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: Adam Foulds meets a man who wasn’t there • Frances Donnelly remembers her first job • Andy Merrills follows the path of a storm • Miranda Seymour discovers a haunting first novel • Anthony Gardner gets caught up in the Troubles • Alexandra Pringle falls for Barbara Trapido’s people • Brandon Robshaw salutes Captain Carruthers • Morag MacInnes battens down the hatches • Christian Tyler leans to the right • Posy Fallowfield finds herself in a book, and much more besides . . .
Stumbling with Precision • NIALL ALLSOPP on Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles
A Season at the Agency • FRANCES DONNELLY on Joanna Rakoff, My Salinger Year
Friendship and a Book • VESNA GOLDSWORTHY on Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday
Right Turn! • CHRISTIAN TYLER on Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things
Reaching for the Moon • JULIA STIELSTRA on R. C. Sherriff, The Hopkins Manuscript
Hanging Around in Doorways • POSY FALLOWFIELD on Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding
Master of Invention • ADAM FOULDS on Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
A Hard Act to Follow • MORAG MACINNES on Elizabeth Linklater, A Child under Sail
Sex and Silliness and Sorrow • ALEXANDRA PRINGLE on The novels of Barbara Trapido
Voyage to the Blessed Isles • ANDREW JOYNES on Derek Walcott, ‘The Schooner Flight’
A Boy in the Big House • ANTHONY GARDNER on Terence de Vere White, Prenez Garde
Of Innocence and Experience • CAMILLA CASSIDY on Wilhelm Grimm’s Dear Mili, with Maurice Sendak
A Gale Called Maria • ANDY MERRILLS on George R. Stewart, Storm
The Sound of Silence • MIRANDA SEYMOUR on Jennifer Atkins, The Cellist
Pulsing Hearts beneath the Tweed • CHRIS SAUNDERS on Bernard J. Farmer, Death of a Bookseller
Absolutely Smashing! • BRANDON ROBSHAW on Boyhood comics
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. More . . .
‘Slightly Foxed is a handsome magazine full of wonderful surprises and discoveries. I learn something every time I read it. ’ Michael Holroyd
Stumbling with Precision
According to Dorothy Dunnett’s fans, she is one of Scotland’s greatest writers. They descend on Edinburgh for their annual symposium on Dorothy Dunnett Day. They read the books alongside a...
Read moreA Season at the Agency
There is something about a memoir describing a young person starting their first job that makes an older reader’s heart beat faster with sympathetic recall. Especially when it’s funny and...
Read moreFriendship and a Book
The novelist Graham Swift and I first met at a literary gathering on the outskirts of Norwich in June 2005. The university backdrop to our meeting seems strangely extra-territorial in retrospect, as...
Read moreRight Turn!
It’s not often that you come upon a book of science and philosophy that bowls you over. The Matter with Things (2021) is a big, beautiful, expensive book about how we see the world and why we...
Read moreReaching for the Moon
Edward Hopkins is a middle-aged bachelor, retired from teaching arithmetic to breed poultry in the English countryside. He gardens, he is vainglorious about his prize-winning chickens, and he is a...
Read moreHanging Around in Doorways
I first read Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding (1946) in my twenties – a teaching colleague had recommended it – and loved it. I took it at face value: I enjoyed its plot, succumbed...
Read moreMaster of Invention
The Book of Disquiet (1982) is, strictly speaking, a book that isn’t a book by an author who isn’t an author. How does such a thing come into the world? Perhaps only under a very unusual...
Read moreA Hard Act to Follow
They say if you want to understand a man, look at his mother. Nowhere is this as true as in the story of Eric Linklater, the fatally prolific Orcadian writer. He was a difficult man. His son Andro...
Read moreSex and Silliness and Sorrow
I was at the Dartington Festival in the very early 1990s with Esther Freud and Elspeth Barker, whose first novels I had published at Hamish Hamilton. We knew that Barbara Trapido was appearing and we...
Read moreVoyage to the Blessed Isles
I first came across Derek Walcott’s narrative poem ‘The Schooner Flight ’ in the mid-1980s, when I was travelling on a Commonwealth bursary through the Caribbean. I was away from England for...
Read moreA Boy in the Big House
I didn’t have many conversations with Bill Bagwell, our neighbour in Tipperary. I was a shy teenager and he, it seemed to me, was an equally shy old man. But one thing he told me made a deep...
Read moreOf Innocence and Experience
A little girl ventures into a forest and before long, she is lost. Her shoes are soft and flimsy, the ground beneath her feet thorny and treacherous. Tree trunks twist into crouching, threatening...
Read moreA Gale Called Maria
I first learned about the concept of the ‘pathetic fallacy’ when I was doing my A levels three decades ago. The furious winds that tore through Wuthering Heights – or across the playing fields...
Read moreThe Sound of Silence
In my friendly north London neighbourhood, people often leave discarded household items and clothes out for eagle-eyed passers-by to help themselves: saucepans, DVDs, shoes and – quite often –...
Read morePulsing Hearts beneath the Tweed
Antiquarian bookselling is not a famously perilous profession. In my nineteen years at Sotheran’s, the antiquarian bookdealer in London, I have never had a life insurance policy refused on the...
Read moreAbsolutely Smashing!
I am not one of those who think childhood was better in the old days. When my children were growing up I was fully aware that they had better toys, better telly, better food, better playgrounds,...
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