So the longer days are here at last. Maybe you’re dreaming of wine beneath the vines, hot white beaches, absurdly blue seas – or perhaps a hammock in the garden, a good read and a long cool drink. Whatever your plans, may we suggest the perfect companion – good-looking, discreet, well-informed, amusing, the quarterly book review that’s more like an entertaining friend than a literary magazine?
In the Summer 2024 issue: Sarah Wedderburn meets an unusual therapist • Justin Marozzi salutes the founder of the Mughal Empire • Anne Theroux has a difficult meeting • Grant McIntyre goes in search of The Right Stuff • Jane Feaver is touched by a small family • Trevor Millum finds love at first flight with Frances Hodgson Burnett • Richard Smyth packs his binoculars • Sarah Langford decides the answer lies in the soil • Tom Hodgkinson gets into deep water • Frances Donnelly hears Chinese whispers, and much more besides . . .
Spaced Out • GRANT MCINTYRE on Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
An Antidote to Self-pity • BRAD BIGELOW on Pamela Bright, Life in Our Hands
Up a Creek • TOM HODGKINSON on Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
Earth Works • SARAH LANGFORD on Eve Balfour, The Living Soil
Waiting for the Rains • ANNE THEROUX on Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather
Eye-wateringly Sharp • MATHEW LYONS on Walburga, Lady Paget, Embassies of Other Days
Desert Derring-do • CAROLINE JACKSON on P. C. Wren, Beau Geste
Both a Caesar and a Cervantes • JUSTIN MAROZZI on Babur, The Baburnama
The Art of Hiding Art • MARTIN SORRELL on Alphonse Daudet, Letters from My Windmill
Chinese Whispers • FRANCES DONNELLY on Ann Bridge, Peking Picnic
The Making of a Bird Nerd • RICHARD SMYTH on R. S. R. Fitter (ed.), Book of British Birds
Meet the Plantagenets • JANE FEAVER on Rumer Godden, The Dolls’ House
Birth of a Nation • RICHARD PLATT on J. Hector St John de Crèvecœur, Letters from an American Farmer
Gloriously Over-the-top • HARRY COCHRANE on Jan Morris, Venice
Choosing Life • SARAH WEDDERBURN on Salley Vickers, The Other Side of You
Love at First Flight • TREVOR MILLUM on Frances Hodgson Burnett, My Robin
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 . . .
‘Unusual, stimulating, educational, amusing, informative and very well written. On top of which it is beautifully produced, lovely paper and layout and super illustrations.’ Foxed Reader
‘I never read an issue without making several terrific discoveries . . . also, it’s a great gift for a booklover.’ Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project
- Smyth, Richard
- Daudet, Alphonse
- Babur
- Wren, P. C.
- Paget, Lady Walburga
- Head, Bessie
- Theroux, Anne
- Balfour, Eve
- Jerome, Jerome K.
- Bright, Pamela
- Wolfe, Tom
- Bridge, Ann
- Langford, Sarah
- Bigelow, Brad
- Fitter, R. S. R.
- Lyons, Mathew
- Hodgkinson, Tom
- Feaver, Jane
- Jackson, Caroline
- Crèvecœur, J. Hector St John de
- Wedderburn, Sarah
- Vickers, Salley
- Millum, Trevor
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson
- Cochrane, Harry
- Donnelly, Frances
- Godden, Rumer
- McIntyre, Grant
- Marozzi, Justin
- Morris, Jan
- Platt, Richard
Spaced Out
On 16 July 1969 I was in Florida with three friends, driving along the mile-wide Indian River. We were trying to park our battered Oldsmobile and look over the water to Apollo 11, because on board...
Read moreAn Antidote to Self-pity
‘Where am I?’ a soldier asks Pamela Bright in the first line of Life in Our Hands (1955). ‘In a field hospital,’ she replies, and moves on down the line of beds to the next patient. And that...
Read moreUp a Creek
Three Men in a Boat was published in 1889, in a distant age from ours. Queen Victoria was on the throne, middle-class people had servants, there was no radio or television, gas lamps lit the streets,...
Read moreWaiting for the Rains
When I saw that When Rain Clouds Gather (1968) by Bessie Head had been included in ‘The Big Jubilee Read’, seventy books published during the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth, I was gratified;...
Read moreEarth Works
I begin with a confession: my discovery of The Living Soil (1943) by Lady Eve Balfour was an accident. A few years ago, I unexpectedly left my life as a barrister-turned-writer and moved from London...
Read moreEye-wateringly Sharp
‘I always see the faults of my friends,’ writes Walburga, Lady Paget, in the introduction to her two-volume memoir Embassies of Other Days (1923). ‘But I like their faults and I mention them as...
Read moreDesert Daring-do
‘Seriously?’ said the obstetrician as she departed the delivery room. In fairness, she had just delivered our firstborn, for which all is forgiven. The happy news was only marginally eclipsed,...
Read moreBoth a Caesar and a Cervantes
The greatest memoirist you’ve never heard of? Quite possibly. The most enchanting read you least expected? Most definitely. Those readers who have yet to discover Babur and his Baburnama, the...
Read moreThe Art of Hiding Art
Blanquette is as pretty as a picture, prettier than any of Monsieur Seguin’s previous goats. Her eyes are as soft as a doe’s and her beard resembles that of an army corporal. Her hooves are black...
Read moreChinese Whispers
Until recently, I’d never heard of the novelist Ann Bridge. But Peking Picnic (1932), her first novel, set in British diplomatic circles in Peking in the 1920s, captivated me. Ann Bridge was a pen...
Read moreThe Making of a Bird Nest
It’s an enticing mystery, this question of how one of the great ornithological brains trusts, a convention of the finest minds in twentieth-century bird science, created the most popular bird book...
Read moreMeet the Plantagenets
I was 6 when I was given the new Puffin edition of Rumer Godden’s The Dolls’ House (1947). ‘This is a novel written about dolls in a dolls’ house,’ it begins. It was the first novel I’d...
Read moreBirth of a Nation
It is 3 a.m. I have risen, as men of a certain age are wont to do, to answer a call of nature. Emerging from the smallest room, torch in hand, for I am staying with friends and the way is unfamiliar,...
Read moreLove at First Flight
I came across Frances Hodgson Burnett’s My Robin (1912) while doing research for a book I was writing about my grandfather. I had discovered, on reading through my father’s papers, that the...
Read moreGloriously Over-the-top
Jan Morris loved to provoke. Though she wrote elsewhere of nationalities as a ‘cruel pretence’, she was not above outrageous generalization or outrageous distinction – in this case, between the...
Read moreChoosing Life
I remember exactly how I first came across The Other Side of You. It was about fifteen years ago. Yet another relationship had hit the buffers and I was consoling myself with a mini-break. Browsing...
Read more
I feel extremely fortunate to receive your beautifully crafted reviews, your book inserts, your small etchings and synopses, not to omit your podcasts. Thank you to everyone who plays their part in keeping this remarkable business alive.
‘I just want to say thank you for Slightly Foxed. I always love to receive the quarterly magazine . . . it has been a delight to read, so thank you again from the bottom of my heart.’