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: Andrew Joynes goes back to the Middle Ages • Margaret Drabble gets to the truth of the matter with Doris Lessing • John Smart dreams of cheese • Rachel Kelly finds consolation in poetry • Charles Elliott follows a paper trail • Clarissa Burden falls for Inspector Grant • Ken Haigh takes the Tolkien test • Caroline Jackson rides with the Irish RM • Patrick Welland reads an elegy to a family, and much more besides . . .
Jocelin’s Folly • ANDREW JOYNES on William Golding, The Spire
Elegy to a Family • PATRICK WELLAND on George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna
A Down-to-Earth Visionary • MARGARET DRABBLE on Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City
Paper Trails • CHARLES ELLIOTT on Richard Altick, The Scholar Adventurers
Plenty to Say • OLIVIA POTTS on the novels of Mary Wesley
Gone Fishing • ADAM SISMAN on Hugh Falkus, The Stolen Years
Magical Talisman • SUE GAISFORD on Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword Song & The Shield Ring
The Ubiquitous Canadian • MICHAEL BARBER on Charles Ritchie, The Siren Years
A Smooth Man in a Trilby • CLARISSA BURDEN on Josephine Tey’s Inspector Grant novels
Dreaming of Cheese • JOHN SMART on John Squire (ed.), Cheddar Gorge
A Strangulation of the Soul • MAGGIE FERGUSSON on Brian Masters, Killing for Company
The Price of Virtue • FRANCES DONNELLY on Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
The Tolkien Test • KEN HAIGH on J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Winston and Clementine • JANE RIDLEY on Mary Soames (ed.), Speaking for Themselves
Innocent or Not? • CHRISTIAN TYLER on Rita Monaldi & Francesco Sorti, Imprimatur
Out with the Galloping Major • CAROLINE JACKSON on Somerville and Ross, Some Experiences of an Irish RM
Poetry, My Mother and Me • RACHEL KELLY on the consolation of poetry
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.
‘Slightly Foxed is pure happiness.’ Ronald Blythe
- Sisman, Adam
- Masters, Brian
- Squire, John
- Smart, John
- Burden, Clarissa
- Ritchie, Charles
- Falkus, Hugh
- Wesley, Mary
- Altick, Richard
- Lessing, Doris
- Clare, George
- Potts, Olivia
- Joynes, Andrew
- Haigh, Ken
- Tolkien, J. R. R.
- Poetry
- Kelly, Rachel
- Somerville and Ross
- Sorti, Francesco & Monaldi, Rita
- Monaldi, Rita & Sorti, Francesco
- Soames, Mary
- Brookner, Anita
- Sutcliff, Rosemary
- Tey, Josephine
- Tyler, Christian
- Jackson, Caroline
- Welland, Patrick
- Barber, Michael
- Churchill, Winston
- Donnelly, Frances
- Drabble, Margaret
- Elliott, Charles
- Fergusson, Maggie
- Gaisford, Sue
- Golding, William
- Ridley, Jane
Slightly Foxed Issue 71: From the Editors
For many of us, the summer of 2021 will be remembered through the words of a song from forty years ago. ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ was the theme of days in which we packed and unpacked our...
Read moreJocelin’s Folly
Across the east end of the nave of Canterbury Cathedral, where I was a volunteer guide for over a decade, there is a stone strainer arch erected by Prior Thomas Goldstone 500 years ago. It is a kind...
Read moreElegy to a Family
I have a photo of Aunt Margaret standing outside Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, beret jauntily askew. It is 1937 and, aged 28, she is on her return with a friend from Czechoslovakia, travelling in an...
Read moreA Down-to-Earth Visionary
I read Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City in 1969, when it was published, and I have a hardback first edition of it, still in its original dust wrapper. When I rediscovered my copy and reread it...
Read morePaper Trails
I have always been taken with the idea of treasure-hunting. Not that I have done much of it myself. I do recall searching (without success) for a reputed abandoned gold mine on Tom Ball Mountain in...
Read morePlenty to Say
A few months after my mother died, my sister and I returned home to clear out her possessions. I felt unsentimental about most of them. I readily threw away clothes, keeping only a cardigan that was...
Read moreGone Fishing
For me, some books act like a time machine, leading me back into my past, reminding me of how it felt to be young. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the effect is intense. Sensations...
Read moreMagical Talisman
It’s silly to covet a piece of jewellery. When would you really wear Marie-Antoinette’s necklace or the Hope Diamond? Even the glittering parures paraded by red-carpet celebrities are borrowed,...
Read moreThe Ubiquitous Canadian
Charles Ritchie (1906–95) was a witty, cultivated Canadian diplomat whose voluminous diaries, a blend of anecdote, commentary and confession, were an ‘escape hatch’ from the confines of his...
Read moreA Smooth Man in a Trilby
I was 13 and mad about horses when I was presented with Brat Farrar. The name of its author, Josephine Tey, meant nothing to me at the time and the title didn’t tell me much either, but it had a...
Read moreDreaming of Cheese
When I was writing a biography of John Hayward, T. S. Eliot’s flat-sharer and friend for many years, I was intrigued to come across a letter from Eliot to The Times. It was a reply to a certain Sir...
Read moreA Strangulation of the Soul
It was dusk on a winter’s day, many years ago now, when I settled down to read the prison letters of Dennis Nilsen, the most prolific murderer in British history. They had been donated to the Royal...
Read moreThe Price of Virtue
Hotel du Lac was Anita Brookner’s fourth novel, published in 1984. To the consternation of many and the incredulity of the author, it won the Booker Prize that year. The photograph taken after the...
Read moreThe Tolkien Test
As parents, we hope our children will love the books we ourselves enjoyed, the ones that turned us into readers. But as often as not, our attempts to interest them fail. I remember a friend who was...
Read moreWinston and Clementine
It was lockdown, and I was short of a book to read. One night I picked up the fat paperback volume of letters that I had ordered from Amazon (yes, I know, but where else could I buy a 1999 paperback...
Read moreInnocent or Not?
Chance put this book into my hands – and I shall be forever grateful to her. Searching for local colour from late seventeenth-century Rome for a project of my own, I came across the Italian...
Read moreOut with the Galloping Major
On one of my more recent trips to Ireland, I took a detour through County Waterford to visit Lismore Castle. Towering over the steep, wooded banks of the Blackwater, it was built nearly 900 years...
Read morePoetry, My Mother and Me
My mother Linda Kelly was a historian and lover of the eighteenth century, with biographies of Sheridan, Tom Moore and Talleyrand to her name. Though I studied history at university, when it comes to...
Read moreCover Artist: Slightly Foxed Issue 71, Jackie Morris, ‘Spring into Autumn’
Jackie Morris, born in 1961, grew up with a desire to paint. She studied art at Bath Academy of Art and has exhibited her work internationally. She is the illustrator of many books and the author of...
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