Slightly Foxed

Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader's Quarterly
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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

  1. Travels with Norman Lewis

    4月15日

    Travels with Norman Lewis

    Norman Lewis, who died in 2003 at the age of 95, was one of the twentieth century’s most adventurous travellers and one of its most brilliant and compelling writers. He was also prolific, producing fifteen novels, twenty highly praised travel books and hundreds of influential newspaper articles. So why isn’t he better-known today? The Slightly Foxed team put this question to Julian Evans, a distinguished writer and traveller himself, author most recently of Undefeatable: Odessa in Love and War, and of Semi Invisible Man, the definitive biography of Norman Lewis. Julian took his title directly from his subject, who described himself as a ‘semi-invisible man’, a watcher from the sidelines who hated personal publicity. It was a lesson Norman learned from a hard childhood in which, as a clever boy growing up in the North London suburbs, he was severely bullied at school. His spiritualist parents, shattered by the deaths of his two older brothers, sent him to stay for some time with his Welsh grandfather and three disturbingly eccentric aunts, an interlude he described in his autobiography Jackdaw Cake.A sharp dresser with a taste for fast cars, motor bikes and guns (though he hated violence) and a man of great charm, Norman survived during the 1930s Depression by running his own successful camera business. But travelling and writing were his passions, and after wartime service as an army Intelligence officer which produced his masterpiece Naples ’44, he wove the experiences of his worldwide travels into many other magical books such as A Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth and Voices of the Old Sea. He had an unerring instinct for a story and took risks to give a voice to overlooked communities. His Sunday Times article on the genocide of indigenous tribes in Brazil prompted the founding of Survival International, and The Honoured Society exposed the inner workings of the Mafia in Sicily. Courage, humour, humanity, a distinctive voice and a genius for storytelling – Lewis has them all. ‘One goes on reading page after page as if eating cherries,’ wrote one New York Times reviewer. An essential author, we all agreed, for anyone who relishes good writing. The Slightly Foxed Editors’ book recommendations were two novels by Joseph O’Connor, My Father’s House and The Ghosts of Rome, and Justin Webb’s childhood memoir The Gift of a Radio. And for an introduction to Norman Lewis, A Quiet Evening, a selection of his best articles introduced by John Hatt.

    57 分鐘
  2. The Thrilling World of Dick Francis

    1月15日

    The Thrilling World of Dick Francis

    Wartime bomber pilot, champion jockey, racing journalist, bestselling novelist, Dick Francis truly was a legend. The Slightly Foxed team join Dick’s son Felix and renowned racing commentator Derek Thompson (‘Tommo’ to his fans) to talk about the modest man who left school at 15 but went on to write thrillers set in the world of racing that have sold more than 60 million copies in 35 languages. Dick grew up with horses and riding was in his blood, though he didn’t become a professional jockey until he was 26, an age when many jockeys are retiring. But he quickly became one of the most successful National Hunt jockeys (and Champion Jockey in 1953–4), riding winners for top owners including the Queen and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. And it was the spectacular collapse of the Queen Mother’s horse Devon Loch beneath him on the point of winning the Grand National in 1956 that finally persuaded Dick to retire from racing and begin a new career, first as a journalist and then as a writer of endlessly inventive crime fiction. So how did he do it? The novels, with their evocative titles – Dead Cert, Decider, Bolt, Hot Money – take you straight into the world of old-fashioned racing with its toffs and touts and inevitable shady characters. According to Felix, the writing of them was always a partnership, with Dick, a born storyteller, producing the plots and the atmosphere and his wife Mary as brilliant researcher and editor. Felix, too, helped with writing and research, and after Dick’s death in 2010 he was persuaded by Dick’s literary agent to keep the Francis ‘brand’ alive. He is now the author of 19 bestselling ‘Dick Francis’ novels, bringing the racing scene up to date with a female jockey as the heroine of his latest, Dark Horse. Along with Dick Francis’s story of talent, courage and sheer determination – one he told himself in his autobiography The Sport of Queens – the team enjoyed added anecdotes and insights into the world of racing from ‘Tommo’, and an ending that had us on the edge of our seats.

