I’ve just finished reading the latest issue of Slightly Foxed a four a year magazine billed as ‘The Real Reader’s Quarterly. Slightly Foxed is beautifully produced on cream paper with lovely illustrations and usually comprises 15 or 16 articles – all championing books that are often out of print, but always an influential book for the essay’s author.
No 19 was as usual a fascinating mixure:- I’ve added the quartet of spy novels featuring John Craig by James Munro to my wishlists – contemporaries of Fleming’s Bond novels, but nodding more towards Le Carre, searching them out will be a priority. There are also articles about I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, one of the best young adult novels ever, and Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, I hope my daughter will love that as much as I did. Richard Ingrams, and Paul Atterbury (off the Antiques Roadshow) also contribute amongst many other fine writers.
Issue No 16 also had more than the usual number of gems – articles on: 1066 & All That; the novels of Georgette Heyer; James Thurber; Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time sequence; the crime novels of Italian author Leonardo Sciascia, and perhaps best of all an essay about Edmund ‘Clerihew’ Bentley – I quote …
“The Art of Biography,
Is different to Geography.
Geography is about
Maps,
But Biography is about Chaps.”
Excellent stuff indeed!
See also their lovely website http://www.foxedquarterly.com/
