes while eschewing the lure of Amazon.’

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