    58 分鐘
  3. At Home with the Brontës

    2025/10/15

    At Home with the Brontës

    There has never been a literary family quite like the Brontës. In our autumn podcast Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth in Yorkshire, joined the Slightly Foxed team to discuss the story of the family’s life there. The Brontës moved to Haworth in 1820 when Patrick Brontë became curate, and the parsonage was established as a museum in 1928 when it was acquired by the Brontë Society. Mrs Brontë and the oldest two daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, died there from tuberculosis, leaving Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell to be educated at home by their widowed father.  Ann talks about her work at the Parsonage Museum, a treasure trove of Brontë memorabilia, containing 9,000 items including clothes, letters, first editions and the sisters’ own writing boxes. The Brontës were a close-knit family, sharing their games and creating a rich imaginary world which formed the basis of their later writing. Patrick Brontë was a loving and in many ways an unconventional father, who encouraged the girls’ education and allowed them to read freely. He was a lover of the natural world, and on their daily walks in the wild moorland country around Haworth the sisters absorbed the atmosphere that would permeate their novels.  Recognition came in 1847 when each published a novel, though initially they hid behind the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was the first, an overnight sensation which was the talk of literary London, causing endless speculation about the identity of its author. Three months later came Emily’s Wuthering Heights, which shocked readers with its story of passion, violence and revenge, and finally Anne’s Agnes Grey. The scene could have been set for brilliant literary careers, but within two years both Emily and Anne were dead from tuberculosis, Emily at 30 and Anne at 29. Charlotte married her father’s curate, lived on to write Shirley and Villette, based on her time as a teacher in a school in Brussels, and died at 38. Branwell, who never fulfilled his family’s high expectations, died addicted to alcohol and opium when he was 31. Even before Charlotte’s death Haworth had become a place of pilgrimage for Brontë fans, and Mrs Gaskell’s 1857 biography of her helped to establish the family’s lasting fame. Today the Parsonage Museum is hugely popular with visitors. It is also a centre for research and runs an annual festival of women’s writing. Ann’s deep knowledge of the Brontës and her experience of running the museum made for a fascinating discussion, leaving us to wonder, had the sisters lived longer, what their eventual literary legacy might have been. Autumn book recommendations were Blythe Spirit, Ian Collins’s biography of Ronald Blythe, The Brothers York by Thomas Penn, Plainsong, an American novel by Kent Haruf, Traitor’s Legacy by S. J. Parris, and The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller. For episode show notes, please see the Slightly Foxed website. Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by Bach Hosted by Rosie Goldsmith Produced by Philippa Goodrich

    52 分鐘
  4. The Many Lives of Muriel Spark

    2025/07/15

    The Many Lives of Muriel Spark

    It’s been said that Muriel Spark’s career was not so much a life as a plot, and she did indeed repeatedly reinvent herself, closing one chapter of her life and opening another, regardless of how many friends and business associates she abandoned along the way.This month the Slightly Foxed team were joined by Muriel Spark’s biographer Martin Stannard, and Spark enthusiast Emily Rhodes of Emily’s Walking Book Club, to discuss the work of this highly original and somewhat forgotten writer and learn how Muriel first invited Martin to write her biography and then did her best to prevent it seeing the light of day.Born in 1918, Muriel grew up in a working class family in Edinburgh – the setting for her most famous novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which was based on a charismatic teacher at her own school. At the age of 19 she closed that chapter of her life by marrying an older maths teacher, Sydney Oswald Spark, known (appropriately) thereafter as SOS, and going with him to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where their son Robin was born. Unfortunately it soon became obvious that Sydney had severe psychiatric problems and in 1943 Muriel left husband and son and returned to London where she began her career as a novelist.Several times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and much admired by Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, Muriel produced 22 novels, most of them drawing on events in her own life. Everyone at the Slightly Foxed table had their favourites, including The Girls of Slender Means, A Far Cry from Kensington, Loitering with Intent, and Memento Mori, a clear eyed and also very funny look at old age. Everyone agreed on the brilliance of her writing with its dark humour, preoccupation with the supernatural and with the presence of evil in unlikely places.Her life was equally fascinating, moving from poverty to great wealth and success, and from the shabbier parts of London to intellectual life in New York centred on The New Yorker magazine, to which she became a contributor. In 1954 she was received into the Roman Catholic church and for some time she lived in Rome, relishing the glitter of Italian high society, finally settling in Tuscany with her friend Penelope Jardine, where she died in 2005.Summer reading recommendations included Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan, Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson, Homework by Geoff Dyer and Of Thorn and Briar by Paul Lamb. Martin also praised Electric Spark, the new – and very different – biography of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson.For episode show notes, please see the Slightly Foxed website.Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by BachHosted by Rosie GoldsmithProduced by Philippa Goodrich

