Slightly Foxed Issue 58

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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: Helen MacEwan is touched by the life of William Cowper • Christopher Rush finds much to be gained from Paradise Lost • Maggie Fergusson talks travel with Colin Thubron • Andy Merrills has a brush with some beards • Ann Kennedy Smith meets E. M. Forster’s great-aunt • Ariane Bankes explores Trieste with Jan Morris • Robin Blake recommends some spiritual reading • Sarah Perry gets to the roots of Englishness • Patrick Welland witnesses power struggles in Ancient Rome • Julie Welch joins the Pony Club and much more besides . . .

A Snatch of Morning • HELEN MACEWAN on David Cecil, The Stricken Deer

Sprouts and Parsnip Wine • SARAH PERRY on John Moore, The Blue Field

The Price of Power • PATRICK WELLAND on John Williams, Augustus

Travelling Fearlessly • MAGGIE FERGUSSON on the travel writing of Colin Thubron

An Epic Achievement • CHRISTOPHER RUSH on John Milton, Paradise Lost

Pony-mad • JULIE WELCH on Ruby Ferguson’s ‘Jill’ books

Hands across the Tea-shop Table • SUE GEE on Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek

Marcel • ANTHONY WELLS on Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Streams of Consciousness • RICHARD PLATT on Henry Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Prayers before Plenty • ANN KENNEDY SMITH on E. M. Forster, Marianne Thornton, 1707–1887

Spiritual Reading • ROBIN BLAKE on H. F. M. Prescott, The Man on a Donkey

Holding a Mirror • JOHN CONYNGHAM on William Plomer, Turbott Wolfe

Man on the Run • DEREK COLLETT on John Mair, Never Come Back

Melancholy but Marvellous • ARIANE BANKES on Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Hair Today and Gone Tomorrow • ANDY MERRILLS on Reginald Reynolds, Beards: An Omnium Gatherum

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.

‘I enjoy reading the quarterly. It is a much-needed reminder of a gentler and simpler time.’ L. Gauvin, Canada

‘SF is such a delight. You have no idea how much you’ve broadened my horizons and provided me with such gems of writing, both within and beyond the magazine. Thank you for all you do and keep up the amazing work.’ J. Reardon, UK

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Slightly Foxed Issue 58: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

For some months now the office in Hoxton Square has been ringing to the sounds of hammering, banging, drilling, and tools dropping on to scaffolding, and we’ve often struggled to hear one another...

Hair Today and Gone Tomorrow

Andy Merrills on Reginald Reynolds, Beards: An Omnium Gatherum

Five or six summers ago, I was browsing in a shabbily genteel second-hand bookstore in a university town somewhere in the middle of the United States. The shop had a substantial stock of fiction, a...

Man on the Run

Derek Collett on John Mair, Never Come Back

In 1990, I watched a drama series on the BBC called Never Come Back. It was a superb Second World War thriller with a fine cast including James Fox, Nathaniel Parker and Martin Clunes. Then about a...

Holding a Mirror

John Conyngham on William Plomer, Turbott Wolfe

Early in 1925 there arrived at the Hogarth Press in London’s Tavistock Square a parcel, sent from Zululand, containing the manuscript of Turbott Wolfe, the first novel of an unknown writer named...

Spiritual Reading

Robin Blake on H. F. M. Prescott, The Man on a Donkey

Hilda Prescott was a professional historian, and a biographer of Queen Mary Tudor, who knew the sixteenth century like the back of her falconer’s glove. She was also a natural novelist who carried...

Prayers before Plenty

Ann Kennedy Smith on E. M. Forster, Marianne Thornton, 1797–1887

In 1953 the writer E. M. Forster, then aged 74, was sorting through old family papers and thinking about the past. He had recently moved back to King’s College, Cambridge, and the high-ceilinged...

Streams of Consciousness

Richard Platt on Henry Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Life had been kind to the Thoreau brothers. They were fit, healthy, enjoyed nothing so much as their time together in the open air, and having successfully taken over the Concord Academy, the local...

Sprouts and Parsnip Wine

Sarah Perry on John Moore, The Blue Field

Early one morning, late in July, the villagers of ‘crack-brained Brensham’ woke to a remarkable spectacle. There amid the customary colours of furze and wheat was a seven-acre field that ‘had...

The Price of Power

Patrick Welland on John Williams, Augustus

Octavian laid down the ideological and institutional framework which would sustain that empire for the next 400 years. He died aged 76 in AD 14 having been granted the honorific title of Augustus...

A Snatch of Morning

Helen MacEwan on David Cecil, The Stricken Deer

I bought David Cecil’s Life of William Cowper, The Stricken Deer, at a time, in my early twenties, when I was starting to devour literary biography, my preferred reading ever since. I was by then...

Travelling Fearlessly

Maggie Fergusson on the travel writing of Colin Thubron

In 1992, I started working for a strange but beguiling organization. The Royal Society of Literature was, in those days, housed in a huge, dilapidated mansion in Bayswater, and it was there that its...

An Epic Achievement

Christopher Rush on John Milton, Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost was first published 350 years ago in 1667, and was still being hailed and even enjoyed as an epic achievement (literally) into the early twentieth century. Now it’s almost unread,...

Pony-mad

Julie Welch on Ruby Ferguson’s ‘Jill’ books

Ruby Ferguson wrote nine ‘Jill’ books, of which Jill’s Gymkhana is the first. Originally published in 1949 by Hodder & Stoughton, it was beautifully illustrated by ‘Caney’, and priced at 7s...

Hands across the Tea-shop Table

Sue Gee on Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek

The novel is set in the 1920s and 1940s. Both world wars are elided, the one before it opens, the other between one chapter and the next, but in the background is the fierce struggle of the...