Slightly Foxed Issue 7

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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: Penelope Lively explores the genius of William Golding • Michael Moran entertains his Bulgarian lover • Christopher Hawtree meets a reclusive writer • Miranda Seymour goes orchid-hunting • William Palmer blows Louis Armstrong’s trumpet • Sarah Crowden meets an Edwardian It girl • Derek Robinson rewrites his CV • Justine Hardy follows the south-west monsoon • Rachel Campbell-Johnston gets the creepy-crawlies, and much more besides . . .

Waist-high in Kale • CHRISTIAN TYLER on Ivan Turgenev, A Sportsman’s Notebook

In Search of P. Y. Betts • CHRISTOPHER HAWTREE on P. Y. Betts, People Who Say Goodbye

Infinite Depths . . . • PENELOPE LIVELY on the novels of William Golding

. . . and Tempests and Doldrums • ANDREW SINCLAIR on the novels of William Golding

Every Other Inch a Gentleman • MICHAEL MORAN on Michael Arlen, The Green Hat

Cowboys, ‘Hottentots’ and the Vietcong • PATRICK DENMAN FLANERY on J. M. Coetzee, Dusklands

Tooth and Claw • RACHEL CAMPBELL-JOHNSTON on Gordon Grice, The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators

The Trouble with Idealism • MATTHEW J. REISZ on private presses

A Kind of Redemption • VICTORIA NEUMARK on George Eliot, Adam Bede

South-West Monsoon • JUSTINE HARDY on Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family

A Bad Chooser of Husbands • HILARY TEMPLE on the novels of Angela Thirkell

Natural the Way He Is • WILLIAM PALMER on Thomas Brothers (ed.), Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words

All the Fun of the Fair • PAUL WILLETTS on Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

A la Recherche • JOHN DE FALBE on Vesna Goldsworthy, Chernobyl Strawberries; Richard Wollheim, Germs

Edwardian It Girl • SARAH CROWDEN on E. Nesbit, Five Children and It

The Orchid Man • MIRANDA SEYMOUR on Jocelyn Brooke, The Scapegoat

The Book Hound

Slightly Foxed’s Book Hound has chosen some stimulating non-fiction titles

News from Alpha Centauri • DEREK ROBINSON on literary awards

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.

Waist-high in Kale

Christian Tyler on Ivan Turgenev, A Sportsman’s Notebook

Tsar Alexander II was warned that Turgenev’s collection of short stories, variously translated into English as Sketches from a Hunter’s Album or A Sportsman’s Notebook, was politically...

In Search of P. Y. Betts

Christopher Hawtree on P. Y. Betts, People Who Say Goodbye

At a desk beneath the dome of the British Museum Reading Room, as sombre Ph.D. types on either side of me pored over earnest looking volumes, I had to restrain myself from yelling for joy at item NN...

Infinite Depths . . .

Penelope Lively on the novels of William Golding

William Golding’s is not a large oeuvre: fifteen books, a play, an unfinished novel. Rereading everything, I am struck by the modesty of the pile through which I have worked, and the brevity of the...

. . . and Tempests and Doldrums

Andrew Sinclair on the works of William Golding

William Golding was the only writer I have ever pursued. An Angry Young novel I wrote in three weeks when up at Cambridge, The Breaking of Bumbo, outsold Lord of the Flies that year for Faber &...

Cowboys, ‘Hottentots’ and the Vietcong

Patrick Denman Flanery on J. M. Coetzee, Dusklands

Though J. M. Coetzee is now internationally fêted as South Africa’s second Nobel Laureate in Literature, his early novels remain largely ignored. His first, Dusklands, is especially worth...

Tooth and Claw

Rachel Campbell-Johnston on Gordon Grice, The Red Hourglass

The Red Hourglass, a debut volume by a writer called Gordon Grice, explores a fundamental premise. ‘We want the world to be an ordered room,’ its author writes, ‘but in the corner there hangs...

The Trouble with Idealism

Matthew J. Reisz on private presses

It was towards the end of his long life, after revolutionalizing many other aspects of design, that William Morris embarked on his ‘typographical adventure’ at the Kelmscott Press. Though it...

A Kind of Redemption

Victoria Neumark on George Eliot, Adam Bede

I’ve been a passionate reader all my life, be it of labels on jam jars or the small print on the back of tax forms, aged copies of free newspapers left on seats on the London Underground, Peter...

South-West Monsoon

Justine Hardy on Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family

Eight winters ago in India I fled the manila-folder-bound desiccation of Delhi for the south and Kerala. The backwaters there have a sensuality that slides about you as you enter, moving you away...

A Bad Chooser of Husbands

Hilary Temple on the novels of Angela Thirkell

Do your favourite authors have a recognizable voice, so that you can identify them from a paragraph in the same way that you identify a voice over the telephone? Angela Thirkell has just such a...

Natural the Way He Is

William Palmer on Thomas Brothers (ed.), Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words

It is a fair bet to say that, for most people under the age of 50, and those who are not jazz fans, the name Louis Armstrong is one associated – if recognized at all – with the sound of his voice...

A la Recherche

John de Falbe on Vesna Goldsworthy, Chernobyl Strawberries; Richard Wollheim, Germs

Halfway through Marilynne Robinson’s gorgeous novel Gilead, the narrator, John Ames, a 77-year-old preacher in Iowa, makes this observation: ‘Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on...

Edwardian It Girl

Sarah Crowden on E. Nesbit, Five Children and It

‘The small material objects that surround one’s daily life have always influenced me deeply,’ wrote E. (Edith) Nesbit in her memoir Long Ago When I Was Young. In my mother’s old nursery were...

The Orchid Man

Miranda Seymour on Jocelyn Brooke, The Scapegoat

I owe the discovery of The Passing of a Hero and Conventional Weapons to a fellow-visitor to the London Library who, shrewdly interpreting the glazed stare of a fellow shelf-crawler, urged me to make...

News from Alpha Centauri

Derek Robinson on literary awards

I got lucky in 1971. In that year’s Booker prize I came 2nd, or so Saul Bellow, one of the judges, said. Coming 2nd, of course, was like coming 102nd; nevertheless it boosted my ego, which got a...

Slightly Foxed Issue 7: From the Editors

Gail Pirkis & Hazel Wood

Sadly, just as we were celebrating the arrival of the summer issue, we lost a member of our team. On 15 June, Jennings the cocker spaniel died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 13. We miss him...