Slightly Foxed

Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader's Quarterly

The independent-minded book review magazine 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.

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.

For more information about Slightly Foxed visit: foxedquarterly.com

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60 episodes
Updated July 15

Episodes60

Newest first

Jan 15, 2022 · 46 min
39: Idle Moments: Literary Loafers through the Ages and Pages
In the spirit of Plato’s Symposium, the Slightly Foxed team enter into lively dialogue with two distinguished magazine editors, Tom Hodgkinson of the Idler and Harry Mount of the Oldie, and learn lessons from notable loafers in literature. We begin with Doctor Johnson, an icon of indolence who wrote an essay called ‘The Idler’ and liked time to ponder; this lazy lexicographer claimed his dictionary would take three years to write when in fact it would take nine . . . The wisdom-loving philosophers of Ancient Greece made a case for carving out leisure time, while the anchorite Julian of Norwich favoured a life of seclusion in which ‘all shall be well’. At the age of thirty-eight Michel de Montaigne retired to a grand book-filled chateau to test out ideas in essays, while George Orwell wrote book reviews in hungover misery. Izaak Walton found contemplation in The Compleat Angler and Jerome K. Jerome found humour in Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, while the autodidactic Mitford sisters sought wild freedom. We enjoy a leisurely spell with loungers in fiction, visiting Lady Bertram and her pug in Mansfield Park, taking to Lady Diana Cooper’s bed in A Handful of Dust, retreating to Aunt Ada Doom’s room in Cold Comfort Farm, settling into the quiet comfort of Mycroft Holmes’s Diogenes Club and meeting Thomas Love Peacock’s Honourable Mr Listless along the way. And, to finish, there are the usual wide-ranging reading recommendations for when you have an idle moment. (Episode duration: 46 minutes; 56 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (9:49) Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays (11:48) Sarah Bakewell, How to Live (13:05) Plato, Symposium (17:51) Janina Ramirez, Julian of Norwich (18:58) Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust (26:53) Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (28:21) Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat; Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow is out of print (29:44) Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy will be available in a new edition in July 2022 (32:29) Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm (34:41) Geoffrey Willans, The Lost Diaries of Nigel Molesworth is out of print (39:51) Gamel Woolsey, Death’s Other Kingdom (40:40) Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (42:29) David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything (43:28) Jane Smiley, The Strays of Paris (46:56) Related Slightly Foxed Articles ‘Study to be quiet’, Ken Haigh on Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, Issue 54 (9:49) The Great Self-Examiner, Anthony Wells on the essays of Michel de Montaigne, Issue 69 (11:48) Poste-Freudian Therapy, Michele Hanson on Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm, Issue 10 (34:41) Peacock’s Progress, J. W. M. Thompson on Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall; Crotchet Castle, Issue 5 (42:29) Other Links The Idler magazine The Oldie magazine Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Dec 15, 2021 · 41 min
38: Literary Drinking: Alcohol in the Lives and Work of Writers
Booze as muse or a sure road to ruin? In this month’s episode, William Palmer – author of In Love with Hell: Drink in the Lives and Work of Eleven Writers – and Henry Jeffreys – author of Empire of Booze and The Cocktail Dictionary – join the Slightly Foxed team to mull over why alcohol is such an enduring feature in literature. From the omnipresence of cocktails in John Cheever’s short stories and ritual aperitifs in Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels to Mr Picksniff falling into Mrs Todger’s fireplace in Martin Chuzzlewit and P. G. Wodehouse’s hangover remedies for booze-soaked Bertie Wooster, drinks are social signifiers in fiction. Charles Dickens was fond of sherry cobblers and Jean Rhys knocked back Pernod in Paris, while Malcolm Lowry was a dipsomaniac and Flann O’Brien dreamed up alcoholic ink for the Irish Times, rendering readers drunk from fumes. We ask why gin denotes despair and port is always jovial, and question whether hitting the bottle helps or hinders the creative process in writers. Following a convivial sherry, we’re whisked away on a wet-your-whistle-stop tour of drinking dens with our friends at London Literary Tours, barrelling from bars propped up by Oscar Wilde to the follies of Dylan Thomas at Soho’s French House via Ian Fleming’s Vesper cocktail at Dukes. And we finish with a final round of reading recommendations, visiting a whisky distillery in Pakistan in Lawrence Osbourne’s The Wet and the Dry, enjoying Happy Hour with Marlowe Granados and stopping for a nightcap at Kingsley Amis’s ghostly local The Green Man. (Episode duration: 41 minutes; 16 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Anne Fadiman, The Wine Lover’s Daughter, Slightly Foxed Edition No. 57 (1:39) William Palmer, In Love with Hell: Drink in the Lives and Work of Eleven Writers (2:24) Henry Jeffreys, Empire of Booze (2:33) Henry Jeffreys, The Cocktail Dictionary Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (3:41) Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking (4:45) Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman (6:40) Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (11:16) Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight (11:49) Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley (12:17) Patricia Highsmith, Diaries and Notebooks Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (14:54) Edward St Aubyn, The Patrick Melrose Novels (17:03) Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain (19:01) Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (20:42) John Cheever, Collected Stories (23:26) Jeremy Lewis, Kindred Spirits (26:05) Ladybird Books: What to Look For in . . . Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter (33:05) Kingsley Amis, The Green Man (35:13) Lawrence Osbourne, The Wet and the Dry (36:45) Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour (38:27) Related Slightly Foxed Articles The Smoking Bishop, William Palmer on drinking and drunkenness in Dickens, Issue 16 (8:52) On the Randy Again, William Palmer on Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Issue 30 (3:41) Cheers!, Henry Jeffreys on Bernard DeVoto, The Hour & Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking, Issue 68 (4:45) A Quare One, Patrick Welland on the novels of Flann O’Brien, Issue 41 (6:40) Voyage in the Dark, Patricia Cleveland-Peck on the novels of Jean Rhys, Issue 4 (10:22) With a Notebook and a Ukelele, Gordon Bowker on the stories of Malcolm Lowry, Issue 37 (19:46) A Visit from God, William Palmer on Kingsley Amis, The Green Man, Issue 20 (35:09) Other Links London Literary Tours (28.00) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Nov 15, 2021 · 48 min
