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
Dervla Murphy recalls an Anglo-Irish way of life • Clare Morrall takes off with Biggles • Derek Parker experiences verse and worse • Barnaby Rogerson travels hopefully • Colin Martin casts a fly • Malcolm Gluck becomes mittel-European • Peter Oborne hits a six • Sarah Anderson dives in at the deep end • Michele Hanson celebrates the parasite • John Keay meets a very big fish, and much more besides . . .
Taking the Plunge • SARAH ANDERSON
Roger Deakin, Waterlog
After the Death of the Masters • BARNABY ROGERSON
On travel writing
A Modest Superhero • CLARE MORRALL
Captain W. E. Johns, the Biggles books
Feudal Afterglow • DERVLA MURPHY
David Thomson, Woodbrook
Hoodwinkery and Legerdemain • MALCOLM GLUCK
On the novels of Stefan Zweig
A Positive View of Parasites • MICHELE HANSON
William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples; Ian & Jennifer Glynn, The Life and Death of Smallpox
On the Loose • MARY FLANAGAN
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Marxism and Cricket • PETER OBORNE
C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary
Casting a Spell • COLIN MARTIN
Gaylord Schanilec, Mayflies of the Driftless Region
Going West • ANNE SEBBA
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
When Ethel Met Sidney • FRANCES WOOD
Ethel Lillian Voynich, The Gadfly
On Matters Mekong • JOHN KEAY
Alan Davidson, Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos
The Pick of the Pocket Editions • JOHN SAUMAREZ SMITH
On World’s Classics
A Painterly Eye • NICHOLAS BAGNALL
On the novels of Theodor Storm
No Whingeing! • C. J. DRIVER
Mary Bruce Grant, A Little Bush Maid
The Book Hound
Slightly Foxed’s Book Hound has run to earth a selection of interesting new fiction which may well get lost behind the piles of bestsellers
The Editor Regrets • DEREK PARKER
On the Poetry Review
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.
- Stegner, Wallace
- Travel writing
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Storm, Theodor
- World’s Classics
- The Book Hound
- Thomson, David
- Bookshops and bookselling
- Voynich, Ethel Lillian
- Jones, Tobias
- James, C. L. R.
- Karmi, Ghada
- Johns, Captain W. E.
- Kiser, John W.
- Keay, John
- McLean, Stuart
- Wood, Frances
- Perrotta, Tom
- Zweig, Stefan
- Pomfret, Kat
- Matrix
- Scroggins, Deborah
- Smith, John Saumarez
- Poetry Review
- Weatherill, Cat
- Baldwin, James
- Bagnall, Nicholas
- Anderson, Sarah
- Davidson, Alan
- Deakin, Roger
- Driver, C. J.
- Flanagan, Mary
- Gluck, Malcolm
- Glynn, Ian & Jennifer
- Grant, Mary Bruce
- Hanson, Michele
- McLaughlin, Ben
- McNeill, William H.
- Hartley, Dorothy
- Martin, Colin
- Morrall, Clare
- Murphy, Dervla
- Oborne, Peter
- Parker, Derek
- Rogerson, Barnaby
- Schanilec, Gaylord
- Sebba, Anne
Slightly Foxed Issue 6: From the Editors
It’s a hopeful time of year. The stalwart London plane trees have unfurled their leaves, and the sun is rising higher behind the City domes, towers and spires that we can see from our now...
Read moreTaking the Plunge
The notion of a long swim through Britain began in the pouring rain while Roger Deakin was swimming in his moat in Suffolk. The idea became an obsession and, inspired by John Cheever’s short story...
Read moreAfter the Death of the Masters
Last summer the two masters of travel writing, Norman Lewis and Wilfrid Thesiger, died within a month of each other. As Britain buried the last of her explorers and the best of her travel writers, it...
Read moreA Modest Superhero
I can’t remember the moment when I decided to allow Biggles some space in my new novel, but I imagine he just turned up one day, demanding attention. An ingrained loyalty to past escapism meant...
Read moreFeudal Afterglow
It is peculiarly exciting to turn a page and find a strong personal emotion exactly distilled – an emotion hitherto believed to be one’s private idiosyncrasy. Around the age of 13 most bookish...
Read moreHoodwinkery and Legerdemain
The one thing that five of the six Stefan Zweig books currently in print in Britain have most strikingly in common is not the author’s consistency of style but his photograph opposite the title...
Read moreA Positive View of Parasites
A parasite is often to be admired for its ingenuity and persistence, even if it isn’t always attractive. A friend of mine once discovered a worm in his bed. It had come from his own body and had...
Read moreOn the Loose
To compensate for this structural flaw, I went to Athens and had the adventure I wanted to have. Then I nipped back to Rome, found a seedy pensione and holed up there until he arrived. For two days I...
Read moreMarxism and Cricket
Only one masterpiece has ever been written about the game: Beyond a Boundary, by the intellectual and political agitator C. L. R. James. It is a book that transcends all other books on the subject in...
Read moreCasting a Spell
Given that we’re talking in years, it is ironic that the book that stimulated this article deals with the most ephemeral entomological order, poetically described by Louis MacNeice as ‘One only...
Read moreGoing West
I am next to a businessman at a formal dinner. The conversation dries up after the soup. At a loss, I ask what sort of books he enjoys. Risky, I know. Either he won’t read, ‘except on planes when...
Read moreWhen Ethel Met Sidney
I have always been interested in translations, for they can affect one nation’s view of another. Thanks to Charles Dickens, Sherlock Holmes and a weepy film called Waterloo Road, for most...
Read moreOn Matters Mekong
Scrolling idly through the SOAS Library’s subject catalogue, I must have brushed an unusual combination of keys, so activating a random function not mentioned on the options bar nor widely known to...
Read moreThe Pick of the Pocket Editions
For those like me who look out for, and sometimes even retain, useless knowledge, the first World’s Classic, published in 1901, was Jane Eyre; the last in the original pre-paperback series,...
Read moreA Painterly Eye
I first discovered Theodor Storm about eight years ago when someone sent me a copy of The Dykemaster in an excellent translation by Denis Jackson. I say excellent, not because of its truth to the...
Read moreNo Whingeing!
A Little Bush Maid began as a serial, from newspaper articles which Minnie (as she was christened) Grant Bruce – a jobbing journalist in Melbourne – had contributed to the children’s page she...
Read moreThe Editor Regrets
Suddenly, out of the blue, one morning in December 1965, a letter arrived on the delightfully old-fashioned headed notepaper of the Poetry Society (‘Patron, Sir Compton Mackenzie, LL.D., F.R.S.L.,...
Read more
