Slightly Foxed Issue 59

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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: Margaret Drabble travels with Trollope • Kristian Doyle eavesdrops in Manhattan • Sue Gaisford is gripped by the Asquiths’ wartime letters • Ken Haigh takes to the open road with Mr Polly • Kate Tyte goes Gothic • Michael Leapman meets an unexpectedly good-tempered gardener • Hazel Wood enters the Tiger’s cage • Richard Crockatt leaves the Magic Mountain • Helena Drysdale goes back to nature • Martin Sorrell witnesses a plague in Oran • Michael Barber smells murder in Moscow, and much more besides.

Manhattan Moments • KRISTIAN DOYLE on Maeve Brennan, The Long-winded Lady

Tiger the Literary Lion • HAZEL WOOD on Jennie Erdal, Ghosting

A Peak Experience • RICHARD CROCKATT on Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Growing up Edwardian • ANTHONY GARDNER on Osbert Lancaster, All Done from Memory & With an Eye to the Future

Forest School • HELENA DRYSDALE on BB, Brendon Chase

Trollope’s Ireland • MARGARET DRABBLE on the Irish novels of Anthony Trollope

Mr Polly Walks to Freedom • KEN HAIGH on H. G. Wells, The History of Mr Polly

Cogs in a Fighting Machine • HENRY JEFFREYS on Len Deighton, Bomber

Grinning at the Devil • KATE TYTE on Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

Father Figures • MARTIN SORRELL on Albert Camus, The Plague

In a Class of Their Own • PATRICK WELLAND on Graham Greene (ed.), The Old School

Front Lines • SUE GAISFORD on H. H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley & Raymond Asquith, Life and Letters

Moscow Under Terror • MICHAEL BARBER on Guide to the city of Moscow, 1937

Trips to the Past • SOPHIE BREESE on Daphne du Maurier, The House on the Strand

A Well-tempered Gardener • MICHAEL LEAPMAN on the garden writings of Christopher Lloyd

The Missing Librarian • C. J. WRIGHT on escaping the British Museum’s Department of Printed 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.

‘A vibrant and stimulating literary diamond’ Dovegrey Reader

Slightly Foxed Issue 59: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

‘For weeks the trees had been heavy-laden with tired green leaves,’ writes BB when autumn arrives in Brendon Chase, ‘but now! What glory! What a colour ran riot in the underwood, how sweet and...

Cover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 59, Luna North, ‘Beechnuts’

Luna North trained at the Falmouth School of Art. She now lives in Devon where she specializes in printmaking. The images in her linocuts of native flora and fauna are inspired by the wild landscape...

Manhattan Moments

Kristian Doyle on Maeve Brennan, The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker

In January 1954, a vignette appeared in the New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ section, introduced only vaguely as a missive from ‘a rather long-winded lady’. The piece – like all ‘Talk’...

Forest School

Helena Drysdale on BB, Brendon Chase

It’s the end of the Easter holidays, and Robin, John and Harold Hensman can’t face returning to their boarding-school. Their ‘people’ are in India, and for years they’ve been entrusted to...

Tiger the Literary Lion

Hazel Wood on Jennie Erdal, Ghosting

One day in 1981 a young woman found herself travelling from her Scottish home to London to meet a publisher. So far so predictable perhaps. She had read Russian at university and had recently...

Growing up Edwardian

Anthony Gardner on Osbert Lancaster, All Done From Memory & With an Eye to the Future

I wonder if I have ever stayed in an English house that didn’t contain a creased and dog-eared book by Osbert Lancaster. In my childhood his collections of pocket cartoons were always a...

A Peak Experience

Richard Crockatt on Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

If literary critics are to be believed, understanding literature requires an analytical approach. We all know, however, that our experience of a particular book or author is often bound up with where...

A Well-tempered Gardener

Michael Leapman on the garden writings of Christopher Lloyd

There is no good reason why an expert and dedicated gardener should be able to write elegant prose – and a survey of the gardening shelves of bookshops, along with the many magazines devoted to...

Trollope’s Ireland

Margaret Drabble on the Irish novels of Anthony Trollope

I have been reading Trollope’s fiction over several decades, but it was not until this year that I embarked upon his three principal Irish novels. They have not been his most popular works, and I,...

Mr Polly Walks to Freedom

Ken Haigh on H. G. Wells, The History of Mr Polly

Part of the attraction lies in its hero, Alfred Polly. He is a small, inconsequential man, the sort who drifts through life as if in a dream. ‘I’ve never really planned my life, or set out to...

Cogs in a Fighting Machine

Henry Jeffreys on Len Deighton, Bomber

While reading Len Deighton’s Bomber (1970), I was reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s line – ‘To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.’ Bomber is a novel...

Grinning at the Devil

Kate Tyte on Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

Seven Gothic Tales is an apt title. All tales must have a teller, and Dinesen’s seven separate tales – all long, some long enough to be novellas – have multiple storytellers. There are tales...

Father Figures

Martin Sorrell on Albert Camus, The Plague

Three-quarters of the way through the novel I’ve always thought is Camus’ finest, its two main protagonists go for a swim after dark in the waters beyond the harbour of their coastal city, which...

In a Class of Their Own

Patrick Welland on Graham Greene (ed.), The Old School

The Old School is made up of seventeen essays by writers who achieved literary distinction later in life, though some are all but forgotten today. Apart from Auden, still familiar names include...

Front Lines

Sue Gaisford on H. H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley & Raymond Asquith, Life and Letters

The Prime Minister was blazingly indiscreet, prefacing the most vital secrets of military strategy with such remarks as ‘this is rather private’ and reminding her not to leave the letter lying on...

Moscow Under the Terror

Michael Barber on Guide to the city of Moscow 1937

Written by the Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, the guide describes Moscow as ‘the city of emancipated and joyful labour’. In fact it was a huge building site over...

Trips to the Past

Sophie Breese on Daphne du Maurier, The House on the Strand

Set in Cornwall, it is a brilliantly compelling story told in recognizable du Maurier style: civil disturbance lurks in the background; it has a frustratingly passive narrator; and it deals with that...

The Missing Librarian

C. J. Wright on escaping the British Museum’s Department of Printed Books

Somewhere high in the Austrian Alps there may lie the body of a librarian, for that is where Robert Proctor was last seen, at the head of the Taschach valley, on the morning of Sunday, 6 September...