37: Rewriting the Script: The short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath with her acclaimed biographer Heather Clark
Heather Clark, Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the University of Huddersfield and author of the award-winning biography Red Comet, joins the Slightly Foxed team from New York to dispel the myths that have come to surround Sylvia Plath’s life and art. Tired of the cliché of the hysterical female writer, and of the enduring focus on Plath’s death rather than her trailblazing poetry and fiction, Clark used a wealth of new material – including juvenilia, unpublished letters and manuscripts, and psychiatric records – to explore Plath’s literary landscape. She conjures the spirit of the star English student at Smith College who won a Fulbright scholarship to Cambridge University and who brought her enormous appetite for life to her writing and relationships. We follow her life from the ‘mad passionate abandon’ of her thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, rebellion against genteel verse and her creation of a dark ‘potboiler’ in The Bell Jar to her belief that a full literary life and a family unit can coexist and the outpouring of first-rate poems fuelled by rage in her final days. She introduced female anger and energy into the poetic lexicon with ‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Daddy’, ‘Ariel’ and more; poems that were considered shocking at the time, but which are now regarded as masterpieces. And there are more biographies to be found in our round-up of reading recommendations – of renegade anthropologists and female abstract expressionists – as well as a relationship between a father and his young son told through illustrated letters that leap off the page in Letters to Michael, with wonderful readings by the actor Nigel Anthony. (Episode duration: 48 minutes; 48 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol. I: 1940-1956 The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol. II: 1956-1963 Sylvia Plath, Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices, a radio play (23:28) Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (30:16) Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition (39:23) Sylvia Plath, The Colossus Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes Lucie Elven, The Weak Spot (41:55) Charles King, Gods of the Upper Air is not currently available in the UK (43:44) Lily King, Euphoria (44:06) Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women (44:15) Charles Phillipson, Letters to Michael: a father writes to his son 1945–1947. With thanks to the actor Nigel Anthony for the readings. (45:19) Related Slightly Foxed Articles & Podcasts Slightly Foxed Podcast Episode 29: A Poet’s Haven. Dr Mark Wormald, a scholar on the life and writings of Ted Hughes, on the Barrie Cooke archive Other Links Heather Clark’s website Heather Clark wins The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2020 for Red Comet Listen to the 1961 BBC Interview with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (17:07) Listen to the BBC Radio 3 Arts & Ideas podcast on Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Seamus Heaney (44:45) The artist Heather Phillipson’s Sketches from Space Instagram account, where she first shared Charles Phillipson’s letters to Michael (45:38) The National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, London (47:31) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Oct 15, 2021 · 44 min
36: Graphic Novels: A Comic Turn with Posy Simmonds & Paul Gravett
The cartoonist, writer and illustrator Posy Simmonds brilliantly captures the ambitions and pretensions of the literary world, and the journalist and curator Paul Gravett has worked in comics publishing for decades. Together they bring graphic novels and comic books to the foreground with the Slightly Foxed team. We draw moral lessons from the Ally Sloper cartoons of the 1870s, glimpse Frans Masereel’s wordless woodcut stories of the 1920s, view the pictorial politics of Citizen 13660 by Miné Okubo in the 1940s and revisit Art Spiegelman’s 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus before taking a closer look at more contemporary works. From a tragicomic summer with Joff Winterhart, nuclear explosions with Raymond Briggs, the shadow of James Joyce with Mary and Bryan Talbot and an Iranian childhood with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, the discussion moves through panels, frames, splashes and spreads to Posy Simmonds’s own methods in bringing literature to life, including crosshatching to Vivaldi. Originally serialized in the Guardian, Posy’s Gemma Bovery builds on the bones of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Tamara Drewe draws from Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, while Cassandra Darke takes inspiration from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Though rooted in the classics, the devil is in Posy’s detail, be it real French coffee pots, the joy of characters’ names, such as Kevin Penwallet, and fictional places, such as Tresoddit. We continue our travels off the beaten track with our usual round-up of reading recommendations, and a trip to Gilbert White’s House and Gardens in Hampshire, where we view the landscapes that sparked his evergreen classic The Natural History of Selborne. (Episode duration: 44 minutes; 39 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Ally Sloper: A Moral Lesson, cartoons by Marie Duval and words by Judy’s office boy is out of print (4:48) Miné Okubo, Citizen 13660 (6:29) George Takei, They Called Us Enemy (7:25) Jules Feiffer, Passionella and Other Stories is out of print (9:05) Art Spiegelman, Maus (10:37) Mary M. Talbot & Bryan Talbot, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes (12:52) Joff Winterhart, Days of the Bagnold Summer (13:22) Raymond Briggs, When the Wind Blows (15:42) Raymond Briggs, Ethel & Ernest (17:07) Posy Simmonds, Gemma Bovery (17:48) Posy Simmonds, Tamara Drewe (17:48) Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (28:31) Posy Simmonds, Cassandra Darke (29:04) Riad Sattouf, The Arab of the Future (30:24) Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (31:20) Posy Simmonds, Literary Life Revisited Paul Gravett, Posy Simmonds Emma Tennant, Burnt Diaries is out of print (34:20) Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways (37:28) Our Time, an anthology commissioned by The Lakes International Comic Art Festival (38:29) Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. Published in our series of Slightly Foxed Editions, along with Cider with Rosie (39:54) Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (41:24) Related Slightly Foxed Articles & Illustrations Underwear Was Important, Hazel Wood on the cartoons of Posy Simmonds, Issue 15 Cover illustration by Posy Simmonds, Issue 16 Inside cover illustration by Posy Simmonds, Issue 60 Touched with a Secret Delight, Melissa Harrison on Gilbert White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, Issue 48 Other Links Posy Simmonds Close Up, Cartoonmuseum Basel, Switzerland. The exhibition runs until 24 October 2021 (2:39) The bd BOUM festival, Blois, France. The festival is chaired by Posy Simmonds and runs from 19-21 November 2021 Gosh! Comics, London, UK (31:58) The Lakes International Comic Art Festival, Kendal, UK (32:08) Thought Bubble, The Yorkshire Comic Convention, Harrogate, UK (32:26) Gilbert White’s House & Gardens, Selborne, UK (41:13) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Sep 15, 2021 · 42 min
