The Readers' Catalogue

readers’catalogue • spring 2018

‘Hurrah for Slightly Foxed – a truly independent ‘It’s always a red-letter day when the post small publishing house that flourishes while eschewing the lure of Amazon.’ John Sandoe Books includes Slightly Foxed.’ Penelope Lively est. 2004

3 The Readers’ Catalogue

Welcome to our quarterly Readers’ Catalogue. Here you’ll find listings for our cloth-bound limited-edition hardbacks, our growing range of collectable children’s books, back issues of Slightly Foxed (all in print) together with handsome slipcases in which to keep them, our popular paperbacks and Plain Editions, a small collection of literary goods and our pick of the most interesting (and sometimes unusual) titles from other publishers’ bookshelves Everything listed in this catalogue or on our website can be sent to you, or directly to a gift recipient, in good time for a date of your choice, and Slightly Foxed subscribers can use their usual discount on all orders. The office is well-stocked with sturdy cardboard packaging, handsome postcards bearing wood engravings, reams of brown paper and signature foxed ribbon in anticipation! Whether or not you order anything we’d like to thank you for your support, and wish you a very happy 2018. With best wishes from Gail, Hazel and all of us here at Slightly Foxed

contents

Slightly Foxed Edition No. 41, Something Wholesale 4 A Ronald Welch original, The Road to Waterloo 5 Slightly Foxed Editions 6 Plain Foxed Editions 11 Slightly Foxed Paperbacks . . . 13 Frequently Foxing Questions & Order Form 15 . . . Slightly Foxed Paperbacks cont. 19 Slightly Foxed Cubs: The BB Books 20 Slightly Foxed Cubs: Ronald Welch 21 Personalized Bookplates 25 Featured in SF Issue 57 and other Spring reading 27 Notebooks, Bags, Back Issues, Slipcases & Cards 31

3 new this spring slightly foxed edition no. 41 Eric Newby, something wholesale My Life and Times in the Rag Trade

Who would have thought that the adventurous traveller and decorated wartime hero Eric Newby had started his working life in the rag trade? But that is the story he tells in this characteristically jaunty and very funny book.

Newby was in his late twenties when he returned home in 1945 after an adventurous war. He had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy and had fallen in love with his future wife Wanda, who had saved his life when he was hiding out in the mountains – an episode he later memorably described in Love and War in the Apennines. Back in London, however, demobbed and demoralized, he bowed to pressure and joined the family firm. Lane & Newby, ‘Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers’, occupied a warren of offices in Great Marlborough Street and here young Eric was put to work in the Mantle Department, cutting off lengths of fabric to supply orders for customers such as a Mrs Bangle of Leeds, whose majestic dimensions were given as ‘Hips 62˝. Bust 58˝. Waist 55˝’. Such figures would become a grim reality when he was forced to accompany Mr Wilkins, the head salesman, on one of his twice-yearly excursions to drum up orders in the great industrial towns of the North. As Eric blundered his way through the various departments, doing his best to repel the advances of Lola, the in-house model – ‘a girl so silly her silliness had a sexual quality’ – things were beginning to go wrong at Great Marlborough Street. Eric’s father, an Edwardian patriarch with a light-hearted attitude to accounting, had somehow managed to keep the firm going while sidestepping the more extreme changes in fashion. But he had been running up debts, and during the Fifties Lane & Newby finally collapsed under the weight of a massive tax demand. By this time, however, Eric was laying plans for an excursion to the Hindu Kush – and the rest is travel history. 256 pages • from £16 (uk/eire): £18 (overseas) 4 5 a brand-new carey story the road to waterloo Recently rediscovered among Ronald Welch’s papers and now published for the first time with splendid specially commissioned illustrations, this novella has all the colour and realism of the other books in the series and fills a gap in the story of the Careys.

It is June 1815. Napoleon, recently escaped from Elba, is on the march, and 17-year- old James Carey, a Cornet in the 30th Light Dragoons, is patrolling the frontier between France and present-day Belgium, on the lookout for the arrival of Napoleon’s troops. As part of Wellington’s great Allied army this is James’s first experience of active service, but he’s a modest, conscientious and likeable young man, with the added benefit of fluent French, learned from his mother who had fled France during the Revolution – an episode that links this book with the earlier Escape from France. Briefly taken prisoner when his troop encounters an advance party of French Lancers, James manages to escape and takes refuge at a farmhouse where he finds himself sharing accommodation with Wellington’s legendary intelligence officer Colonel Colquhoun Grant. It’s a timely meeting, for it soon becomes clear there has been a disastrous break in communications. Wellington doesn’t yet know that Napoleon has crossed the frontier. Soon James is riding hell for leather to Wellington’s headquarters in Brussels with a vital report for the Duke. The Road to Waterloo is a nail-biting picture of the events leading up to the great battle, of the first encounter of the opposing armies at Quatre Bras, and of the effects of war on a decent and inexperienced young man. illustrated by mark robinson 88 pages • from £14 (uk/eire): £16 (overseas)

‘I loved these books as a child and now my 11-year-old daughter has read them all and loved them as well. Your set is magnificent and already a much-loved family collection.’ M. Islam

‘I wanted to pass on to you personally the joy that my son (aged 10) has experienced in receiving the Ronald Welch full set . . . he loves history and reading about battles and adventures, so these books have been an absolute delight for him!’ A. Wilson 4 5 slightly foxed editions

Our Editions are perfectly designed to curl up with – neat, sturdy little hardbacks, just the right size to hold in the hand and with a ribbon marker to keep your place. More important still, they’re wonderful reads – hitherto forgotten memoirs that bring alive a particular moment, that allow you into someone else’s world and make you feel you have actually known the writer. If you’ve started collecting them already, now could be the moment to fill in any gaps. And if you haven’t – well, you’ve a treat awaiting you.

Hand-numbered, cloth-bound hardback limited editions of 2,000 copies per title Coloured endpapers • 170 x 110mm • Silk headband, tailband and ribbon marker Blind blocking to front • Gold blocking to spine

SF Subscriber Price: UK & Ireland £16; Overseas £18 per title Non-Subscriber Price: UK & Ireland £17.50; Overseas £19.50 per title

Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika When Elspeth Huxley’s family arrived in Nairobi in 1913, British East Africa was still a Garden of Eden, virtually untouched by the destructive hand of man. It was also a land of dreams, a place for the recouping of lost fortunes by those who hadn’t managed things very well elsewhere. Elspeth Huxley evokes both the harshness and the beauty of the life that, against all the odds, they managed to create, the mutually dependent society of those early white settlers, and the effect of Africa and its native population on the imagination of a solitary and self-sufficient child.no. ( 18 • 360 pages)

