Slightly Foxed

The Slightly Foxed Podcast: Episode 1, Kindred Spirits is now live! We can't wait to hear what you all make of it.
In the first episode of The Slightly Foxed Podcast, SF founders Gail Pirkis, Hazel Wood and Steph Allen meet author Jim Ring round the kitchen table at No. 53 to remember how it all began, and Veronika Hyks gives voice to Liz Robinson’s article on Anne Fadiman’s well-loved Ex Libris.

November News from Slightly Foxed: The Book Cure
Greetings from No. 53 where the floor, once more, has diminished to a series of winding paths from kettle to desk to wrapping station, between a fort of Foxed Cubs, an edifice of Ernest Shepard editions, a stack of SF quarterlies and a cache of Christmas cards. It was here amidst the boxes, with a ‘sound-wall’ constructed with binders’ parcels of A Country Doctor’s Commonplace Book, that Gail, Hazel and Steph took up their micr...ophones and, together with our friend and long-term SF reader Philippa, recorded the very first episode of The Slightly Foxed Podcast: ‘Reading off the beaten track’.
In each episode of the podcast (released on the 15th of each month) we’ll be sharing news from behind the scenes here at SF, meeting some of our varied friends and contributors, and passing on personal recommendations for favourite and often forgotten books that have helped, haunted, informed or entertained them. We do hope you’ll enjoy it, and find it an entertaining and interesting addition to the quarterly magazine. The first episode will be released tomorrow afternoon so we’ll be sending out a little note about that then.
On the subject of forgotten favourites, in this month’s newsletter we thought we’d share a cheering article from the archives: Ken Haigh on rediscovering the joy of childhood reading. But first, a little housekeeping . . .
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The Royal Society of Literature Poems for Peace competition is now open for entries from those aged 11 to 18 who are resident in the UK.
The Poems for Peace project marks the anniversary of the end of the First World War and the Armistice and the centenary of the death of the poet Wilfred Owen.
Win a signed copy of the Peace Poetry anthology (illustrated by Slightly Foxed artist Anna Trench) and National Book Tokens for yourself and your school library. A number of poems ent...ered will also be published on the RSL website.
Your poem might tell us: • What peace feels like to you • What you want your future to look like • How poetry written in the past can help us imagine a better future
The closing date for entries is Friday 25 January 2019.
The RSL Poems for Peace project is in partnership with First Story.
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‘If you need a good gift for someone who loves to read — or if you love to read and want a little treat for yourself — check out the delightful Slightly Foxed — “the Real Reader’s Quarterly.”
It’s a little quarterly magazine, published in Britain, with essays about books. These aren’t reviews, but personal recommendations. For people who read a lot, it can be hard to find new suggestions, and every time I read Slightly Foxed, I add several titles to my library list.’
Thanks to our long-term reader and friend Gretchen Rubin for this wonderful quote.

Come behind the scenes with the staff of Slightly Foxed to learn what makes this unusual literary magazine tick, meet some of its varied friends and contributors, and hear their personal recommendations for favourite and often forgotten books that have helped, haunted, informed or entertained them.
Coming up in Episode 1, 'Kindred Spirits' (Released 15 November): Gail, Hazel, Steph and SF director Jim Ring meet round the kitchen table at No. 53 to remember how it all began and Veronika Hyks gives voice to Liz Robinson’s article on Anne Fadiman’s well-loved Ex Libris.