    58 分鐘
  5. Dervla Murphy: A Life at Full Tilt

    2025/04/15

    Dervla Murphy: A Life at Full Tilt

    Described as ‘the first lady of Irish cycling’, Dervla Murphy was renowned for her intrepid spirit, and she remained passionate about travel, writing, politics, conservation and bicycling until her death in 2022. In this episode of the Slightly Foxed podcast we have gathered a number of those who knew and worked with Dervla to discuss the life and work of this extraordinary travel writer. Gail Pirkis and Steph Allen, from Slightly Foxed, worked with Dervla during their time at John Murray Publishers. Rose Baring was her editor at Eland Books and Ethel Crowley was a friend and editor of the recent anthology, Life at Full Tilt: The Selected Writings of Dervla Murphy. Together with our host Rosie Goldsmith they discuss Dervla’s early years and inspiration, consider the experience of publishing her work and examine her place in the Ireland of her time. Born in Lismore, Ireland, in 1931, Dervla lived there until the end of her life. She was an only child and her parents, who originated from Dublin, encouraged her independence and love of books. Her father – who later became the much-loved Waterford County Librarian ‒ had been involved in the Irish republican movement and had served time in Wormwood Scrubs prison for his activities. Dervla spent her childhood caring for her mother who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, and then left school at 14 to care for her full-time. When her parents died in 1962 Dervla, at the age of 30, found herself free to travel. She acquired a bicycle and set out on a journey to Istanbul, through Iran and on to India during one of the worst winters in recent memory. This would become the subject of her first, and most famous book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, published in 1965. There followed numerous voyages with her trusty steed and 25 more books, including her highly acclaimed autobiography Wheels within Wheels. She won worldwide praise for her writing and many awards, including the Edward Stanford Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing and a Royal Geographical Society Award. Dervla took huge risks, mostly travelling alone and in famously austere style, whether in far-flung Limpopo, the Andes, Gaza or closer to home, where she documented the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Battling injury and political circumstance, she immersed herself in the lives of ordinary people caught in the shifting tides of power that dictated the terms on which they lived. To these people, she listened. What resulted was some of the most astute and compelling travel writing of the twentieth century. As the table choose their favourite book of Dervla’s, we also have our usual round-up of current reading, including the latest mystery from Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook, the Booker Prize-nominated The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, and Jon Dunn’s monograph on the hummingbird, The Glitter in the Green. For episode show notes, please see the Slightly Foxed website. Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by Bach Hosted by Rosie Goldsmith Produced by Philippa Goodrich

    59 分鐘
  6. William Golding: A Literary Colossus

    2025/01/15

    William Golding: A Literary Colossus

    The first title that springs to mind at the mention of William Golding’s name is most often Lord of the Flies. The classic story of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island all but made his reputation and has somewhat overshadowed his twelve other novels. Golding was a fascinating and often troubled man, a voracious reader who enjoyed the Odyssey in Greek as well as Georgette Heyer and Jilly Cooper and was an influence on many novelists from Stephen King to Penelope Lively, Ben Okri and Kazuo Ishiguro. Definitely a writer ripe for rediscovery.Now, the Slightly Foxed team sit down with the author’s daughter Judy and Golding expert Professor Tim Kendall to discuss the life and work of this brave and highly original writer, whose novels transport the reader to distant but entirely believable worlds. His work grapples with the big questions of existence but his originality as a writer sometimes worked against him, and Lord of the Flies was rejected by seven publishers before it was accepted by Charles Monteith at Faber. It was glowingly reviewed and became a bestseller but, behind the scenes, Golding was struggling with his addiction to alcohol and the fame his writing would bring him. After a poor reception from the critics for several of his following books, including both The Spire and The Pyramid, Golding was thrown into a deep depression. This crisis lasted over ten years, but when he finally returned to writing he went on to produce a series of successful novels – including Rites of Passage, winner of the 1980 Booker Prize. In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The usual round of reading recommendations include South from Granada, Gerald Brenan’s recollection of the years he spent in an Andalusian village in the 1920s with visits from the Bloomsbury group; Robert Harris’s Precipice, a semi-fictional account of the relationship in 1914 between Prime Minister Asquith, and Venetia Stanley, and Penelope Lively’s novel Passing On. For episode show notes, please see the Slightly Foxed website.Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by BachHosted by Rosie GoldsmithProduced by Philippa Goodrich