Denis Constanduros, My Grandfather & Father, Dear Father These delightfully funny and affectionate portraits of the two most influential male figures in the author’s life conjure up two strongly defined characters and the times in which they lived. The two could hardly have been more different. Denis’s maternal grandfather, though surviving sturdily into the reign of George V, was to his grandson a character from the ‘warm, gas-lit, stable-smelling past’ of the Victorian age and symbolized everything that was convivial and straightforward and reliable. His father, however, was flamboyant, melo- dramatic and full of grand ideas for solving his perpetual financial problems at a stroke – a tendency which ultimately led to disaster. This is a small jewel of a book. (no. 20 • illus. • 272 pages) 6 7 Ysenda Maxtone Graham, The Real Mrs Miniver The exemplary middle-class housewife Mrs Miniver, whose doings first appeared on the Court pages of The Times, was said by Winston Churchill to have done more for the Allied cause in the Second World War than a flotilla of battleships. Everyone assumed that Mrs Miniver was a portrait of her creator, Jan Struther, but the reality was very different. Ysenda, Jan’s granddaughter, draws a vivid portrait of this fascinating and contradictory woman whose own creation ultimately forced her to lead a painful double life. (no. 21 • 320 pages)

Richard Hillyer, Country Boy Richard Hillyer was the pseudonym used by Charles Stranks, a farmworker’s son who grew up in great poverty in a remote Buckinghamshire village in the years before and during the First World War. Country Boy is the extraordinary and moving story of how, against incredible odds, he managed to educate himself and get to university. Written with almost painful honesty, it is a deeply poetic evocation of the unspoilt English countryside and its effect on the imagination of a lone and sensitive boy. no.( 22 • 256 pages)

John Moore, Portrait of Elmbury (Vol. i of The Brensham Trilogy) Born in 1907, John Moore grew up in Tewkesbury at a time when such small English market towns still had a distinct and sturdy life of their own. Mass travel, mass media and the changes brought about by two world wars would gradually destroy this self-contained rural society, but in Portrait of Elmbury, the first book in a trilogy based on his home town, Moore caught and preserved it in captivating detail. Though far from sentimental, it is a joyful hymn to the fullness and variety of small-town life compared to the life he found in the city. (no. 26 • 288 pages) *Only available to buy together with Brensham Village and The Blue Field

Gerald Durrell, My Family & Other Animals In 1935 the Durrell family sold their house and ‘like a flock of migrating swallows’ fled from the depressing grey damp of an English summer to the Mediterranean warmth and colour of Corfu. For Gerry, this was where paradise began. For the next five years, despite 6 7 his mother’s anxious attempts to educate him, he was allowed to run wild, glorying in the freedom and beauty of the island. My Family & Other Animals is a perfect family book for reading aloud, a funny, magical evocation of a boyish paradise which has been a favourite with readers of all ages since it was first published over sixty years ago. no.( 28 • 384 pages)

Michael Holroyd, Basil Street Blues Well-known for his frank biographies of such controversial figures as Augustus John and Lytton Strachey, Holroyd teases out the story of his own distinctly problematic family in this delightful and original book. His volatile father, always busy with his own enterprises, and his glamorous Swedish mother with her succession of exotic husbands, had only walk-on parts in his life. It was only after both his parents had died that he was overcome by a desire to find the ‘connecting story’ which his fragmented childhood had so lacked. The result is a very personal detective story, subtle, funny and poignant. (no. 29 • 368 pages)

Adrian Bell, Silver Ley (Vol. ii of Bell’s Trilogy) In this captivating sequel to Corduroy (see p. 19) Adrian Bell describes the hardships and happiness of setting up on his own farm. The story opens in 1921 as Bell wakes, full of hope, to start his new life at Silver Ley. This second book in Bell’s farming trilogy is a quietly observed and unsentimental picture of a rural world and a way of life which was even then fading. (no. 30 • 288 pages)

Helene Hanff,8 4, Charing Cross Road In the drab and traumatized post-war London of 1949, Marks & Co., second-hand and antiquarian booksellers at 84, Charing Cross Road, received an enquiry from ‘a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books’, a Miss Helene Hanff of New York City. It was the beginning of a correspondence that would last for twenty years and the result is this gloriously heart-warming account of a friendship conducted through letters. (no. 32 • 240 pages)

Harold Carlton, Marrying Out This darkly comic story of a Jewish family’s rise and fall is seen through the eyes of the teenage Harold Carlton, lightly disguised as ‘Howard Conway’. But you don’t have to be Jewish to recognize the characters in this dysfunctional family – Howard’s dyspeptic and dominating father; his delightful but dissatisfied mother; his brother and sister, who provide a kind of background chorus; lovable, easy-going Grandad, with his surprise 8 9 secret life; and glorious, ghastly Grandma, the arch manipulator and expert in emotional blackmail. A brilliantly observed study of family dynamics, and of a certain kind of Jewish life in 1950s North London. (no. 27 • 288 pages)

Gavin Maxwell, The House of Elrig The writer and naturalist Gavin Maxwell is best known forRing of Bright Water, his moving account of raising otters on the remote west coast of Scotland. In his childhood memoir The House of Elrig he describes, with the same lyrical power that made that earlier book a classic, how it all began. In loving detail he evokes the wild moorland country around his Scottish home and the creatures that inhabited it. As was then the custom, he was ripped away from this paradise to go to a series of brutalizing schools. But always in his imagination he was at Elrig. It was his refuge and his escape, and the power of his longing and the ecstasy of each return fuel this haunting book. (no. 30 • 256 pages)

Diana Petre, The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley Diana and her twin sisters grew up in Barnes, South London, in the care of an elderly housekeeper, having been abandoned in 1912 by their mother, the enigmatic Mrs Muriel Perry, whose real name and true identity were a mystery. After an absence of ten years, Muriel reappeared and took charge of her children, with disastrous results. For the girls, one of the highlights of their isolated lives were visits from a kindly man they knew as ‘Uncle Bodger’. In fact, as Muriel finally revealed in characteristically brutal fashion, he was their father, Roger Ackerley. (no. 33 • 272 pages)

John Moore, Brensham Village (Vol. ii of The Brensham Trilogy) In this second volume of Moore’s interwar trilogy the setting moves from Elmbury – a lightly disguised version of Tewkesbury, where Moore grew up – to a village nearby. It is the 1930s, there is unemployment, and change is creeping in with mannerless weekenders arriving from the city, a shady ‘Syndicate’ of developers, an ugly petrol station and a local cinema. But there is still cricket on the village green, and Moore and his friends still go fishing, ferreting and bird’s-nesting. Moore tenderly evokes the last shadows of an England that was on the very point of vanishing. (no. 34 • 272 pages) 8 9 Anthony Rhodes, Sword of Bone It’s hard to imagine that anyone who took part in the disaster of Dunkirk could write an amusing book about it. But that is what Anthony Rhodes has done in Sword of Bone, his wry account of the events leading up to the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in May 1940 – a ‘strategic withdrawal according to plan’ as the chaos was officially described. Being observant and cool-headed, with an ironic sense of humour, he manages to capture the absurdity as well as the tragedy of what took place. (no. 35 • 320 pages)