‘We strongly recommend all our readers who love novelty to get this story, for we can promise them that they never have read anything like it before’ || An early review for Wuthering Heights quoted in #slightlyfoxed issue 56. * Good morning friends and fellow #readersofinstagram. Our 56th #GetFoxed60 international giveaway draw is now open and this week's prize is especially tempting thanks to @penguinbooks for the generous gift of a Brontë Sisters boxed set (Jane Eyre | Wuth...ering Heights | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Villette) * Please rush over to this week’s host @whatsallyreadnext and find this capture to enter. Go forth good bookworms! * In this issue of Slightly Foxed magazine: Anthony Wells goes in search of Proust • Ysenda Maxtone Graham mourns the passing of a great Children’s Encyclopedia • Brandon Robshaw introduces the real George Orwell • Morag MacInnes has a laugh with Frank Reynolds • Daisy Hay admits to being a Chalet girl • Michael Holroyd wonders why he became a biographer • Sue Gee meets the author of Emil and the Detectives • William Palmer gets to know Mr Lear • Matt Huber takes off with Gavin Lyall . . . and much, much more.
* Penguin’s beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series are designed by the award-winning @coraliebickfordsmith . These delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. 🦊💕📚
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Liberty and love, these two I must have // A good book and a comfortable chair, these too I must have ... As one of Hungary's most famous poets Sándor Petőfi (that handsome-looking fellow rendered in stone atop the fireplace) didn't quite say. We'd love to curl up with a copy of #SlightlyFoxed or another favourite read in this delicious little corner of the Petőfi Parlour in The Writer's Villa @brodyhouse up in the hills of Budapest - wouldn't you? . . . 📷 Office fox @jenharrisonbunning who recently joined @katymacscott on the latest leg of her journey across Europe inspired by the late great travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor's journey in memory of her dear friend and fellow bookworm Harriet. To find out more and follow along, look up #adventuresforharriet

Greetings from No. 53 Hoxton Square, where slightly unnervingly and rather unusually for this time of year, the office foxes are feeling cool, calm and collected.
In a few weeks’ time, the special celebratory 60th issue of Slightly Foxed, a pair of cloth-bound editions of Ernest H. Shepard’s charming memoirs, Drawn from Memory and Drawn from Life, the wall calendar and our Christmas cards (with a new design for 2018) will land in Hoxton Square. Subscriber labels for the wint...er dispatch of Slightly Foxed have been sent up to Smith Settle ready for the new issue to be sent out to readers all around the world on 15 November, tickets and programmes for Readers’ Day have all been sent out and videos of voice warm-up exercises for our first podcast recording this week have been passed around the office, accompanied by only a modest amount of tittering.
Otherwise all is quiet and serene here at Foxed Towers. Boxes of back issues have been squirrelled away, shelves have been re-stocked and the packing desk is well-equipped with rolls of good brown paper, lengths of foxy cream ribbon, piles of wood-engraved gift cards and towers of handsome gift boxes in hopeful anticipation of the Christmas rush.
Given how organised we’re feeling, we’re slightly loath to send out this enticement to shop but we are not the sorts for thumb-twiddling so . . . if you would like to introduce a fellow booklover to the world of Slightly Foxed this Christmas, why not get your order in before the rush?
For all orders to the value of £40 or more placed before midnight on 18 November, we’ll gift-wrap your items with our compliments. To request free gift wrap, just enter the code NOVEMBER in the ‘Promotional code’ box at the final stage of the online checkout or quote this code over the phone when you order.
Please read on for a few suggestions for presents or click here to go straight to our main shop and browse at your leisure.
We’ll be in touch again next week with the usual newsletter fare of an extract, readers’ comments, a round-up of new membership benefits and the like.
Meantime we send you our very best wishes
Jennie, Anna, Olivia, Hattie and Helen The SF Office Staff
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'Hailed as the laureate of middle-class muddle, the author-illustrator has been delighting readers with her exquisitely drawn comic strips and novels since the 1970s . . .'
And now Slightly Foxed artist Posy Simmonds brings us Cassandra Darke – a loose reworking of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which casts an elderly female art dealer as Dickens’s muttering male misanthropist.
This graphic novel is now available to order from our online shop: foxedquarterly.com/shop/posy-simmonds-cas sandra-darke/

Happy Salonniversary to Damian Barr's Literary Salon!
The Literary Salon has debuted new work by Helen Fielding, Maggie O’Farrell, Jojo Moyes and David Nicholls, hosted stars such as Armistead Maupin and David Gilmour, put on the UK debut of Yaa Gyasi, and moved from a tiny snug in a private members' club to the grand Ballroom at the Savoy Hotel. As it prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary this month, Damian describes what makes this irreverent literary society so special, and introduces some of the most memorable events over at Boundless . . .