35: Decline and Fall: A Literary Guide
The Dark Ages, Late Antiquity, the late Roman . . . however you define the years spanning the fall of Rome, the period is rich in stories, real or reimagined. In this episode Dr Andy Merrills, Associate Professor of Ancient History, joins the Slightly Foxed team to cast light on the surviving literature. We begin with Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire before delving into 4th-century accounts by the Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus, a spiritual autobiography by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, ecclesiastical chronicles by the Venerable Bede, Gallic tales of Christian miracles and relic-looting with Gregory of Tours and an alternative look at the period with the modern-day master of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown. From there we venture into fiction with Rosemary Sutcliff’s adventures inspired by archaeological finds and a retelling of the old British folk ballad ‘The Twa Sisters’ in Lucy Holland’s Sistersong, as well as Gore Vidal’s Julian and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. We swap tales from Icelandic sagas and set sail on a tenth-century Viking long ship with Frans G. Bengtsson before heading beyond Hadrian’s Wall for a glimpse of the Lindisfarne Gospels on Holy Island and a hunt for second-hand gems at Barter Books in a converted Victorian railway station in Northumberland. And there’s more historical fiction to be found in further reading recommendations too, as we plunge into the seventeenth-century Essex witch trials with poet A. K. Blakemore’s novel The Manningtree Witches and follow the fortunes of a group of friends in wartime Europe in Olivia Manning’s classic Balkan Trilogy. (Episode duration: 42 minutes; 49 seconds ) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. A Countryman’s Winter Notebook, Adrian Bell (1:02) Letters to Michael: a father writes to his son 1945–1947, Charles Phillipson (1:12) The Rosemary Sutcliff Novels, Slightly Foxed Cubs. The final two in the series, The Shield Ring and Sword Song, are now available (2:00) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon (4:18) The Later Roman Empire, Ammianus Marcellinus (9:30) The History of the Franks, Gregory of Tours (10:41) Confessions, Saint Augustine (13:54) City of God, Saint Augustine (14:46) Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede (15:34) The World of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown (17:34) Julian, Gore Vidal (22:14) The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears (22:54) The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro (23:38) Dawn Wind, Rosemary Sutcliff (25:06) The Long Ships, Frans G. Bengtsson (26:08) Beowulf: A New Translation, Maria Dahvana Headley (27:13) Sistersong, Lucy Holland (27:30) Le Morte Darthur, Thomas Malory (30:53) The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell (32:11) The Manningtree Witches, A. K. Blakemore (38:17) The Balkan Trilogy, Olivia Manning (40:47) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Scaling Gibbon’s Everest, Richard Crockatt on Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Issue 68 (8:17) A Frank Look at History, Andy Merrills on Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, Issue 65 (12:48) Last of the Pagans, Patrick Welland on Gore Vidal, Julian, Issue 45 (22:50) The Sound of Chariots, Sue Gaisford on the Roman Britain novels of Rosemary Sutcliff, Issue 63 Light in the Dark Ages, Sue Gaisford on Rosemary Sutcliff, Dawn Wind, Issue 69 Magical Talisman, Sue Gaisford on Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword Song & The Shield Ring, Issue 71 Adrift on the Tides of War, Patrick Welland on Olivia Manning’s Balkan trilogy, Issue 63 (40:47) Other Links Listen to Episode 18 of the Slightly Foxed Podcast: An Odyssey Through the Classics (0:20) Barter Books, Alnwick (36:12) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Aug 15, 2021 · 43 min
34: Sybille Bedford’s Appetite for Life
‘I wondered for a time who this brilliant “Mrs Bedford” could be,’ wrote Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford on reading Sybille Bedford’s first novel, A Legacy. The twentieth-century European writer Sybille Bedford could be many things: traveller, gourmand, oenophile, court reporter, Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist. In this month’s literary podcast the Slightly Foxed team discover the pleasures and landscapes of Bedford’s life, loves and writing with her biographer, Selina Hastings. The daughter of a German Baron, from childhood Bedford travelled endlessly, living in Germany, Italy, France, Portugal and Britain. Claiming to suffer from sloth and love of life, she deified her friend Aldous Huxley, had assets frozen by the Nazi regime, was funded by Martha Gellhorn and was known for her many lovers, all while experiencing the ‘tearing, crushing, defeating agony’ of writing. From a delicious account of a visit to Don Otavio in Mexico and vivid reportage of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial to the autobiographical novel Jigsaw, we see the world through Bedford’s observant eye and voracious appetite. And we continue our travels with a trip to the Heath Robinson Museum in London, exploring the cartoonist’s imagination through electric egg poachers, Christmas cracker-pulling machines and other curious contraptions, before sharing reading recommendations for Italo Calvino’s short stories that follow the cycle of the seasons, and an enlightening experiment with fiction from Francis Spufford. (Episode duration: 43 minutes; 56 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Sybille Bedford: An Appetite for Life, Selina Hastings A Visit to Don Otavio, Sybille Bedford (12:00) A Legacy, Sybille Bedford (17:41) The Best We Can Do, Sybille Bedford is out of print (21:23) The Trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sybille Bedford (21:33) Jigsaw, Sybille Bedford (28:51) Aldous Huxley: A Biography, Sybille Bedford is out of print (29:40) Very Heath Robinson, Adam Hart-Davis (38:34) Marcovaldo, Italo Calvino (39:10) Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford (41:02) Other available books by Sybille Bedford A Favourite of the Gods A Compass Error Pleasures and Landscapes Related Slightly Foxed Articles Bruised, Shocked, but Elated, Selina Hastings on Sybille Bedford, A Visit to Don Otavio, Issue 69 (12:00) A Bath with a View, Caroline Chapman on Sybille Bedford, A Legacy, Issue 38 (17:41) Other Links Listen to Selina Hastings on Episode 18 of the Slightly Foxed Podcast: The Ordeal of Evelyn Waugh (0:54) Sybille Bedford on Desert Island Discs, recorded in 1998 (9.09) Heath Robinson Museum (36:20) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Jul 15, 2021 · 44 min
33: The Golden Age of Crime Writing
