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: Christopher Rush brushes up his Shakespeare • Annabel Walker stays on • Christian Tyler finds himself on the front line • Pegram Harrison visits the folks back home • Paul Routledge makes Eastern approaches • Caroline Chapman goes to the dogs • Peter Broad witnesses a revolution • David Eccles illustrates the Book Stealer’s Curse • John de Falbe puts the story into history, and much more besides . . .
Tusker’s Last Stand • ANNABEL WALKER on Paul Scott, Staying On
Blame It on Matron • CHRISTIAN TYLER on Norman F. Dixon, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
Southern Crosses • PEGRAM HARRISON on Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
Reading the Play’s the Thing • CHRISTOPHER RUSH on reading the plays of William Shakespeare
Classroom Revolution • PETER BROAD on Simon Sebag Montefiore, My Affair with Stalin
The Maclean Effect • PAUL ROUTLEDGE on Fitzroy Maclean, Eastern Approaches
Artist of Earth and Sky • SIMON BRETT on the wood engravings of Gwen Raverat
Big Windies • JOHN HARRISON on Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Putting the Story into History • JOHN DE FALBE on H. E. Marshall, Our Island Story
Uncle Solly’s World • TARQUIN HALL on Emanuel Litvinoff, Journey Through a Small Planet
Top Dog • CAROLINE CHAPMAN on Percy FitzPatrick, Jock of the Bushveld
A Fine Burgundy • MARK VALENTINE on Peter Vansittart, The Tournament
Race of Ghosts • PATRICK DENMAN FLANERY on Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags
In Search of Shangri-La • JOHN HAMMOND on James Hilton, Lost Horizon
Edit and Be Damned • CHARLES ELLIOTT on editing
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.
‘It’s so pleasant diving into good writing about good reading’ Glen Hirshberg
‘There is a nostalgic – dare one say almost whimsical – quality to Slightly Foxed which is both appealing and quietly stimulating … At times there is also ‘something of the night’ about it but in this case the sort of black night when there is no greater pleasure than pulling the curtains against the cold, driven rain and lighting the fire’ W. M. Millar, North Berwick
- Pirkis, Gail & Wood, Hazel
- Spalding, Frances
- Tyler, Christian
- Valentine, Mark
- Vansittart, Peter
- Walker, Annabel
- Waugh, Evelyn
- Litvinoff, Emanuel
- Wood engraving
- Curse against Book Stealers illustration
- Eccles, David
- Editing
- Pryor, William
- Selbourne, Joanna & Newman, Lindsay
- Newman, Lindsay & Selbourne, Joanna
- Brett, Simon
- Broad, Peter
- Chapman, Caroline
- Davidson, Rosemary
- De Falbe, John
- Defoe, Daniel
- Dixon, Norman F.
- Elliott, Charles
- FitzPatrick, Percy
- Flanery, Patrick Denman:
- Gombrich, E. H.
- Hall, Tarquin
- Hammond, John
- McClure, Emma
- Harrison, John
- Harrison, Pegram
- Hart, Elizabeth Anna
- Maclean, Fitzroy
- Marshall, Arthur
- Marshall, H. E.
- Hilton, James
- O’Connor, Flannery
- Raverat, Gwen
- Routledge, Paul
- Rush, Christopher
- Scott, Paul
- Montefiore, Simon Sebag
- Shakespeare, William
Slightly Foxed Issue 9: From the Editors
When we mentioned last year that we were moving to a new office, with spectacular views over St Paul’s, we’re not sure what image this will have conjured up. One of those atmospheric,...
Read moreTusker’s Last Stand
The immediate framework of the story is the relationship between the Smalleys and Mrs Bhoolaboy, tenants and landlady respectively, as they struggle to achieve very different aims: the Smalleys to...
Read moreBlame It on Matron
Usually, when I discover a second-hand bookshop, I confine my browsing to one or two familiar categories. Military history is not one of them, nor is psychology. So it was by sheer fluke that I...
Read moreSouthern Crosses
Like Flannery O’Connor, I was born in Georgia. I used to have a thick Southern accent, until my momma hired a British nanny to wallop it out of me; Momma reckons that’s why I live in London now....
Read moreReading the Play’s the Thing
I want to ask you a question: how long is it since you actually sat down and read a Shakespeare play, for the sheer pleasure of it, as you would read a novel, for example, or a volume of verse? How...
Read moreClassroom Revolution
For those who have travelled the English boarding-school route, similar prep-school memories are sure to be jogged by reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s My Affair with Stalin, a wonderfully...
Read moreThe Maclean Effect
I defy anyone to read Fitzroy Maclean’s Eastern Approaches and not want to go to mysterious Central Asia. From the moment I read those seductive first paragraphs as a student, I was drawn to the...
Read moreArtist of Earth and Sky
Despite the aspirations Gwen Raverat expressed in her classic childhood memoir Period Piece (‘O happy Mrs Bewick!’ she declares at one point) and all the drawings in the book, many of its...
Read moreBig Windies
Robinson Crusoe is a simple stereotype; he is you and me forced back on to our own resources. He was inspired by the true adventures of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, an able but short-fused...
Read morePutting the Story into History
The year 1905 was not the zenith of the British Empire in territorial terms (surprisingly perhaps, that was 1947, before Indian independence), but imperial confidence was about as high then as it...
Read moreEdit and Be Damned
Editing must be one of the few professions that require no professional training. Even a plumber needs to learn how to plumb before he’s allowed to attack pipes. An editor, on the other hand, just...
Read moreTop Dog
As the years advance I’ve become increasingly aware of the books I read as a child that have exerted an influence on my life. Would I have just returned from my fourth tramp through the African...
Read moreA Fine Burgundy
Vansittart's great achievement is to take us into the completely different way of thinking of the men and women of those times; their superstitions and certainties, their rituals and fetishes and...
Read moreRace of Ghosts
Preoccupied with the ‘Phoney War’, from declaration to the fall of France, or what Waugh described as the ‘Great Bore War’, Put Out More Flags was his sixth novel, and although it was a great...
Read moreIn Search of Shangri-La
I first discovered James Hilton’s Lost Horizon as an adolescent, when I came across a hardback copy in a secondhand bookshop marked at one shilling and ninepence (8p in today’s money). It was...
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