Hilary Mantel, Giving up the Ghost Hilary Mantel 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’. Giving up the Ghost is a story of ‘wraiths and phantoms’, and of a life full of challenges, but it is very far from being a misery memoir. Rather it is a compulsively readable and ultimately optimistic account of what made Hilary Mantel the writer she is, full of courage, insight and wry humour. (no. 37 • 232 pages)

Richard Hillary, The Last Enemy Richard Hillary was a charming, good-looking and rather arrogant young man, fresh from public school and Oxford, when, like many of his friends, he abandoned university to train as a pilot on the outbreak of war. At the flying training school, meeting men who hadn’t enjoyed the same gilded youth as he had, Hillary’s view of the world, and of himself, began to change. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, he shot down five German aircraft and was finally shot down in flames himself, sustaining terrible burns to his face and hands. With its raw honesty, lack of self-pity and its gripping and terrifying accounts of aerial combat and the psychological aftermath, The Last Enemy is a wartime classic, the harrowing story of a carefree young man who, like many others, was suddenly and cruelly forced to grow up. (no. 39 • 224 pages) Suggested further reading: Sebastian Faulks, The Fatal Englishman, see p. 30.

Adrian Bell, The Cherry Tree (Vol. iii of Bell’s trilogy) In this final volume of his trilogy Bell makes a happy marriage and settles down with his wife Nora on their own small farm. But behind this cheerful picture lurks the shadow of the growing agricultural depression and the passing of an old rural order, which Bell, with his poet’s eye and farmer’s knowledge, records in poignant detail. (no. 38 • 256 pages) 10 11 Erich Kästner, When I Was a Little Boy Erich Kästner, author of the immortal children’s book Emil and the Detectives, was born at the end of the nineteenth century in Dresden – that ‘wonderful city full of art and history’ which was razed to the ground by the Allies in 1945. Erich’s gentle father Emil, a master-saddler, and his mother Ida, an intelligent woman who set up as a hairdresser, had come to Dresden from small-town Saxony. Times were tough, and Erich grew up in a tenement flat at the shabby end of a long street called the Königsbrücker Strasse. Yet the book shines with the everyday happiness of a young boy’s life in a close-knit, hardworking family, set against the backdrop of the ancient city with its baroque buildings, its parades before the Kaiser, its trams and glittering Christmas shops. When I Was a Little Boy is an affecting picture of both Erich’s childhood and the city he never ceased to mourn. (no. 40 • illus. • 216 pages)

plain foxed editions

These sturdy little books, bound in duck-egg blue cloth, come in the same neat pocket format as the original SFEs and will happily fill any gaps on your shelves, as well as forming a delightful uniform edition of their own.

Duck-egg blue cloth-bound hardback • Cream endpapers • 170 x 110mm Gold blocking to spine • Silk headband, tailband and ribbon marker

SF Subscriber Price: UK & Ireland £16; Overseas £18 per title Non-Subscriber Price: UK & Ireland £17.50; Overseas £19.50 per title

Diana Holman-Hunt, My Grandmothers and I Diana Holman-Hunt spent her Edwardian childhood shuttling between two wildly contrasting grandparents. Her paternal grandmother, the eccentric widow of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt, lived entirely in the past in her big gaunt house in Kensington, while her mother’s mother, in her comfortable and well-ordered home on the edge of the Sussex marshes, lived entirely in the present. Both competed for Diana’s affection while

10 11 being spectacularly blind to her needs. My Grandmothers and I is Diana’s touching and darkly funny memoir of that time – a small comic masterpiece of pitch-perfect dialogue and deadpan observation. (288 pages)

Richard Kennedy, A Boy at the Hogarth Press & A Parcel of Time In 1926, at the age of 16, Richard Kennedy left school without a single qualification and went to work at the Hogarth Press. The Woolfs clearly developed a fondness for their apprentice, but when he left several years later, Leonard pronounced him ‘the most frightful idiot he [had] ever had the privilege of meeting in a long career of suffering fools’. But Kennedy, who became a successful artist and children’s book illustrator, was taking everything in, and 50 years later he produced a minor classic in A Boy at the Hogarth Press, accompanied by his own wonderfully alive illustrations. Later still, he published his touching childhood memoir, A Parcel of Time. Now published together in a single edition, the two are a sheer delight. (illus. • 208 pages)

John Hackett, I Was a Stranger In September 1944 John Hackett, commander of the 4th Parachute Brigade, was severely wounded and captured during the fighting that preceded the Battle of Arnhem. After being taken to a hospital in enemy hands and given emergency surgery, he was spirited away by the Dutch Resistance and hidden in a house owned by three middle-aged Dutch sisters, who risked their lives to nurse him back to health and help him escape down the canals of occupied Holland to the British lines. I Was a Stranger is less a war memoir than a story of friendship, a tribute by a very unusual soldier to a group of outstandingly brave, unassuming and resourceful people. (320 pages)

Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School Like many of the best books, this unusual history of an unusual school – St Philip’s prep- school in Kensington, founded in 1934 by Catholic convert Richard Tibbits and still going strong today – is hard to classify. ‘As you live through its story in these chapters,’ the author promises her readers, ‘you’ll be taken on a meander through the twentieth century. War, rationing, smog, mini-skirts, maxi-skirts, strikes, Thatcherism, the first computer . . .’ Enough to say that for anyone who has enjoyed Decline and Fall or St Trinian’s, anyone who loves to laugh yet feels the poignancy of the passage of time, this book will be a treat. (illus. • 200 pages) ‘Probably my book of the year’ Rupert Christiansen 12 13 Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls’ Boarding-Schools, 1939–1979 ‘When I asked a group of girls who had been at Hatherop Castle in the 1960s whether the school had had a lab in those days they gave me a blank look. “A laboratory?” I expanded, hoping to jog their memories. “Oh that kind of lab!” one of them said. “I thought you meant a Labrador.”’ As we discover from this quietly hilarious history of life in British girls’ boarding-schools, this was a not untypical reaction. Harsh matrons, freezing dormitories and appalling food predominated, but at some schools you could take your pony with you and occasionally these eccentric establishments imbued in their pupils a lifetime love of the arts and a thirst for self-education. In Terms & Conditions Ysenda speaks to members of a lost tribe – the Boarding-school Women, who look back on their experiences with a mixture of horror and humour. (272 pages) A Country Life Book of the Week paperbacks

Delightful to look at, in the same neat format and on the same good cream paper as Slightly Foxed itself, our paperbacks make charming presents.

SF Subscriber Price: UK & Ireland £11; Overseas £13 Non-Subscriber Price: UK & Ireland £12; Overseas £14 Also available in sets of 4. See order form for details.