Diamond Dagger award-winning crime novelist and president of the Detection Club Martin Edwards and Richard Reynolds, crime buyer for Heffers Bookshop and member of the Crime Writers’ Association, lead our investigation in this month’s literary podcast. Together with the Slightly Foxed team, they take a magnifying glass to the Golden Age of crime fiction, tracing its origins to the interwar years when the Detection Club was founded and discussing why the genre continues to thrill. From relishing The Poisoned Chocolates Case and resurrecting Death of a Bookseller to the mystery of E. C. R. Lorac’s missing manuscript and meeting Baroness Orczy’s Teahouse Detective, the plot twists and turns as we collect British Library Crime Classics and celebrate Crime Queens Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey and others along the way. Whether enjoyed as well-crafted puzzles, social documents or guilty pleasures, detective fiction is laced with nostalgia as well as cyanide. To tie up loose ends, we finish with a visit to Agatha Christie’s holiday home, Greenway, a house fit for Hercule Poirot, and the setting of a Devonshire murder hunt in Dead Man’s Folly. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 44 minutes; 56 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Mortmain Hall and The Crooked Shore, Martin Edwards The Murder at the Vicarage, Agatha Christie (3.57) The Nine Tailors, Dorothy L. Sayers. (4.29) The Red House Mystery, A. A. Milne (9.31) The Old Man in the Corner, Baroness Orczy (10.34) A Question of Proof, Nicholas Blake (12:09) The Cask, Freeman Wills Crofts (14.02) Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers (15:00) Cards on the Table, Agatha Christie (15.39) Francis Vivian’s Inspector Knollis Mysteries, published by Dean Street Press (15:58) Tragedy at Law, Cyril Hare (16:53) Thrones, Dominations, Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh (18.03) Anthony Gilbert’s Arthur Crook novels (19.09) Portrait of a Murderer, Anne Meredith (19.38) Bloodshed in Bayswater, John Rowland is out of print (21.38) Death of a Bookseller, Bernard J. Farmer is due to be published in a British Library Crime Classics edition in 2022 (21:41) A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries and Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries, Ed. Martin Edwards (22:35) Two-Way Murder, E. C. L. Lorac (33.40) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (35.15) Verdict of Twelve, Raymond Postgate (35.25) And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (35.57) Arrest the Bishop, Winifred Peck, published by Dean Street Press (37.56) The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Anthony Berkeley (38.42) The Dry, Jane Harper (40.05) Agatha Christie: A Biography, Janet Morgan (41.03) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Murder Most Civilized, Emma Hogan on Agatha Christie, the Miss Marple books, Issue 17 Vane Hopes, Victoria Neumark on the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, Issue 32 Hauntings, Michèle Roberts on Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, Issue 63 A Gentleman on the Case, Brandon Robshaw on Margery Allingham, the Albert Campion novels, Issue 52 The Judge’s Progress, P. D. James on Cyril Hare, Tragedy at Law, Issue 12 Lost in the Fens, Julie Welch on the detective stories of Edmund Crispin, Issue 63 Other Links British Library Crime Classics (22:36) Dean Street Press (30:40) Download Heffers Crime Fiction Top 100, selected by Richard Reynolds. NB The file will download automatically on click. Please check your downloads folder (35:12) Agatha Christie’s holiday home, Greenway, in Devon (42:37) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Jun 15, 2021 · 44 min
32: Picnic at Hanging Rock & Other Stories
‘Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves.’ It’s a scorching St Valentine’s Day in 1900 when three boarding-school girls and a teacher disappear during a day-trip to Hanging Rock in the arid Australian outback. Fact or fiction? Misadventure or murder? Accident or assassination? Join us on our latest literary podcast adventure as we delve into the mystery, history and hysteria of Joan Lindsay’s classic Australian Gothic novel with Kate Young, author of The Little Library Cookbook. From the slow-seeping horror of Hanging Rock to coming-of-age tales of tuck boxes and midnight feasts, high jinks and humour, Kate guides the Slightly Foxed magazine team through the school-story tradition and asks why it’s such fertile ground for fiction. On the way we visit the Chalet School, Malory Towers and St Trinian’s, and slip into darker territory with Decline and Fall, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. In this month’s literary expedition, we take a peek inside Quentin Blake’s House of Illustration, and to finish there’s the usual wide-ranging round-up of current reading featuring: Anthony Buckeridge’s classic Jennings series of prep-school stories; Emily Danforth’s romp, Plain Bad Heroines, inspired by Shirley Jackson; and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s tale of a young girl from a rural village in Zimbabwe, Nervous Conditions. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 44 minutes; 24 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsay (2:02) The Little Library Cookbook, The Little Library Year and The Little Library Christmas, Kate Young The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (14:14) The Naughtiest Girl in the School, Enid Blyton (15:14) Malory Towers is a series of six novels by Enid Blyton. The first novel is First Term at Malory Towers (15:21) The Chalet School is a series of 64 novels by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (15:51) Frost in May, Antonia White (20:37) The St Trinian’s books by Ronald Searle are out of print (22:53) Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh (23:44) Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (25:17) The Secret History, Donna Tartt (27:06) Murder Most Unladylike, Robin Stevens (28:37) An Experiment in Love, Hilary Mantel (30:17) Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls’ Boarding-Schools, 1939–1979, Ysenda Maxtone Graham (30:55) The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy (31:49 Our Lady of the Nile, Scholastique Mukasonga (33:43) Plain Bad Heroines, Emily M. Danforth (38:53) The Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge are out of print (40:11) Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga (41:53) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Hazy Memories of Hanging Rock, Kate Young on Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Issue 64 (2:02) Chalet Girls, Daisy Hay on Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books, Issue 56 (16:07) Once a Catholic . . ., Melissa Harrison on Antonia White, Frost in May, Issue 54 (20.37) Old Girls and Very Old Girls, Nicola Shulman on Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Terms & Conditions, Issue 52 (30:55) C. T. Jennings and the Problem of Evil, Robin Blake on Anthony Buckeridge, the Jennings books, Issue 17 (40:11) Educating Ulyth, Ysenda Maxtone Graham on the girls’ school stories of Angela Brazil, Issue 44 Other Links The Little Library Cafe: food inspired by literature from Kate Young Leave No Trace, Madeleine Watts on lost-children narratives in Australia, The Believer (8:36) Friends of the Chalet School (15:51) House of Illustration, London (36:24) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
