‘A vibrant and stimulating literary diamond’ Dovegrey Reader
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: Daisy Hay runs riot with Dickens • Alan Bradley stands up for purple prose • Hazel Wood meets an uncommon reader • Frances Donnelly finds a gap in the alphabet • Justin Marozzi is charmed by a modest mountaineer • Anne Boston gets the shivers in Cold War Siberia • Nigel Andrew wonders what happened to Elizabeth Jenkins • Sue Gaisford is seduced by a wicked Earl • Laurence Scott gets out his guitar • Sue Gee meets the man who drew Pooh • Richard Platt is gripped by the story of a lost will • Victoria Neumark goes in search of unicorns • Alastair Glegg says a belated thank you, and much more besides . . .
A Dickens of a Riot • DAISY HAY on Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
Between the Lines • SUE GEE on E. H. Shepard, Drawn from Memory & Drawn from Life
From Bloomsbury . . . • ALAN BRADLEY on Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader
. . . to Buckingham Palace • HAZEL WOOD on Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
Rock, Root and Bird • JUSTIN MAROZZI on Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
Keeping Ahead of the Game • CHRISTOPHER RUSH on Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Russian Roulette • ANNE BOSTON on Lionel Davidson, Kolymsky Heights
Incorrigible and Irresistible • SUE GAISFORD on the letters of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
A Modern Pied Piper • MAGGIE FERGUSSON interviews Michael Morpurgo
Histories of the Soul • CHRISTIAN TYLER the works of Svetlana Alexievich
Whatever Happened to Elizabeth Jenkins? • NIGEL ANDREW on the novels of Elizabeth Jenkins
In Search of Unicorns • VICTORIA NEUMARK on Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse & Linnets and Valerians
Grave Expectations • RICHARD PLATT on Charles Palliser, The Quincunx
Kinsey Makes a Difference • FRANCES DONNELLY on Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone Alphabet novels
The Next Bob Dylan • Laurence Scott on Bert Weedon, Play in a Day
Unsung Heroes • ALASTAIR GLEGG on learning to read at prep school
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.
‘It ranks as one of the more unusual publications I have ever come across and manages to be both literary and easily readable. I consider myself fairly well-read but Slightly Foxed never fails to dazzle me upon its arrival. ’ Bookslut
‘Slightly Foxed’s best offering is its quarterly, in which a dozen or so elegant essays make a case for various amusing but neglected books. A subscription would make an inspired gift for a hungry reader.’ Telegraph
‘A highly diverting antitode to the gloom of winter’ The Tablet
- Anon.
- Shepherd, Nan
- Bennett, Alan
- Bradley, Alan
- Shepard, E. H.
- Wormell, Chris
- Watson, John
- Treglown, Jeremy
- Woolf, Virginia
- Wood, Hazel
- Tyler, Christian
- Simmonds, Posy
- Morpurgo, Michael
- Alexievich, Svetlana
- Andrew, Nigel
- Jenkins, Elizabeth
- Palliser, Charles
- Grafton, Sue
- Weedon, Bert
- Glegg, Alastair
- Boston, Anne
- Davidson, Lionel
- Dickens, Charles
- Donnelly, Frances
- Fergusson, Maggie
- Gaisford, Sue
- Gee, Sue
- Goudge, Elizabeth
- Hay, Daisy
- Marozzi, Justin
- Neumark, Victoria
- Platt, Richard
- Rush, Christopher
- Scott, Laurence
Slightly Foxed Issue 60: From the Editors
Well, this issue is our 60th, and it’s making us feel a bit ruminative – emotional even – remembering the little group (four plus a baby) who sat round Gail’s kitchen table, discussing an...
Read moreBetween the Lines
It is hard to know whether it is the featherlight words of A. A. Milne or the airy ‘decorations’ of E. H. Shepard that everyone has ever since loved the more, so perfect was their partnership ....
Read moreWhatever Happened to Elizabeth Jenkins?
When she died in 2010, at the astonishing age of 104, the novelist and biographer Elizabeth Jenkins was all but forgotten, her name known only to a few aficionados, her books mostly long out of...