Frances Wood, Hand-grenade Practice in Peking China in 1975 was a strange, undiscovered country, still half-mad from Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, when young Frances Wood boarded a plane in London to study for a year in Peking. Virtually closed to outsiders for the preceding decade, China was just beginning to make tentative moves towards the outside world when Frances and her fellow students were driven in an ancient coach through the dark silent countryside to their new quarters at the Foreign Languages Institute. Throughout the following year in an extraordinary Alice- in-Wonderland world where ‘education’ consisted of shovelling rubble, hand-grenade practice and cripplingly tedious ideological lectures, 12 13 Frances never lost her sense of humour. Based on the letters she wrote home in 1975‒6, Hand-grenade Practice in Peking is both affecting and hilarious. (240 pages) Featured on BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read

Edward Ardizzone, The Young Ardizzone The creator of the ever-popularLittle Tim and Lucy books begins his story in 1905 when he was 5 and his mother brought him and his two sisters home to England from Haiphong where his father was a telegraph engineer. Left in Suffolk in the care of their grandmother, the three grew up with a full complement of young bachelor uncles, great-aunts and eccentric family friends – a comfortable Edwardian world which is beautifully captured in Ardizzone’s deceptively simple prose and delicately humorous drawings. (illus. • 208 pages)

Dodie Smith, Look Back with Love The author of I Capture the Castle grew up in Manchester among her mother’s doting family, since her father had died when she was a baby. It was the jolliest environment imaginable – the Furbers adored seaside trips, motor-car outings, fairgrounds, circuses, jokes, charades and musical soirées, all of which had their influence on Dodie. Her memoir gives a wonderful picture of this large Edwardian family, of life in the ‘basking Sunday afternoon charm’ of Manchester’s Victorian suburbs, and of the little girl who said, ‘I think I’m an oddity really. But I do my very, very best to write well.’ (272 pages)

Priscilla Napier, A Late Beginner Priscilla Napier grew up in Egypt during the last golden years of the Edwardian Age. Here she brings to life that far-off world – the house and its devoted Egyptian servants, the desert picnics with Nanny, the visits to Cairo Zoo, the afternoons playing in the grounds of the Gezira Sporting Club – and the long summers in England among their mother’s family, as the First World War began to take its tragic toll of uncles and cousins. It is a wonderful evocation of a place, a time and a climate of mind – a book that, as Penelope Lively writes in her preface, ‘ranks quite simply with the greatest accounts of how it is to be a child’. (336 pages) Paperbacks continued on p. 19 14 Frequently Foxing Questions

How do I order from this catalogue? Visit our online shop at www.foxedquarterly.com (open all hours) Call our order line on 020 7033 0258 /+44 20 7033 0258 (Monday–Friday, 9.30 a.m.–5.30 p.m. GMT) and speak to Hattie, Katy or Olivia. Complete the order form in the centre-fold and post it, together with your payment, to: Slightly Foxed Orders, 53 Hoxton Square, London, N1 6PB, UK Visit our publishing offices at the above address. Please get in touch in advance so we can ensure your books or other items (and tea and biscuits!) are in stock

Can I order titles that don�t appear in this catalogue? Yes certainly. The office can obtain many other new and second-hand books on request. Please contact Anna Kirk: +44 (0) 20 7033 0258 • [email protected]

Why are there two pricing tiers? Subcribers to the quarterly receive preferential rates and free (or greatly reduced) post and packing for all books and goods. Non- subscribers are welcome to order at the usual retail price, or subscribe at the same time as placing an order.

Can I send items as a present? Yes, indeed. All items may be given as presents and subscribers may use their discount for all orders. We also offer a gift-wrapping service.

Do you deliver anywhere in the world? We certainly do. Please see prices next to each listing for our overseas rates for both subscribers and non-subscribers.

How do I receive my subscriber discount? You will need to quote your subscription number. This can be found on your membership card, and on most printed correspondence from the office. If you don�t know your number, do get in touch.

Why have I received this catalogue? Our catalogue goes out to all Slightly Foxed subscribers, and also to those who’ve placed orders or received gifts from others in the past. However, we hate to bother people with unwanted paper so do get in touch if you’d like to be removed from our mailing list.

[email protected]• +44 (0) 20 7033 0258 Slightly Foxed Ltd, 53 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB, UK

14 item quan- sf subscriber non-subscriber gift readers’ catalogue order form spring 2018 tity prices prices wrap slightly foxed cubs To order from this catalogue, please visit our website www.foxedquarterly.com, phone us BB, The Little Grey Men& Down the Bright Stream (Pair) £32 £36 £36 £40 (UK 020 7033 0258; Overseas +44 20 7033 0258) or return this order form with payment Set of all 14 Ronald Welch titles (RRP £250) £208 £236 £236 £264 details to us by post: Slightly Foxed Ltd, 53 Hoxton Square, London n1 6pb individual carey novels (by ronald welch)

The Road to Waterloo £14 £16 £16 £18 Slightly Foxed Member No. ______Name ______Tank Commander Captain of Dragoons Not a current subscriber? Why not join now to receive our discounted rates for books & goods? Ensign Carey For the King £16 £18 £18 £20 One-year Subscription: uk & eire £40; overseas £48 Nicholas Carey The Galleon per per per per 4 printed issues plus full digital archive, starting from Issue 57, Spring 2018 or Issue 58, Summer 2018 Captain of Foot The Hawk title title title title Escape from France Sun of York Subscription Bundle: uk & eire £94; overseas £114 *save £20 Mohawk Valley Bowman of Crécy (Set of 4 printed issues, Spring–Winter 2017 plus 4 printed issues throughout 2018, 2 slipcases and full digital archive)