May 15, 2021 · 42 min
31: The Magic of Angela Carter
Imagination, influence and the invention of infernal desire machines . . . Edmund Gordon, biographer of Angela Carter, guides the Slightly Foxed team through her colourful works and explores the wider realms of magical realism. Witty and wilfully idiosyncratic, Carter conjured sex and death from fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber, used her Somerset Maugham Award money to leave her husband and go to Japan to write, and absorbed the Latin American influences of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez. We hear how she enlisted the Marquis de Sade as an ally of feminism, embraced pulp genres and opened doors for David Mitchell, China Miéville, Helen Oyeyemi and more, while always attending to the grammar of the folk story. And, to finish, there are the usual wide-ranging recommendations for reading off the beaten track. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 42 minutes; 50 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. The Invention of Angela Carter, Edmund Gordon (2:27) Shadow Dance, Angela Carter (7:40) The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Angela Carter (8:46) Fireworks, Angela Carter (8:51) The Magic Toyshop, Angela Carter (10:08) The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter (10:27) The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim (11:29) Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado (13:47) Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter (16:29) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez (25:50) Beloved, Toni Morrison (26:21) Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (27:24) Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, Barbara Comyns (27:37) The Sadeian Woman, Angela Carter (29:50) Shaking A Leg: Collected Journalism and Writings, Angela Carter (31:22) Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories, Angela Carter (31:24) A Card from Angela Carter, Susannah Clapp is currently out of print. A reprint is under consideration (36:12) Extinction, Thomas Bernhard (37:06) Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (38:15) Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca, Ferdinand Mount (40:20) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Keeping it Real, Maggie Fergusson interviews the novelist Ali Smith, Issue 54 (9:48) Sophia Fairclough and Me, Sophie Breese on the novels of Barbara Comyns, Issue 42 (27:35) Other Links The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize (2:30) Keats House, Hampstead, London (33:50) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Apr 15, 2021 · 45 min
30: Jim Ede’s Way of Life
In this twentieth-century story of a quest for beauty, the writer Laura Freeman introduces us to Jim Ede, a man who, in creating Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, changed the way we look at art. We follow Jim from the trenches of the First World War to Lady Ottoline Morrell’s literary parties in Bloomsbury and a curating job at the Tate. He collected artworks by his friends Ben Nicholson and David Jones, acquired the estate of the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and designed a house in Tangiers that became a sanctuary for soldiers. These were stepping stones towards Jim turning derelict slum cottages into a home and gallery, a space for both tea and tours. And, as ever, we share recommendations for reading off the beaten track. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 45 minutes; 18 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. A Way of Life: Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede is available from the Kettle’s Yard shop Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale, Miranda Seymour is published in a Faber Finds edition. Second-hand copies are available. (12:59) Savage Messiah: A Biography of the Sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, H. S. (Jim) Ede is available from the Kettle’s Yard shop David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet, Thomas Dilworth (19:40) Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert (37:55) Lady into Fox, David Garnett (38:53) Indelicacy, Amina Cain (40:26) Transient Desires, Donna Leon (42:15) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Living Art, Mark Haworth-Booth on A Way of Life: Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede, Issue 42 (28:00) Other Links Kettle’s Yard House and Galleries, Cambridge Tangier Days: the Edes in Morocco, 1936-52 (22.29) Bookshop.org (2:16) Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge (33:50) With thanks to Kettle’s Yard and Paul Allitt for the photo used for this episode’s cover artwork. Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Mar 15, 2021 · 46 min
29: A Poet’s Haven
The artist Barrie Cooke had fishing in common with Ted Hughes, and mud and art in common with Seamus Heaney. Dr Mark Wormald, a scholar on the life and writings of Ted Hughes, has brought to light an extraordinary haul of poems, letters and drawings documenting a decades-long triangular friendship and a shared love of poetry and nature. He describes the spine-tingling discovery of Barrie’s cardboard box stuffed with correspondence and traces its history, starting with the first supper at Barrie’s Kilkenny home, and then at Jerpoint, also on the River Nore, where the trio forged their friendship, Seamus began Station Island and a poet’s haven flourished. From Ted’s dream of a burning fox man, climbing into Carrowkeel passage tombs and visits from Robert Lowell and Tom Paulin to fishing diaries, pike spoons and a stuffed trout, subsurface treasures are dredged up as our literary sifting takes us off the beaten track. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 46 minutes; 20 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. River, Ted Hughes (6:46) Lupercal, Ted Hughes (12:56) Station Island, Seamus Heaney (14:34) On Seamus Heaney, R. F. Foster (15:09) Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes (20:13) Crow, Ted Hughes (20:42) Opened Ground, Seamus Heaney (25:15) The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes, Janet Malcolm (39:50) A Celtic Miscellany, selected and translated by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (41:38) The Mission House, Carys Davies (43:12) Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark (45:48) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Through the Looking Glass, Jane Feaver on life at Faber and Faber, Issue 55 Other Links For more information about the Barrie Cooke archive, visit the Cambridge University website Barrie Cooke’s portrait of Ted Hughes, National Portrait Gallery (5:50) Kilkenney Arts Week (33:47) Keats-Shelley House, Rome (37:34) The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2020 (45:48) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Feb 15, 2021 · 39 min
28: An Odyssey through the Classics