Golden autumn light illuminates the narrow way of Magpie Lane in Oxford in this scene by fine artist @francis__hamel, from the cover of #SlightlyFoxed Issue 35, Autumn 2012. * This lane was named in the seventeenth century for the sign of a magpie on an alehouse and was once known as the rather less sweet-sounding Grope Lane - or worse, if any readers should care to look it up! 😳 * Francis Hamel lives at Rousham, Oxfordshire. He studied at The Ruskin School of Fine Art, and... now divides his time as a painter between working for exhibitions and doing commissions. He is represented by @johnmartingallery in London.
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Listen to illustrator, author and former children's laureate Chris Riddell read ‘I Miss You’ by poet and Slightly Foxed contributor A. F. Harrold. The poem features in Poems to Live Your Life By, a collection of forty-six famous and lesser-known poems, personally chosen and beautifully illustrated by Chris Riddell, published by Pan Macmillan.

In most childhood games, the first thing you need to do is eliminate the parents. You can’t be an outlaw or have adventures if you have parents to spoil the excitement ... All the best children’s writers understand this and get rid of the parents as soon as possible. J. K. Rowling makes Harry Potter an orphan, housed in a cupboard under the stairs by the awful Dursleys. C. S. Lewis evacuates the Pevensey children from London during the Second World War to stay with an old Pro...fessor, whose spareroom wardrobe is the portal to Narnia; their parents never feature ... * The magic of such adventures is captured in one of the great children’s books, BB’s Brendon Chase, first published in 1944 but set thirty or so years earlier. It’s the end of the Easter holidays, and Robin, John and Harold Hensman can’t face returning to their boarding-school ... they are country boys who dread being trapped in a classroom when summer approaches and the great outdoors calls. They hatch a plan. They will escape and hide out like Robin Hood and his merry men in the eleven-thousand-acre forest of Brendon Chase ... * The book’s main focus is on the fugitives themselves, their relationships with each other, and how they grow and change during their adventures. They overcome their own fears and discover things about themselves. They squabble and occasionally fight, but they share solid British values of fair play, honour and pluck. We follow them as they learn how to shoot and become skilled at fishing, tracking, snaring and skinning. They grow alert, sharp-eyed, almost subsumed in nature ... Helena Drysdale shares her enthusiasm for a childhood favourite #BrendonChase by ‘B.B.’ in Slightly Foxed #bookreview magazine Issue 58
— Products shown: Brendon Chase - BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford).
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October greetings to our friends and readers all around the world. We hope by now you’ve all enjoyed the autumn issue of Slightly Foxed.
As the build-up to Christmas in all of its fun and exhausting glory fast approaches, the office foxes have been wondering if they could abandon the scaffold-clad confines of Hoxton Square for a spell in the forest. But then who would greet Paul from Smith Settle with the winter haul in a few weeks’ time, hand-write gift messages, swaddle pa...rcels in tape, scribble 'Please leave behind large toadstool to the left of the gnome' or 'If out, please leave with neighbours at no. 7 or no. 11. Not no. 10, they cannot be trusted' and the like on sturdy cardboard envelopes, and wrestle postbags downstairs for our cheery postman to collect each day? No! It simply won’t do. We are far too fond of our readers and conscious of their literary present requirements for that so, for this month’s mailing, we’re making do with a spot of armchair escapism with BB’s Brendon Chase instead.
Do read on for an extract, introduced with a snippet of Helena Drysdale’s lovely article in the current issue of Slightly Foxed.
With best wishes from the SF office staff – Jennie, Anna, Olivia, Hattie and Helen – and the office dogs, Chudleigh, Stanley and Tarka
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‘Slightly Foxed is something solely for me, nothing to do with food shopping, house cleaning, badgering my husband re his consumption of pork pies . . . You are all very clever and give much pleasure, thank you.’ // #foxedreader J. Hornsby, Hackney * Good morning fellow bookish friends. England is feeling unseasonably springlike today and we’re longing to down tools and head for the garden or the charming shed on the cover of Issue 53 - this week's star of our ongoing #GetFox...ed60 international giveaway series. The draw is now open so, if you're on Instagram, please head over to our host @dempstersbookshelf Anna's feed to enter. * This week one booklover is in with the chance of winning a copy of #SlightlyFoxed Issue 53 together with a limited-edition hardback of Hilary Mantel’s extraordinary memoir, 'Giving up the Ghost' - Hilary has said that this powerful and haunting book came about by accident. She never intended to write a memoir, but the sale of a much-loved cottage in Norfolk prompted her to write about the death of her stepfather, and from there ‘the whole story of my life began to unravel’. It is a story of ‘wraiths and phantoms’, a story not easy to forget.
🌟In Slightly Foxed Issue 53🌟
ADAM SISMAN on John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
MAGGIE FERGUSSON on Hilary Mantel, Giving up the Ghost
CHRISTOPHER RUSH on Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
SARAH LAWSON on Albert Payson Terhune, Lad: A Dog
ALEXANDRA HARRIS on The letters of William Cowper ISABEL LLOYD on Brian Bates, The Way of the Actor
ALISON LIGHT on John McGahern, The Barracks
CHRISTIAN TYLER on Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
CHARLES ELLIOTT on Noël Mostert, Frontiers
JIM McCUE on Editing The Poems of T. S. Eliot
SARAH CROWDEN on J. B. Priestley, Jenny Villiers
ROBIN BLAKE on maps in books
KATIE GRANT on Violet Needham, The Black Riders
DAVID BEANLAND on Arthur Ransome, Rod & Line
ANTHONY GARDNER on Godfrey Smith, The Business of Loving
PAMELA BEASANT on George Mackay Brown, An Orkney Tapestry
JEREMY LEWIS on Robert Kee, A Crowd Is Not Company
URSULA BUCHAN on W. H. Hudson, A Shepherd’s Life
KEN HAIGH on Rediscovering the love of reading
COVER ARTIST: Alice Patullo
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‘Wilde hosted Sunday-night parties where he showed off the reproductions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings on his walls, the blue china in his cabinet, the imported tobacco on his table, and, most of all, himself. He flitted about the room, reciting Euripides in ancient Greek, quoting Romantic poets, and trying out his latest one-liners. At the end of one such evening, a friend asked, “What is your real ambition in life?” Wilde replied, “Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.”’
The Importance of Being Wilde in Lapham's Quarterly.

'I received a lovely gift yesterday: two issues of Slightly Foxed, that most charming and readable literary quarterly. It was particularly welcome with a grey, wet weekend in prospect and an ugly sea roiling outside my window. I haven’t read Slightly Foxed in years, tsk tsk, but I’m going to buy myself a subscription for my fast-approaching birthday . . .'
Author Laurie Graham has written about her reading habits on her blog, and we're delighted that she has rediscovered the joys of Slightly Foxed.

As the Second World War draws to a close, a group of six friends pool resources in order to rent a sizeable House in the Country – capital H, capital C. Their list of requirements is exacting. It has to be ‘one of those houses that’s been built bit by bit, for hundreds of years’. It has to have acres of land and dozens of outhouses. As it turns out, such a house does exist, a pretty, rambling but rather rundown Tudor manor house in deepest Kent. And so they move in . . . * In... Issue 57 of Slightly Foxed Antony Longden introduced Ruth Adam’s A House in the Country, published by the Country Book Club in 1957. Claire Dalby’s wood engraving ‘Nettlecombe: Garden in October’ provided the perfect Country House to illustrate the article. * Claire Dalby was born in St Andrews, and Scotland is the subject of much of her work. She has been roaming Shetland since 1978, and many of her wood engravings from the area focus on buildings within their context of the landscape. As a botanical illustrator, she produces portraits of plants as well as more scientific studies, and in her watercolours she explores landscapes and still lives, and their textures, forms and colours. She says ‘it can be maddening to sit outside with paper and watercolours in a strong, cold wind. […] But perversely it is often the weather and lighting that makes me want to paint a particular subject. Even fog has its own special quality of softly revealing shapes and colours without shadow or recession of headlands.’
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Smashing read every time

Simply delightful. A breath of civilization in a rough world.

I have to say that the new issue is the best ever. But then I would, wouldn't I? See pages 44-49 for my article on Pauline Baynes!

I am a longtime fan of SF, these guys just keep getting better and better. The day their cloth bound book drops through the letter box is a celebration indeed!

Great magazines, in fact the best literary magazine on the market. The books they publish are, like the magazine, beautifully produced and illustrated. I am hooked.

Smashing read every time

Simply delightful. A breath of civilization in a rough world.

I have to say that the new issue is the best ever. But then I would, wouldn't I? See pages 44-49 for my article on Pauline Baynes!

I am a longtime fan of SF, these guys just keep getting better and better. The day their cloth bound book drops through the letter box is a celebration indeed!

Great magazines, in fact the best literary magazine on the market. The books they publish are, like the magazine, beautifully produced and illustrated. I am hooked.