Mixed set of any 3 Ronald Welch titles? Deduct £1 PER book. No thanks. I’d like to order books and goods at the non-subscriber prices -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ All books and goods may be gift-wrapped and sent with a hand-written card for £2.50 per item. sub total: ( ____ x ronald welch novels at £ _____ per title) £______bookplates item quan- sf subscriber non-subscriber gift tity prices prices wrap 3-WEEK LEAD-TIME FROM APPROVAL OF ARTWORK PROOF. Printed Plates x 250 £115 £120 £125 £130 uk & over- uk & over- slightly foxed editions & plain foxed editions £2.50 eire seas eire seas per item Printed Plates x 500 £150 £157 £160 £167 set of 20 available sf editions *save £1 per title £300 £340 £330 £370 Printed Plates x 1,000 £250 £260 £260 £270 set of 5 plain foxed editions *save £1 per title £75 £85 £85 £95 Howard Phipps: Water meadow Coombe Bissett Down Cranborne Chase A green lane Sue Scullard: Dashing fox Geese in a meadow March hare Barn owl (42) The Blue Field (1.6.18) (31) The House of Elrig (41) Something Wholesale (30) Silver Ley name(s) to be printed (block capitals please) (40) When I Was a Little Boy (29) Basil Street Blues ______(39) The Last Enemy (28) My Family & ... £16 £18 £17.50 £19.50 (38) The Cherry Tree (27) Marrying Out per per per per featured in slightly foxed 57 & from other publishers (37) Giving up the Ghost (26) Portrait of Elmbury title title title title (35) Sword of Bone (22) Country Boy Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (SF 57) £7.99 £9.99 £9.99 £11.99 (34) Brensham Village (21) The Real Mrs Min ... Brian Carter, A Black Fox Running £14.99 £16.99 £16.99 £18.99 (33) The Secret Orchard ... (20) My Grandfather & ... Miriam Darlington, Owl Sense £15.99 £17.99 £17.99 £19.99 (32) 84, Charing Cross Road (18) The Flame Trees of ... Jon Dunn, Orchid Summer £18.99 £20.99 £20.99 £22.99 My Grandmothers & I Terms & Conditions £16 £18 £17.50 £19.50 A Boy at the Hogarth Press Mr Tibbits’s Catholic per per per per Sebastian Faulks, The Fatal Englishman £10.99 £12.99 £12.99 £14.99 I Was a Stranger School title title title title Laura Freeman, The Reading Cure £16.99 £18.99 £20.99 £22.99 Mixed set of any 4/8/12/16/20/24 Slightly Foxed Editions Dorothy Hartley, Made in England £14 £16 £16 £18 or Plain Foxed Editions? Deduct £1 PER book. -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ Angela Huth, Not the Whole Story: A Memoir £20 £22 £22 £24 sub total: ( ____ x sf editions &/or plain foxed editions at £ _____ per title) £______Rudyard Kipling, Kim (SF 57) £8.99 £10.99 £10.99 £12.99 slightly foxed paperbacks Matthew Kneale, English Passengers (SF 57) £8.99 £10.99 £10.99 £12.99

total p.1 total p.2 £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ item quan- sf subscriber non-subscriber gift tity prices prices wrap slightly foxed cubs To order from this catalogue, please visit our website www.foxedquarterly.com, phone us BB, The Little Grey Men& Down the Bright Stream (Pair) £32 £36 £36 £40 (UK 020 7033 0258; Overseas +44 20 7033 0258) or return this order form with payment Set of all 14 Ronald Welch titles (RRP £250) £208 £236 £236 £264 details to us by post: Slightly Foxed Ltd, 53 Hoxton Square, London n1 6pb individual carey novels (by ronald welch)

The Young Ardizzone A Cab at the Door £11 £13 £12 £14 John Lewis-Stempel, The Wood: The Life & Times of Cockshutt... £14.99 £16.99 £16.99 £18.99 Corduroy Look Back With Love per per per per David Lodge, Writer’s Luck, A Memoir: 1976–1991 £25 £27 £27 £29 A House in Flanders Blue Remembered Hills title title title title A Late Beginner Hand-grenade Practice . . . Lucy Mangan, Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading £14.99 £16.99 £16.99 £18.99 Mixed set of any 4 Slightly Foxed Paperbacks? Blake Morrison, The Executor £16.99 £18.99 £10.99 £12.99 Deduct £1 PER book. -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ Fiona Sampson, In Search of Mary Shelley £18.99 £20.99 £20.99 £22.99 sub total: ( ____ x sf paperbacks at £ _____ per title) £______Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey: The Complete Short Stories £14.99 £16.99 £16.99 £18.99 total p.1 total p.2 £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ item quan- sf subscriber non-subscriber gift tity prices prices wrap foxed goods Small Notebook: duck-egg blue apple green charcoal grey maroon £12 £14 £14 £16 sub total: ( __ x small notebooks at £ ____ each) £____ Large Notebook: duck-egg blue apple green charcoal grey maroon £14.50 £16.50 £16.50 £18.50 sub total: ( __ x large notebooks at £ ____ each) £____ Foxed Canvas Tote Bag £8 £10 £9 £11 Foxed Jute Book Bag £5 £6.50 £7 £8.50 The Completely Foxed Collection*rrp £840 £600 £680 £700 £780 Slightly Foxed: Issues 1–56 in 14 slipcases Single Issues: All 57 issues of Slightly Foxed are in print: Mar 2004–2018. issue nos. £11 £13 £12 £14 each each each each

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Security code (3 or 4 digits) Name on card For Visa or Mastercard the security code is the last 3 digits at the top of your signature strip on the back of your card. For American Express, the 4 digit security code is on the front of your card, above your account number. 19 item quan- sf subscriber non-subscriber gift tity prices prices wrap Paperbacks continued foxed goods Small Notebook: duck-egg blue apple green Adrian Bell, Corduroy (Vol. i of Bell’s trilogy) charcoal grey maroon £12 £14 £14 £16 When Adrian Bell left London in 1920 to learn sub total: ( __ x small notebooks at £ ____ each) £____ agriculture on a Suffolk farm, like many townies he Large Notebook: duck-egg blue apple green assumed at first that the locals were somewhat simple. £14.50 £16.50 charcoal grey maroon £16.50 £18.50 But soon his own ignorance and inability to do the sub total: ( __ x large notebooks at £ ____ each) £____ most basic physical tasks taught him a new respect. Foxed Canvas Tote Bag £8 £10 £9 £11 He grew to love the land, and Corduroy is filled with Foxed Jute Book Bag £5 £6.50 £7 £8.50 precise and poetic descriptions of the countryside and The Completely Foxed Collection*rrp £840 £600 £680 £700 £780 Slightly Foxed: Issues 1–56 in 14 slipcases of farming life. Not merely a period piece, it captures Single Issues: All 57 issues of Slightly Foxed are in print: Mar 2004–2018. what is unchanging about the lives of those who live issue nos. £11 £13 £12 £14 from, rather than simply on, the land. (288 pages) each each each each Michael Jenkins, A House in Flanders

Mixed set of 4 issues (or multiples of 4)? Deduct £1 PER issue -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ -£_____ In 1951, a shy and solitary 14-year-old boy was sent by his parents to spend the summer sub total: ( ____ x sf issues at £ _____ per issue) £______with ‘the aunts in Flanders’. His account of those months in the dignified old French Slipcases for Slightly Foxed *1 holds 4 issues £10 £12 £12 £14 country house on the edge of the Flanders Plain has an idyllic, dream-like quality. Yet all Puns & Buns: Artychoke (Single card + envelope) £2.50 £3 £3.25 £3.75 was not as idyllic as at first it seemed. Gradually he teases out the history of the family and Puns & Buns: Conference Pears (Single card + envelope) £2.50 £3 £3.25 £3.75 of the surrounding area and finally uncovers the secret at the heart of the book – the reason Puns & Buns: Damson in Distress (Single card + envelope) £2.50 £3 £3.25 £3.75 he has been sent there. (216 pages) Puns & Buns: Tomatoes on the Wine (Single card + envelope) £2.50 £3 £3.25 £3.75 Puns & Buns Pack (2 of each + 8 envelopes) *savings from £9 £11 £12 £12 £13 V. S. Pritchett, A Cab at the Door total p.3 The writer V. S. Pritchett’s mother was an irrepressible cockney, his father a reckless, over- £_____ £_____ £_____ £____ optimistic peacock of a man, always embarking on new business ventures which inevitably gift wrap: ( ______x items at £2.50 each) £______nb 3+ items may come in a gift box crashed – hence the ‘cab at the door’ waiting to bear the family quietly away from yet another set of creditors. In this vigorous and original memoir Pritchett captures unforgettably the grand total £_____ £_____ £_____ £_____ smells, sounds and voices of London in the first decades of the twentieth century, and the billing address / delivery address (if different) cast of Dickensian characters among whom he grew up. (296 pages)

