Slightly Foxed Issue 90: From the Editors

Henry James famously said that for him ‘summer afternoon’ were the two most beautiful words in the English language and for many of us no doubt, however unpredictable the weather, the idea of summer still conjures up hopeful and romantic pictures of warm afternoons and scented evenings, cricket games, al fresco meals and beach picnics. Wherever you’ll be this summer the right book for the right place is of course essential, and we hope you’ll enjoy the suggestions in this issue, from sailing with Arthur Ransome to wandering the unspoiled English countryside with the Victorian nature-writer Richard Jefferies or following Julius Caesar during the last year of his life with Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March – a scuffed grey copy of which was serendipitously spotted in a card board box of discarded holiday thrillers in a Greek seaside café and greatly enjoyed by Noonie Minogue (see p. 76).

There’s nothing romantic about our summer Slightly Foxed Edition, but this gripping read has an unexpected and moving ending. In The Railway Man (see p.13) Eric Lomax tells the story of how as a young man he survived torture and starvation working on the infamous Burma–Siam Railway. Growing up in Edinburgh in the 1920s Eric had always been entranced by the sight of the great steam engines in the Portobello Goods Yard and railways were his passion, but his experience as a prisoner-of-war poisoned his postwar life. Unable to speak of it, he was filled with pent-up anger and hatred and his marriage finally collapsed. It was not until his second wife persuaded him to face his trauma and take a brave and unusual step that forgiveness became a possibility and his anger drained away. One reviewer called it ‘a beautiful, awkward book by a fine an