Read more‘What a delightful 60th issue of Slightly Foxed . . . ’
‘What a delightful 60th issue of Slightly Foxed, especially the art work by Posy Simmonds. Enjoyable to see the dogs portrayed, Stanley looks to be a dog with attitude. I also enjoyed and can...
Read moreUnsung Heroes
The library at Fonthill Preparatory School was just what I imagined a Gentlemen’s Club to be like: shiny brown leather armchairs with velvet cushions, long oak tables, panelled walls, a coal fire...
Read moreGrave Expectations
The leitmotiv of The Quincunx is the interplay of Chance and Design – do we perceive Design in our lives, or merely impose it? – underscored by the recurrence of those Dickensian coincidences...
Read moreA Dickens of a Riot
Last year I decided that I felt like reading Dickens at Christmas. Resisting the temptation to turn to old and reliable fireside favourites, I alighted instead on Barnaby Rudge. It seemed a choice...
Read moreFrom Bloomsbury . . .
Notoriously, Woolf doesn’t write about the women on whom she herself depended for home comforts but, mostly, about those who were educated and wealthy enough to write diaries or letters. But she...
Read more. . . to Buckingham Palace
How Bennett must have enjoyed writing this book. The Palace setting, with its hierarchies and snobberies and constipated bureaucracy, and the shrewd no-nonsense voice of his central character, allow...
Read moreRock, Root and Bird
The Living Mountain, thankfully, is a treasure that, rather like the Cairngorms it describes so wondrously, stands alone in space and time. Happening on it at any point in one’s reading life brings...
Read moreKeeping Ahead of the Game
Most of us can respond with deep childhood memories to the line ‘I’m going to tell you a story’, words which we repeat to our own children and grandchildren; and this is the formula applied by...
Read moreRussian Roulette
I met Davidson in 1994 when Kolymsky Heights, his last and arguably his finest, was published. He was slight and unassuming, with expressive dark eyes that widened when I showed him my early proof...
Read moreIncorrigible and Irresistible
On our course we were studying Rochester, as published in the Muses Library edition, and while we were certainly impressed by the rage and ingenuity of his satires, most of us had fallen slightly in...
Read moreA Modern Pied Piper
For generations of children, Michael Morpurgo has been a kind of Pied Piper. No one is sure exactly how many books he’s written, but there are over 150 of them, and they are said to have sold, in...
Read moreHistories of the Soul
Alexievich was not interested in conventional responses, the kind of thing people say to journalists when they are shy, afraid of controversy or anxious to please. Since this was Russia, she had also...
Read moreIn Search of Unicorns
Like Traherne Goudge was an ardent Anglican. But although religion can be an oppressive presence in her adult novels, in her children’s books it manifests itself merely as a sense of embracing...
Read moreKinsey Makes a Difference
There are authors’ deaths, announced casually on the radio, that provoke an involuntary cry of loss. The recent death of Sue Grafton, author of the alphabetically themed Kinsey Millhone detective...
Read moreThe Next Bob Dylan
In 1950 guitars were rare in the UK and sales barely touched 5,000, but Elvis, Cliff and British rock ’n’ roll changed all that. In 1957, when Play in a Day was first published, annual UK guitar...
Read more
The Real Person!
Author Michael Palin acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.
Slightly Foxed is a very civilised way to appreciate books and writers. No shouting, no hype, just beautifully presented enthusiasms, most of which are irresistible. Happy 60th!
The Real Person!
Author Adam Foulds acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.
Slightly Foxed is a perfect readers’ periodical and every issue is a joy. In its pages, books you don’t yet know come to light and books you already love come to life.
The Real Person!
Author Hilary Mantel acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.
The business of reading should please the hand and eye as well as the brain, and Slightly Foxed editions – books or quarterly – are elegant creations. Content follows form, offering new discoveries and old favourites to curious and discriminating readers.
The Real Person!
Author Damian Barr acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.
I adore Slightly Foxed. It should be made available in every school as it challenges the idea of the canon. The quarterly is full of impassioned pleas and raves about curious obsessions and literary passions, and to read of these passions is a real privilege.