For gift messages & delivery instructions please do enclose a separate sheet Rosemary Sutcliff, Blue Remembered Hills payment One of Britain’s most distinguished children’s writers tells the story of her own childhood Do we have your debit or credit card stored on file? If so please check this box to charge that card in this vivid and touching memoir. Permanently disabled by juvenile arthritis, she grew up We never share your contact details with a third party & your card details will be more than usually sensitive to her surroundings – the naval dockyards at Chatham where shredded after processing, unless you expressly ask us to keep them by checking this box her father worked and the beautiful Devon countryside where she and her parents went to I enclose a sterling cheque made payable to Slightly Foxed Ltd or Please charge my Visa/Mastercard/Amex live when he retired. After art school and the heartbreak of a failed love affair she finally found her vocation in writing novels that would bring the past vividly alive for generations Card No. Expiry (MM/YY) / of children. Her own story is full of humour, affection and joy. 208( pages) Security code (3 or 4 digits) Name on card ‘Pocket-sized pieces of perfection’ – Erik Heywood BOOK/SHOP For Visa or Mastercard the security code is the last 3 digits at the top of your signature strip on the back of your card. For American Express, the 4 digit security code is on the front of your card, above your account number. 19 slightly foxed cubs Slightly Foxed Cubs is a series of reissues of classic children’s books which will, we feel, strike a nostalgic chord with many older readers and introduce a younger generation to writers whose marvellous books have, unaccountably, been allowed to slip out of print. Elegantly designed and handsomely bound, the Cubs are not only great reads but also distinguished additions to any bookshelf, and eminently collectable. the bb books

SF Subscriber Price: UK & Eire £32; Overseas £36 a pair Non-Subscriber Price: UK & Eire £36; Overseas £40 a pair

Denys Watkins-Pitchford (1905–90), who wrote under the pseudonym ‘BB’, was the author of more than sixty books for adults and children, but The Little Grey Men and its sequel Down the Bright Stream are his masterpieces. BB was both a writer and an illustrator, and his charming original illustrations decorate these books. But above all he was a countryman, whose intimate and unsentimental knowledge of animals, birds and plants, as well as his gifts as a storyteller, make these books unique. The Little Grey Men The last gnomes in England – Dodder, Baldmoney, Sneezewort and Cloudberry – are living contentedly in a burrow beneath the roots of an aged oak tree on the banks of the Folly Brook. Contentedly, that is, until Cloudberry becomes obsessed with the idea of exploring the world beyond the riverbank and sets off alone. Two years later he has not returned and Baldmoney and Sneezewort decide they must look for him. But Dodder refuses to go with them, and so with heavy hearts the two gnomes set off upstream, leaving him behind. So begins a heroic quest to find their missing brother. Before the gnomes are finally reunited they confront shipwreck, starvation and their worst enemy – Man. (224 pages) Down the Bright Stream The last gnomes are woken from a long winter sleep in their snug burrow, to find their world collapsing. The Folly Brook, beside which they have lived for five hundred years, and on which they and their animal friends depend, is being diverted to supply water for a new reservoir and is drying up. Man is beginning to destroy the idyllic

20 English countryside.The gnomes set out once again on the Folly in search of a new home, sailing downstream towards the big river and the sea. It’s a perilous journey and before it is done the Jeanie Deans will have been sunk and one of them will have come to a nasty end. Will the remaining gnomes finally find an unspoilt home? (200 pages)

the ronald welch novels

Fast-paced and colourful, Ronald Welch’s novels join up the dots of English history in a remarkably vivid and human way. The plots are gripping, the characters believable and the research meticulous.

SF Subscriber Price: From UK & Eire £14; Overseas £16 Non-Subscriber Price: From UK & Eire £16; Overseas £18 Also available in a full set for a discounted rate. See order form for details.

the hundred the wars of the crusades >> >> >> years’ war the roses >> >>

Knight Crusader Sun of York Young Philip Set during the final years d’Aubigny, son of a of the Wars of the Roses, rich Crusader family Sun of York tells the who have stayed on in story of Owen Lloyd, a the Holy Land after young and impoverished the First Crusade, aristocrat who is finds himself caught determined to reverse the up in the fight against >> family’s fortunes. Owen Saladin, during Bowman of Crécy distinguishes himself in which he is captured battle and contributes to This is the real story of one of Edward and encounters the the victory of the Yorkist III’s campaigns. Sir John Carey is on legendary Emir King Edward IV. This is his way to the wars in France when his himself. Finally, in a a brilliant coming-of-age life is saved by an unlikely hero, Hugh series of hair-raising novel which fits perfectly Fletcher, head of a band of outlaws. Sir adventures, he escapes into the Carey series. John adopts Hugh and his men as part to take possession of (232 pages) of his army and they follow him to the family’s Welsh France, where their courage and skill as estate. (256 pages) longbowmen are crucial in the defeat *Only available as of the French at the Battle of Crécy. part of a set of all (192 pages) 14 novels 20 the battle >> elizabeth 1 >> the english civil war >> of blenheim >> >>

The Hawk Captain of Harry is a young Dragoons naval officer Charles Carey aboard one of his is a Captain in father, the Earl of the Duke of Aubigny’s merchant Marlborough’s ships running army – a between London moody, quick- and Santander tempered and during the reign of charismatic Queen Elizabeth. figure who is Relations with also a brilliant Spain are tense and swordsman. Harry finds himself Having called on to save the >> discovered ship from seizure >> that there is a by the Spanish The Galleon For the King traitor in the authorities, and to After killing a man It’s 1642 and the camp, Charles help scupper a in a duel, penniless country is riven by is sent to spy plot to assassinate Carey cousin Robert civil war. Home- in France on the Queen. Penderyn escapes loving Neil Carey a mission that (224 pages) reprisal by joining his reluctantly sets out ends with his uncle’s merchant ship from the family’s imprisonment sailing for Santander. Welsh estate to fight in the Bastille. England and Spain on the Royalist side in But he escapes are engaged in a trade the regiment his father in time to war, and the English has raised. Sensitive take part in never know when they and small in stature, Marlborough’s will fall foul of the Neil has always lived decisive victory port authorities or the in his older brother’s at Blenheim. Inquisition. Returning shadow, but he acquits (224 pages) after months in a himself courageously Spanish prison Robert in battle, and when becomes involved in he is captured by foiling a Catholic plot the Roundheads at to put Mary Queen of Marston Moor, his life Scots on the English is saved by his own throne. (192 pages) honesty. (224 pages)

