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
John Saumarez Smith remembers the diarists’ diarist • Fiammetta Rocco joins the Mafia • Sue Gee cooks with a poet • Anne Boston dates Philip Marlowe • Andreas Campomar recalls an improvident youth • Malcolm Gluck spends a weekend in Timaru • Derek Parker enjoys some small talk • C. J. Driver reads an unusual school report • The Book Hound goes stocking-filling, and much more besides . . .
Cooking with a Poet • SUE GEE
Paul Roche, Cooking with a Poet
Trouble at Tampling • C. J. DRIVER
J. L. Carr, The Harpole Report
From National Trust . . . • GRANT MCINTYRE
A portrait of James Lees-Milne
. . . to National Treasure • JOHN SAUMAREZ SMITH
On the diaries of James Lees-Milne
A Man’s Man • JULIA ROCHESTER
Eric Linklater, The Dark of Summer
Nuffin’ Like a Puffin • KATE DUNN
Roger Lancelyn Green, Tales of the Greek Heroes
In the Garden of Death and Plenty • FIAMMETTA ROCCO
Peter Robb, Midnight in Sicily
Down These Mean Streets • ANNE BOSTON
On the novels of Raymond Chandler
A Cab at the Door • HAZEL WOOD
Gwen Raverat, Period Piece
Weekend in Timaru • MALCOLM GLUCK
On the short stories of Owen Marshall
Better ’an Heaven • DEREK PARKER
Cecil Torr, Small Talk at Wreyland
Wrestling with a Fine Woman • ROGER HUDSON
Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time
He Stayed the Course • ANDREAS CAMPOMAR
Simon Raven, Alms for Oblivion
Quite Mesmerizing • CLIVE UNGER-HAMILTON
George du Maurier, Trilby
The Golden Thread • HAZEL WOOD
On the Jane Nissen Books
The Book Hound
Our Book Hound tracks down some ideal books to fill Slightly Foxed Christmas stockings
Up There on a Visit • MIKE PETTY
On the dangers of wining and dining poets
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.
- The Book Hound
- Wood, Hazel
- Cawthorne, Nigel
- Lancelyn Green, Roger
- Fermine, Maxence
- Lees-Milne, James
- Jones, Cleolinda
- Linklater, Eric
- Meynell, Francis
- Webb, Kaye
- Wining and dining poets, the dangers of
- Smith, John Saumarez
- Bookshops and bookselling
- Tey, Josephine
- Cookery
- Torr, Cecil
- Jane Nissen Books
- Unger-Hamilton, Clive
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Hudson, Roger
- Boston, Anne
- Campomar, Andreas
- Carr, J. L.
- Chandler, Raymond
- Driver, C. J.
- Du Maurier, George
- Dunn, Kate
- Gee, Sue
- Gluck, Malcolm
- Macartney-Snape, Sue
- McIntyre, Grant
- Marshall, Owen
- Parker, Derek
- Petty, Mike
- Raven, Simon
- Raverat, Gwen
- Robb, Peter
- Rocco, Fiammetta
- Roche, Paul
- Rochester, Julia
Slightly Foxed Issue 8: From the Editors
It’s Christmas again – our second, which seems cause for celebration in itself, especially as subscriptions are holding steady and even (dare we say it) creeping up. We raise a celebratory glass...
Read moreCooking with a Poet
There came to the house a charming letter, a photograph of ‘my paradise of a small garden’ and a parcel of some of the most enchanting volumes I had ever seen. Printed in India (of which more...
Read moreUp There on a Visit
It was the custom then, in the late ’70s, and still is for all I know, for editors to saunter forth from their ivory towers and visit bookshops with the reps, experience life at the sharp end of...
Read moreTrouble at Tampling
J. L. Carr was a primary school head in Kettering, Northamptonshire, who took early retirement from teaching so he could become a full-time writer, and who supported himself, his wife and his son in...
Read moreFrom National Trust . . .
Not everyone has dinner with Winston Churchill and watches him re-enact the Battle of Jutland with wine glasses and decanters, puffing cigar smoke to represent the guns; or gets into a spitting match...
Read more. . . to National Treasure
When Ancestral Voices was first to be published in 1975, Chatto & Windus knew that it was ‘Heywood Hill’s sort of book’. I asked for the earliest possible proof copy and signed up a large...
Read moreA Man’s Man
At first I enjoyed being the only person ever to have read The Dark of Summer. It was like coming across a deserted beach that can only be reached by boat. But then, glancing down Linklater’s...
Read moreNuffin' Like a Puffin
I was a gluttonous reader, possessive and insatiable. On my desk before me sits a little pile of three-and-sixpenny story books, so freighted with emotion that I can hardly bear to open them. The...
Read moreIn the Garden of Death and Plenty
When Peter Robb first visited Sicily in 1974, he was so taken by the food in Palermo’s Vucciria market that he wrote down this description in his notebook: ‘Purple and black eggplant, light green...
Read moreDown These Mean Streets
Chandler himself defined literature as ‘any sort of writing that generates its own heat’, which fairly describes his own best work. No other crime writer could work the same narcotic chemistry in...
Read moreA Cab at the Door
For me a home without Period Piece is like a house without a cat – lacking an essential cheering and comfortable element. I have loved Gwen Raverat’s memoir of growing up in Cambridge in the...
Read moreWeekend in Tiramu
The author is easy to spot as I walk through Christchurch airport. I recognize Owen Marshall Jones (he drops the surname for his nom de plume) from the photograph on the back of Coming Home in the...
Read moreBetter 'an Heaven
Some books announce their quality straight away. On p.3 of Small Talk at Wreyland, the author tells of an old lady looking out across her garden on a gorgeous summer afternoon. ‘She turned to me,...
Read moreWrestling with a Fine Woman
Josephine Tey was a writer of detective stories during the classic era from the 1930s to the 1950s, when Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, Edmund Crispin, Michael Innes and Dorothy Sayers were to...
Read moreHe Stayed the Course
In my mid-twenties, having given up hope of a literary career, or any sensible career for that matter, I did what many desperate men do: I trained to become a lawyer. I mustered up an impressive...
Read moreQuite Mesmerizing
While still relatively young, the brilliant cartoonist and illustrator George du Maurier went blind in one eye, probably as the result of a detached retina. This didn’t prevent him from joining the...
Read moreThe Golden Thread
It was partly her attachment to another of B.B.’s books – Brendon Chase – that gave Jane Nissen the idea of reissuing classic children’s books that had slipped out of print when she retired...
Read more