Daisy Dunn, historian and biographer of Catullus and Pliny, sets our scene in ancient Rome and Greece, entertaining the Slightly Foxed team with literature of love and war, satire and myth, and amplifying echoes of the classics through the ages. We begin with Homer’s monsters and memorials of fallen men, then take a tour of the ancient world, from Catullus’ erotic poetry and Lysistrata’s sex strike to the eruption of Vesuvius and Suetonius’ lives of extraordinary emperors. In a more contemporary turn, F. Scott Fitzgerald borrows Gatsby from the Satyricon, and Mary Renault writes historical novels and lovers’ names in wine. And there’s the usual round-up of recommended reading from off the beaten track. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 39 minutes; 54 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, Daisy Dunn The Odyssey, Homer, translated by Emily Wilson (7:57) The Iliad, Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu (8:08) Homer on Life and Death, Jasper Griffin is out of print (9:02) The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker (11:01) Memorial, Alice Oswald (11:42) The Last of the Wine, Mary Renault (16:37) The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves (19:07) I, Claudius, Robert Graves (21:00) Pompei, Robert Harris (22:15) The Satyricon, Petronius, translated by P. G. Walsh (23:48) The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (24:47) Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman and post-Roman novels, Slightly Foxed Cubs (28:19) Candide, Voltaire (34:26) When the Lights Go Out, Carys Bray (35:27) The Diary of a Provincial Lady, E. M. Delafield (37:03) The Emperor’s Babe, Bernadine Evaristo (37:40) Related Slightly Foxed Articles How Homer Taught Me to Read, Adrian Thorpe on Homer, Odyssey and Iliad, Issue 30 Hadrian to the Life, Caroline Chapman on Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian, Issue 2 (21:42) Scaling Gibbon’s Everest, Richard Crockatt on Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Issue 68 Travels with the Father of History, Justin Marozzi on Herodotus, Histories, Issue 20 Brave Old World, Lawrence Sail on Voltaire, Candide, Issue 10 (34:26) Other Links Daisy Dunn The Greek Play, Cambridge (28:27) Gladstone’s Library (31:37) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Jan 15, 2021 · 37 min
27: Dr Wiener’s Library
Anthony Wells worked at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London for a decade. In this episode he leads the Slightly Foxed editors into the history of the library, which holds one of the most extensive archives on the Holocaust and the Nazi era. We travel to Germany, Amsterdam, New York and Tel Aviv, but it is people rather than places that the library remembers with its annals of personal stories. Dr Alfred Wiener, a German Jew who fought in the First World War, was one of the first to note the rise of the Nazi Party, and he began to assemble an archive of information in order to undermine their activities. From downfall by documentation in the Nuremberg Trial to a tracing service made up of millions of records, we learn how The Wiener Library ensures that those who disappeared are not forgotten. With thanks to The Wiener Library for the image used for this episode’s cover artwork: Member of staff, Mrs Walter at The Wiener Library in 1952 Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 37 minutes; 6 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. The Ratline, Philippe Sands (11:39) An Englishman in Auschwitz, Leon Greenman is out of print (14:25) Dinner of Herbs: Village Life in 1960s Turkey, Carla Grissmann (28:00) Hope against Hope, Nadezhda Mandelstam (29:42) Defying Hitler, Sebastian Haffner (31:04) An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris (33:53) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Comfortable Words, Anthony Wells on the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Issue 36 174517, David Spiller on Primo Levi, If This Is a Man and The Truce, Issue 43 Casting Out Fear, Gary Mead on Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, Issue 50 The Hunt for Hitler, Adam Sisman on Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, Issue 61 Other Links The Wiener Holocaust Library One Tree Books, Petersfield (23:52) The Petersfield Bookshop (24:45) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Dec 15, 2020 · 43 min
26: A Winter’s Tale
In this seasonal episode, the Slightly Foxed team are guided through a snowstorm of winter writing over twelve centuries by the literary critic and author of Weatherland, Alexandra Harris. The tour takes us from Anglo-Saxon mead halls and monsters to Renaissance bodily humours, then on through cool, translucent Enlightenment weather into the dark cloud of the nineteenth century and beyond. We visit frost-fair carnivals on the frozen Thames with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, brave the Brontës’ wild moorland, stay steamed up indoors with Jane Austen, sink into Dickens’s pea-soupers and see in the ‘year’s midnight’ with John Donne as we listen to a winter’s tale through literature. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 43 minutes; 19 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Weatherland and Romantic Moderns, Alexandra Harris (4:22) ‘A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day’, John Donne (5:02) Orlando, Virginia Woolf (6:15) ‘The Wanderer’, an Elegy in the Exeter Book (8:50) Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (12:07) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Simon Armitage’s revised edition (13:54) The Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare (17:08) The Great Frost: Cold Doings in London, Thomas Dekker is out of print (19:36) The Diary of John Evelyn (20:41) The Seasons, James Thomson (22:00) The Task, William Cowper is out of print. Read an extract from Book I: The Sofa (22:52) ‘Ode to the West Wind’, Percy Bysshe Shelley (26:16) Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (27:48) Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (29:27) Bleak House, Charles Dickens (33:14) ‘In Memorium’ in Selected Poems, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (34:31) Letters from Iceland, W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice (36:53) Winter, Ali Smith (38:20) 9780241973332 Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee, Slightly Foxed Edition No. 53 (41:19) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Cain’s Clan, John Harrison on Beowulf, Issue 13 (12:07) Keeping Ahead of the Game, Christopher Rush on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Issue 60 (13:54) The Abyss Beyond the Orchard, Alexandra Harris on William Cowper, The Centenary Letters, Issue 53 (22:50) No Coward Soul, Christopher Rush on Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Issue 56 (27:48) A Dickens of a Project, Laura Freeman on the works of Charles Dickens, Issue 41 (39:13) Other Links The London Library (2:18) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Nov 15, 2020 · 40 min
25: A Writer’s Territory