    59 分鐘
  7. John le Carré: Secrets & Lies

    2024/10/15

    John le Carré: Secrets & Lies

    ‘David at his worst was a liar but John le Carré at his best was a truth teller.’ These were the intriguing words with which his biographer Adam Sisman concluded the conversation when he joined the Slightly Foxed Podcast team at the kitchen table to discuss the life and work of the writer who was born David Cornwell but who is better known to the world as John le Carré.Graham Greene, whom le Carré greatly admired, once said that ‘an unhappy childhood is an asset for a writer’, and this young David had in spades. He was only 5 when he and his older brother were abandoned by their mother, to be brought up by their father, a domineering, larger-than-life conman, wife-beater and sexual tyrant, whose overwhelming personality would haunt David for the rest of his life and was the inspiration for his novel A Perfect Spy.These ‘hugless’ childhood years, as David called them, were ones of stark contrasts. At one moment the family would be living like princes, the next bailiffs were in the house and their father might even be in jail. The boys were taught early on to lie convincingly in order to bail their father out, so the scene was set for the kind of double life that David would later lead when he worked for the secret service, and for the shadowy worlds of violence and betrayal that he created in his novels. It also produced a man who sought out danger, both in doing his meticulous research, and in his multiple affairs with women, a subject Adam explored in a second biography, The Secret Life of John Le Carré, published after le Carré’s death.Adam speaks fascinatingly about his often tense relationship with this complex, brilliant and seductively charming man whose great Cold War novels such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with their brilliant dialogue and scene-setting and their unforgettable central character George Smiley, are felt by many to far transcend the genre of spy fiction.To finish, there’s the usual round-up of reading recommendations including a personal and passionate account of Putin’s Russia through the eyes of a BBC journalist, Goodbye to Russia by Sarah Rainsford, and A Voyage around the Queen by Craig Brown, an exceptionally researched and hilarious biography of sorts of our late Queen Elizabeth II.For episode show notes, please see the Slightly Foxed website.Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by BachHosted by Rosie GoldsmithProduced by Philippa Goodrich

    51 分鐘
  8. Barbara Comyns: Stranger than Fiction

    2024/07/15

    Barbara Comyns: Stranger than Fiction

    Any mention of Barbara Comyns usually brings an ‘I know the name but I don’t know anything about her’ kind of response. In this quarter’s literary podcast, presenter Rosie Goldsmith and the Slightly Foxed Editors sit down with Barbara’s biographer Avril Horner and Brett Wolstencroft, Manager of Daunt Books, to discover who this fascinating and forgotten novelist really was.  Though Barbara enjoyed success in the later part of her life, and a revival with Virago Books in the 1980s, it’s indicative of how thoroughly she disappeared from view that, as Avril tells us, she had difficulty in placing her wonderful biography, Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence, which was finally published this year. Avril describes how, when working on her biography, she came across a huge cache of letters from the 1930s owned by Barbara’s granddaughter, some of which ‘made her gasp’, and the story of Barbara’s life in London is indeed often shocking. It’s a tale of almost unimaginable poverty, of tangled affairs with unsuitable men, of a grim experience of childbirth, and countless moves from one bleak rented property to another. Yet after repeatedly hitting rock bottom Barbara always courageously picked herself up and started again. At various times she survived as a commercial artist, artist’s model, dog breeder, antique dealer, renovator of old pianos and dealer in classic cars. At last in 1945 she made a happy marriage to Richard Comyns-Carr, who worked for MI6 where he was a colleague and friend of Kim Philby.   The couple moved to Spain, and it was then that Barbara started to write novels drawing on her earlier life such as Sisters by a River and Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. She was admired by Graham Greene who became her publisher, and later came other novels of a more gothic and surrealist kind including A Touch of Mistletoe, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead and The Vet’s Daughter. No two of her haunting and disturbing novels are alike for she wrote in a variety of genres. She’s an intriguing novelist, totally original, impossible to pigeonhole and ripe for re-rediscovery. For episode show notes, please see the Slightly Foxed website. Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by Bach Hosted by Rosie Goldsmith Produced by Philippa Goodrich

    57 分鐘
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簡介

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

資訊

  • 創作者
    Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader's Quarterly
  • 活躍年代
    2018年 - 2026年
  • 集數
    59
  • 年齡分級
    兒少不宜
  • 版權
    © Slightly Foxed Ltd.
  • 節目網站
    Slightly Foxed

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