22 23 the peninsular the waterloo >> the seven years’ war >> revolutionary france >> >> >> war campaign >> >> >>

Mohawk Valley Escape from France Captain of Foot In 1755 Alan Carey With news of the Young Christopher Carey is serving is sent to the colony revolution in France, as a Lieutenant in the 43rd Light of New York by his the Careys are anxious Infantry – part of the famous Light father the Earl to about the fate of their Brigade – under Wellington. Chris look into his estates relatives, the aristocratic takes part in the retreat to Corunna in Mohawk Valley. d’Assailly family. Young with Sir John Moore, fights in It’s a life-changing Richard Carey, still a the major battles of Vimiero and experience. Alan Cambridge student but Busaco, is captured by the French, grows in moral already an outstanding escapes and falls in with Spanish stature as he deals swordsman, is sent guerrillas, and ends up as a Captain, with a dishonest secretly by his father having been noticed by Wellington bailiff, learns the Lord Aubigny on a himself. (224 pages) ways of the forest, mercy mission to bring overcomes hostile them back to England. Indians and renders When he arrives at their invaluable service château in Normandy to General Wolfe Richard finds that the

during the capture Marquis has already >> of Quebec. been arrested and he (224 pages) and his cousin Armand New! set out for Paris with a ronald welch original a bold plan to spring The Road to Waterloo him from the Abbaye prison. A complex tale The manuscript ofThe Road to Waterloo of daring and disguise. lay unread among Ronald Welch’s (192 pages) papers for more than 30 years after his death and has now been published, with specially commissioned illustrations, for the first time. It’s a thrilling picture of the build-up to Wellington’s victory at Waterloo and of a great army preparing for battle, and it has all the inimitable Welch ingredients – a young hero who grows up during the course of the book, entirely believable characters and a fast-paced plot brought alive by vivid historical detail. (88 pages)

22 23 the crimean war >> the indian mutiny >> the first world war >> >>

Nicholas Carey Ensign Carey On holiday in In the seedy and dangerous Italy, Captain mid-nineteenth century London Nicholas Carey underworld, William Carey has is persuaded by a frightening encounter with his impulsive George Hampton, a violent and cousin to help unprincipled young man on the three Italian make. Banished from Cambridge revolutionaries as a result, in 1856 William avoid capture travels to India, where his father and escape the has obtained a commission for Papal States. him in the 84th Bengal Native After returning to Infantry, and his path again England, Nicholas crosses that of Hampton. runs his cousin William is no saint, but when the to earth in Paris, Indian Mutiny breaks out among where he is still the native troops, he acts with involved with the generosity and courage. revolutionaries, (200 pages)

and the two foil >> an assassination Tank Commander attempt on In the summer of 1914 the Germans enter Belgium and Britain Napoleon III. mobilizes for war. Second Lieutenant John Carey, with his regiment Nicholas then the West Glamorgans, exchanges his comfortable quarters at rejoins his Tidworth for the mud and bloodshed of the trenches. As the death regiment and is toll mounts, John is called on to take responsibility far beyond his sent to fight the rank and experience in what often seems a hopeless situation. But Russians with with the introduction of a revolutionary new weapon – the tank – Lord Raglan’s the tide begins to turn. (232 pages) army, where he distinguishes himself in the Battles of Sebastopol and The Redan. (224 pages)

24 personalized book plates

Most Slightly Foxed readers, we suspect, have some irritating gaps on their bookshelves left by favourite titles lent and never returned. A personal bookplate is an elegant and practical way of solving the problem. The bookplates are printed on fine Italian Fabriano acid-free paper, and there are eight charming engraved scenes to choose from, with a space on which the owner’s name will be printed. The printed bookplates can take up to 3 weeks to receive (from approval of artwork) so please do order in good time for any special occasion. They come beautifully packaged in a special box and can be sent to you or a gift recipient, or to the SF office to be gift-wrapped and sent on with a gift card.

250 plates: From UK & Eire £115; Overseas £120 inc. p&p 500 plates: From UK & Eire £150; Overseas £157 inc. p&p 1,000 plates: From UK & Eire £250; Overseas £260 inc. p&p

1. • Dotted border shows actual size: 110 x 80mm

• The name can be printed on 1 or 2 lines

• You will be sent a proof for approval before production

• 3-week lead-time • The bookplates are not gummed and will last for years, making them an ideal christening, gradua- tion or wedding present. They should be stored somewhere dry and affixed with a Pritt-stick ex libris or the equivalent Elizabeth Kaye Please see overleaf for the full range of engravings 24 1. Howard Phipps, Water meadow through a garden doorway (previous page) 2. Howard Phipps, Coombe Bissett Down 3. Sue Scullard, Dashing fox 4. 4. Sue Scullard, Barn owl 5. Howard Phipps, A green lane, Exmoor 6. Sue Scullard, Geese in a meadow 7. Howard Phipps, Cranborne Chase 8. Sue Scullard, March hare 2.

26 27 7. 8.

from other publishers

Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (In SF 57) translated by nobuyuki yuasa • penguin • paperback • 176 pages • from £7.99 In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. He wrote of the changing season, the smell of the rain, the brightness of the moon, and the beauty of the waterfall, through which he senses the mysteries of the universe.

Rudyard Kipling, Kim (In SF 57) penguin • paperback • 432 pages • from £8.99 Reared in the teeming streets of India at the turn of the century, Kimball O’Hara – a 13-year-old orphan living in Lahore – is the eponymous hero of Kipling’s masterpiece. One day Kim befriends a Tibetan lama and, looking for adventure and new experiences, becomes his disciple. Together they go on a quest: the lama is searching for the legendary Sacred River of Healing while Kim is charged with delivering a parcel to one Colonel Creighton in Umballa, unwittingly involving himself in the Great Game.

Matthew Kneale, English Passengers (In SF 57) penguin • paperback • 480 pages • from £8.99 With a rich historical sweep and a host of narrative voices, this ambitious novel tells the story of a voyage to look for the Garden of Eden in Tasmania and the rapid decline of that island’s indigenous population of Aborigines.

Brian Carter, A Black Fox Running bloomsbury • hardback • 400 pages • from £14.99 A beautiful lost classic of nature writing which sits alongside Tarka the Otter and Watership Down, this is the story of Wulfgar, the dark-furred fox of Dartmoor, and of his nemesis, 26 27 Scoble the trapper, in the seasons leading up to the pitiless winter of 1947. As lyrical in its descriptions of the natural world as it is perceptive its portrayal of damaged humanity, it is both a portrait of place and a gripping story of survival.