The Scottish nature writer Jim Crumley takes the Slightly Foxed team on a tour of literary landscapes, from the lochs of the Trossachs and the mountainous Cairngorms to Aldo Leopold’s sand county in Wisconsin and Barry Lopez’s Arctic. Together they trace the chain of writers who have influenced Jim, from Robert Burns and Wordsworth to Thoreau and Walt Whitman, and see nature through the eyes of his hero, the great Scottish naturalist and photographer Seton Gordon. They discuss how folklore has demonized the wolf while Jim believes its reintroduction could hugely benefit the ecology of the Scottish landscape. And finally they venture off the beaten track with this month’s wide-ranging reading recommendations. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 40 minutes; 24 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, Roger Hudson (1:14) A Boy at the Hogarth Press & A Parcel of Time, Richard Kennedy (6:40) Jim Crumley’s Seasonal Quartet: The Nature of Autumn, The Nature of Winter, The Nature of Spring, The Nature of Summer (11:03) The Cairngorm Hills of Scotland, The Charm of Skye and Amid Snowy Wastes, Seton Gordon are out print, but some Seton Gordon titles are available from Trieste Publishing (14:11) A High and Lonely Place, Jim Crumley (15:49) A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold (18:14) Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez (18:43) The Last Wolf, Jim Crumley (22:54) Highland River, Neil Gunn is currently out of stock at the publisher (31:07) Featherhood, Charlie Gilmour (33:28) The Silver Dark Sea, Susan Fletcher (35:13) A Month in Siena, Hisham Matar (36:12) The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley (38:00) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Word from the Wood, Galen O’Hanlon on A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Issue 54 (18:14) Northern Lights, Penelope Lively on Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez, Issue 4 (18:43) Other Links An Englishmans’ Commonplace Book ‘launch party’ at John Sandoe Books (1:19) The Art Workers’ Guild (1:54) Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park (8:37) Saraband, independent publisher (12:20) Jim Crumley, The Scots Magazine (31:56) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Oct 15, 2020 · 43 min
24: The Lives and Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb
Dr Felicity James, author of Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth: Reading Friendship in the 1790s and current custodian of Charles’s writing chair, introduces the Slightly Foxed editors to siblings at the heart of a literary circle. In their Tales from Shakespeare, gentle-hearted drunken-dog Charles wrote the tragedies and Mary, often chided for laughing, the comedies, and together they penned letters using different coloured inks. From a murder in the home and time in private asylums to conversations with Coleridge at the pub, dissertations on roast pig and salons in their London lodgings, we explore the lives of the Lambs and their friendships through books. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 43 minutes; 43 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, Roger Hudson (2:03) Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth: Reading Friendship in the 1790s, Felicity James is out of print (2:44) There have been two editions of the Lambs’ letters: The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb, ed. Edwin W. Marrs, Jr., 3 vols. [which go up to 1817], Cornell University Press, 1975, and The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, 3 vols., Dent, 1935. Sadly neither is still in print. Tales from Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb (14:33) Mrs Leicester’s School and Poetry for Children, Charles and Mary Lamb are out of print (14:44) Essays of Elia, Charles Lamb is out of print (16:46) A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb, Sarah Burton is out of print The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel (39:12) Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss (41:00) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Streets, Streets, Streets, Felicity James on the letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, Issue 65 A Delight in Digression, David Spiller on Essays of Elia, Issue 64 (16:46) Other Links The Charles Lamb Society (36:28) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Sep 15, 2020 · 43 min
23: A Writer in the Kitchen
The food writer and chef Olivia Potts joins the Slightly Foxed editors for a literary banquet. Olivia was a barrister for five years before enrolling at Le Cordon Bleu, becoming a cookery columnist on The Spectator and writing A Half Baked Idea, a memoir with recipes. From finding consolation in cooking and precision in pâtisserie to nostalgia-soaked blancmange and family dinners in the Cazalet Chronicles, the conversation flows, welcoming Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David, Charles Dickens and the extraordinary Fanny Cradock to the table along the way. And in this month’s taste from the magazine’s archives, Rachel Khoo’s cookbook conjures up feasts in an attic in Paris. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 43 minutes; 21 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. . Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. - Frontier Wolf and The Lantern Bearers, Rosemary Sutcliff: Slightly Foxed Cubs (0.50)- Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford: Slightly Foxed Edition No. 52 (0.53)- An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, Roger Hudson (1.00)- A Half Baked Idea, Olivia Potts (15:40)- The Little Library Cookbook, The Little Library Year and The Little Library Christmas, Kate Young (21.08)- The Cazelet Chronicles, Elizabeth Jane Howard (22.33)- Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee: Slightly Foxed Edition No. 53 (23:33)- Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant (24:18)- Jumping the Queue, Mary Wesley is out of print (25:04)- The Little Paris Kitchen, Rachel Khoo (28:53)- The Diary of a Nobody, George & Weedon Grossmith (35:41)- Good Things to Eat, Lucas Hollweg is out of print (37:53)- The Pedant in the Kitchen, Julian Barnes (39.17)- The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (39:35) Related Slightly Foxed Articles - Haikus among the Pears, Olivia Potts on Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book, Issue 62- Cooking with a Poet, Sue Gee on Paul Roche, Cooking with a Poet, Issue 8 (1:43)- The Fanny Factor, Laurie Graham on Fanny Cradock, Coping with Christmas, Issue 64 (1:47)- Attics with Attitude, Elisabeth Russell Taylor on Rachel Khoo, The Little Paris Kitchen, Issue 36 (28:53)- At Home with the Pewters, Antony Wood on George & Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody, Issue 32 (37:17) Other Links - Olivia Potts: www.ahalfbakedidea.co.uk - Olivia Potts’s The Vintage Chef column in Spectator Life (12.50)- FEAST catering by Olivia Potts and Kate Young (21:01) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach Additional music: French Waltz by Sam Bikov from the album Dance the Night Away via www.freemusicarchive.org The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Aug 15, 2020 · 37 min
22: Independent Spirit
