Spring again, and the start of a new, third decade for Slightly Foxed. Looking back at the end of our twentieth anniversary year made us think about the promises we’d given when we started SF, and how well – or not! – we’ve kept to them. The world of 2004, when we two and Steph launched the magazine from a table in the children’s playroom of Gail’s house in Canonbury, did all the packing ourselves and queued to send off the first issues at the Post Office on Essex Road, seems very remote when we look at the office now.
Yet a lot of things are still the same. A good number of our original contributors are still with us, and indeed some faithful subscribers too. Slightly Foxed, and now of course the Slightly Foxed Editions, are still printed by our wonderful friends, the craftsmen printers at Smith Settle in Yorkshire. We’ve done our best to stick faithfully to our original do-as-you-would-be-done-by policy of paying contributors and other people we deal with fairly and on time, making sure our phones are answered by a human being and believing that the words ‘customer service’ actually mean something. And if we’ve learned anything in these twenty happy years it’s to follow our instincts, even if that means going against the tide, and not to take ourselves, or Slightly Foxed, too seriously.
But back to the present. Our Spring Slightly Foxed Edition, Portrait of a Marriage, created a sensation when it first appeared in 1973, and its author and publisher Nigel Nicolson feared he might be prosecuted for obscenity. Based on diaries and journals he found when his mother Vita Sackville-West died, it details the passionate lesbian affair that nearly ended her marriage to the writer and diplomat Harold Nicolson. Ultimately the marriage survived to become what Nigel describes as ‘one of the strangest and most successful unions that two gifted people have ever enjoyed’. Strange it certainly was, and Nigel’s own perspective on his parents’ marriage provides an intriguing counterpoint to the agonies and ecstasies of Vita’s journals. Times have changed but the effect is still electric.
The special offer we made to subscribers last summer was so popular, we’ve decided to do the same again. So we’re offering a 50 per cent reduction to anyone taking out a new annual gift subscription between 1 March and 31 May this year (new, rather than renewed, that is). It’s a chance to give pleasure to another booklover and of course to help Slightly Foxed, so please, if you can, pull out all the stops. We know there are difficult times ahead, especially for small businesses like ours, and you’ll really be helping us along – as you do so often in so many ways – by spreading the word.
And finally, our usual warm congratulations to the winner of our sixteenth crossword competition, Margaret Armitage, who receives a free annual subscription. For anyone still struggling, the answers are on p. 46.
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