Miriam Darlington, Owl Sense guardian faber • hardback • 352 pages • from £15.99 Miriam Darlington sets out to tell a new story of the night hunter that has captivated the human imagination for millennia. Her fieldwork begins with wild encounters in the British Isles, on the owl walks she takes with her son Benji. From here, she seeks to identify every European species of owl on a journey that will take her from southern Spain through France, Serbia and Finland, and to the frosted borders of the Arctic. Along the way, Benji succumbs to a mysterious illness, and her quest soon becomes entangled with the search for his cure. In her watching and deep listening to owls, Darlington separates myth from reality and brings the strangeness and magnificence of these creatures to life.

Laura Freeman, The Reading Cure weidenfeld & nicolson • hardback • 272 pages • from £16.99 At the age of fourteen, Laura Freeman was diagnosed with anorexia. But even at her lowest point, the one appetite she never lost was her love of reading. Plum puddings and pottles of fruit in Dickens gave her courage to try new dishes; the wounded Robert Graves’ appreciation of a pair of greengages changed the way she thought about plenty and choice; Virginia Woolf’s painterly descriptions of bread, blackberries and biscuits were infinitely tempting. Book by book, meal by meal, Laura developed an appetite and discovered an entire library of reasons to live.

Dorothy Hartley, Made in England little toller • paperback • from £14 First published in 1939, Made in England is a book about the people and crafts of the cottage industries of England, written by the acclaimed social historian Dorothy Hartley. It’s a portrait not only of the rural industries – whether wood-working or stonework, weaving or pottery, but also of the people engaged in these occupations. Each chapter covers a specific skill, and is illustrated with Hartley’s own photographs and charming, accurate pen-and-ink drawings. (Published 5 April) 28 29 John Lewis-Stempel, The Wood: The Life & Times of Cockshutt Wood doubleday • hardback • 304 pages • from £14.99 For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed Cockshutt Wood. He coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it from the bottom of its beech roots to the tip of its oaks, and to know all the animals that lived there – the fox, the pheasants, the wood mice, the tawny owl – and where the best bluebells grew. Lyrical, informative, steeped in poetry and folklore, to read The Wood is to be among its trees as the seasons change.

Jon Dunn, Orchid Summer Bloomsbury • Hardback • 384 pages • from £18.99 A heady celebration of the beauty and history of the wild orchid species of the British Isles, embraced in one glorious summer-long hunt by naturalist Jon Dunn. From the chalk downs of the south coast of England to the heathery moorland of the Shetland Isles, and from the holy island of Lindisfarne in the east to the Atlantic frontier of western Ireland, Orchid Summer is a journey into Britain and Ireland’s most beautiful corners.

Lucy Mangan, Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading square peg • hardback • 336 pages • from £14.99 As a child, Lucy Mangan was whisked away to Narnia, Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows, into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy, and played by the tracks with the Railway Children. No wonder she only left the house for her weekly trip to the library or to spend her pocket money on amassing her own library at home. In Bookworm she relives beloved books, and looks at the subtle ways they shape our lives.

Angela Huth, Not the Whole Story: A Memoir constable • hardback • 320 pages • from £20 At the age of five Angela Huth decided she would become a writer. Hers was an idiosyncratic childhood. Her parents were known to be a highly glamorous couple: Harold was a famous actor and film director who possessed legendary charm; Bridget was known for her lively sense of humour, fluency in foreign languages and her penchant for giving memorable parties. After her education ended prematurely – Bridget didn’t believe in university for women – Angela went from reluctant débutante to professional writer, switching from journalism to short stories, novels, plays for television and the stage. 28 29 Fiona Sampson, In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein profile • hardback • 320 pages • from £18.99 Fiona Sampson sifts through letters, diaries and records to find the real woman behind the well-known life story of Mary Shelley. She uncovers a complex, generous character – friend, intellectual, lover and mother – trying to fulfil her own passionate commitment to writing at a time when to be a woman writer was an extraordinary and costly anomaly.

David Lodge, Writer’s Luck, A Memoir: 1976–1991 harvill secker • hardback • 400 pages • from £25 David Lodge’s frank and illuminating memoir about the years where he found great success as a novelist and critic. In 1976 Lodge was pursuing a ‘twin-track career’ as novelist and academic. As a literary critic, he made serious contributions to the subject, before carnivalizing it in his comic-satiric novel Small World. The balancing act between his two professions was increasingly difficult to maintain, and he became a full-time writer just before he published his bestselling novel Nice Work.

Blake Morrison, The Executor chatto & windus • hardback • 336 pages • from £16.99 An elegant and unsettling novel about a man who becomes the literary executor of a friend’s estate, and the moral dilemmas he faces when he uncovers some previously unpublished, and potentially explosive, material. The Executor innovatively interweaves poetry and prose to form a gripping literary detective story.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey: The Complete Short Stories hodder • paperback • 448 pages • from £14.99 Presented in chronological order, these short stories see the inimitable Golden Age detective Lord Peter Wimsey bringing his trademark wit and unique detection skills to all manner of mysteries. From poisoned port to murder in fancy dress, Wimsey draws on his expertise to solve cases far and wide.

Sebastian Faulks, The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives vintage • paperback • 352 pages • from £10.99 In his first work of nonfiction, Sebastian Faulks explores the lives of three remarkable men: airman Richard Hillary, artist Christopher Wood and spy Jeremy Wolfenden. Each had the seeds of greatness; each was a beacon to his generation and left something of value behind; yet each one died tragically young.

30 31 foxed goods notebooks small (170 x 110mm): from £12 large (216 x 150mm): from £14.50 Our popular cloth-bound hardback notebooks come with unruled pages, in two sizes, and four colours. See order form or website for details.

canvas tote bag from £8 Made from attractive natural cream canvas with a duck-egg blue trim, our tote bag is exceptionally strong but also light.

jute book bag from £5 Our classic book bag is big enough to hold at least 5 or 6 books and leave plenty of room for all those other small but vital items.

single issues from £10 TheSlightly Foxed archive is a treasure chest – over a decade’s worth of entertaining and original reading recommendations, good humour and good writing. Issues 1–57 (spring 2004–2018) all available.

slipcases from £10 Our elegant slipcases are sturdily bound in a dark grey cloth. Each holds four issues of SF.

completely foxed from £600 *rrp £840* The ultimate present for a bibliophile, or for oneself. Invest in a full set of Slightly Foxed issues 1–56, 2004–2017 and we’ll send you fourteen free slipcases to keep them in. puns & buns greetings cards single cards from £2.50 • mixed pack of 8 from £11 Our range of cards in collaboration with the baker and illustrator Letitia Clark. Blank inside • 148 x 105mm • Envelopes included • Damson in Distress; Tomatoes on the Wine; Artychoke; Conference Pears or a mixed pack.

30 31 Slightly Foxed Ltd 53 Hoxton Square, London N1 6PB

Online shop: www.foxedquarterly.com Telephone order line: +44 (0) 20 7033 0258 Monday–Friday, 9.30 a.m.–5.30 p.m. gmt readers’catalogue • spring 2018