Small but discerning, choosing passion over fashion, Little Toller Books shares an independent spirit with Slightly Foxed. Jon Woolcott joins us from this publishing house based in a converted old dairy in Dorset, and charts the rise from cottage industry origins to a wide, prized backlist. With roots in rural writing, Little Toller has branched out to seek unusual voices, resurrecting the life of the wood engraver Clifford Webb, turning landfill into prose, uncovering Edward Thomas’s hidden photographs and finding a bestseller in the diary of a young naturalist along the way. We turn to the magazine’s archives for John Seymour’s advice on cheddaring, sparging and gaffing, and there’s the usual round-up of recommended reading from off the beaten track. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 37 minutes; 45 seconds) Books Mentioned - Four Hedges, Claire Leighton. Available from the end of August 2020 (2:44) - Men and the Fields, Adrian Bell (2:48) - The Unofficial Countryside, Richard Mabey (4:30) - In Pursuit of Spring, Edward Thomas (4:56) - Diary of a Young Naturalist, Dara McAnulty (7:27) - The Life and Art of Clifford Webb, Simon Brett (12:52) - The Fat of the Land and The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, John Seymour (15:23) - Landfill, Tim Dee (17:51) - Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School, Ysenda Maxtone Graham (19:35)- Stand by Me, Wendell Berry (30:35) - Here We Are, Graham Swift (33:13)- Anton Chekhov’s short stories (35:00) Related Slightly Foxed Articles - These Fragments, Jon Woolcott on John Harris, No Voice from the Hall in Issue 66 (6:34)- Cheddaring, Sparging and Gaffing, Rowena Macdonald on John Seymour, The Fat of the Land and Self-Sufficiency in Issue 26 (22:50) Other Links - Little Toller Books - Blue Moose Books (10:05) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Jul 15, 2020 · 40 min
21: A Bookshelf in Tripoli
Justin Marozzi, a travel writer, historian and journalist who’s lived in Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Darfur, joins the Slightly Foxed editors on a journey through North Africa and the Middle East. His discovery of a nineteenth-century account of an expedition to Libya in a bookshop in Tripoli led to his crossing of the Sahara by camel, against the advice of Wilfred Thesiger. From dual chronicles of the desert penned by Rosita Forbes and Ahmed Hassanein Bey and tales of books hurled into the Tigris to the picaresque life of Ibn Battutah and travels with a Tangerine, the conversation ranges far and wide, and there are the usual recommendations for reading off the beaten track too. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 40 minutes; 22 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Anna in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. - South from Barbary, Justin Marozzi (3:09) - The Secret of the Sahara, Rosita Forbes is out of print (7:08) - The Lost Oases, Ahmed Hassanein Bey is out of print (7:46) - The Travels of Ibn Battutah, ed. Tim Mackintosh-Smith (11:57) - Travels with a Tangerine, The Hall of a Thousand Columns and Landfalls, Tim Mackintosh-Smith (12:03) - Arabs, Tim Mackintosh-Smith (12:26) - Tamerlane, Justin Marozzi (14:20) - Warriors, Gerald Hanley (15:43) - Islamic Empires, Justin Marozzi (20:11) - Kim, Rudyard Kipling (25:40) - The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk (33:37) - Consolations of the Forest, Sylvain Tessant (36:09) - The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf (37:15) Related Slightly Foxed Articles - Not Your Average Englishwoman, Justin Marozzi on Rosita Forbes, The Secret of the Sahara in Issue 62 (7:08) - An Irishman in Somalia, Justin Marozzi on Gerald Hanley, Warriors (15:43) - Small Player in the Great Game, Amanda Theunissen on Rudyard Kipling, Kim in Issue 57 (25:40) - Confessions of a TV Tie-in, Tim Mackintosh Smith on Ibn Battutah, The Travels of Ibn Battutah in Issue 18 (11:57) Other Links - Justin Marozzi: www.justinmarozzi.com Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable
Jun 15, 2020 · 36 min
20: An Issue of Enthusiasms
Slightly Foxed Editors Gail and Hazel take us between the pages of the magazine, bookmarking articles along the way. Crack the spine of the quarterly to discover T. H. White taking flying lessons, smutty book titles, a passion for romantic ruins, John Berger shadowing a remarkable GP, a rebellious Mitford ‘rescued’ by a destroyer, a night to remember on the Titanic and much more besides. From correcting proofs to welcoming writers with a host of experiences, the story of putting together an issue of enthusiasms unfolds. And in this month’s reading from the archives, a hapless apprentice at the Hogarth Press recounts his disastrous stint with the Woolfs. Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 36 minutes; 33 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Anna in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. - Slightly Foxed Issue 66 - Basil Street Blues, Michael Holroyd: Slightly Foxed Edition No. 29 (6:00) - England Have My Bones, T. H. White is out of print (6:47) - Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz (11:04) - The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb is out of print (13:04) - No Voice from the Hall, John Harris is out of print (14:33) - The Family from One End Street, Eve Garnett (15:15) - A Taste of Paris, Theodora FitzGibbon is out of print (15:33) - A Fortunate Man, John Berger (19:38) - Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman novels: Slightly Foxed Cubs (21:15) - Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford: Slightly Foxed Edition No. 52, published 1 September 2020 (21:53) - A Night to Remember, Walter Lord (23:50) - A Boy at the Hogarth Press, Richard Kennedy: Plain Foxed Edition (24:55) - House of Glass, Hadley Freeman (31:47) - All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (34:00) Related Slightly Foxed Articles - Underwater Heaven, Margaret Drabble on Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies in Issue 66 (5:45) - Harvey Learns the Ropes, Andrew Joynes on Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous in Issue 56 (6:24) - On the Shoulders of Giants, Andrew Joynes on T. H. White, England Have My Bones in Issue 66 (6:30) - Sarah Crowden on smut: Something for the Weekend in Issue 32 and All in the Mind? in Issue 44 (7:57) - Unsung Heroes, Alastair Glegg on learning to read at prep school in Issue 60 (9:59) - Dog’s-eye View, Rebecca Willis on Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog in Issue 65 (11:04) - In Praise of Pratchett, Amanda Theunissen on Terry Pratchett, Small Gods in Issue 33 (11:33) - Streets, Streets, Streets, Felicity James on the letters of Charles and Mary Lamb in Issue 65 (13:06) - These Fragments, Jon Woolcott on John Harris, No Voice from the Hall in Issue 66 (14:33) - Keeping up Appearances, Kate Tyte on Eve Garnett, The Family from One End Street in Issue 66 (15:15) - Simply Delicious, Clive Unger-Hamilton on Theodora FitzGibbon, A Taste of Paris in Issue 66 (15:33) - An Early-Flowering Climber, Ursula Buchan on the plant-hunting and garden writings of Reginald Farrer in Issue 66 (16:01) - A Well-tempered Gardener, Michael Leapman on the garden writings of Christopher Lloyd in Issue 59 (17:00) - Putting up Useful Shelves, Sue Gee on Richard Kennedy, A Boy at the Hogarth Press in Issue 20 (24:55) Other Links - Slightly Foxed Editors’ Diary (0:28)- Sign up to the free Slightly Foxed email newsletter here - Slightly Foxed articles by Christopher Rush (12:46)- Little Toller Books (14:18) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach Reading music: Dark Hallway, written and performed by Kevin MacLeod courtesy of incompetech.filmmusic.io The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable