The Hosking Houses Trust is seeking to appoint a writer for its twelfth arts residency. The appointment is for a minimum of two months and a maximum of one year and applications are now invited. Please see the Hosking Houses Trust’s website for further details.
Well we’re slowly getting back to real life following the Christmas break although things have been rather hampered by the weather. Those of us in London have been slipping and sliding to work and with Gail holed up on Dartmoor, Steph snowed in in Hampshire with no power and Hazel hunkering down in icy Highbury we’re a rather far-flung (but still cheery!) team.
In weather like this, there’s nothing quite like SF to curl up with and we recommend you do so, in a comfy chair in front of a fire if possible. Or if you’ve already devoured the latest issue, there’s our new Slightly Foxed Edition, James Lees-Milne’s Another Self to keep you occupied.
And finally, here’s another small but very nice mention of our bookshop in the Times.
A gift subscription to Slightly Foxed is (according to the Daily Telegraph’s ultimate gift guide 2009) one of the top ten gifts ‘for him’! We think a subscription to SF makes a great gift for any book lover really but we’re very pleased to be mentioned.
Well, the party season is upon us and Christmas is fast approaching. We’ve had our first Christmas card (from a subscriber!) and spent a delightful evening with local subscribers at The Old Harlotry in Canterbury to launch our Winter issue.
Now it’s no more parties for the time being and all hands to the deck to get gift-wrapped copies of the Winter issue, books and back issues off in time for Christmas. We’ve got quite a production line of ribbon-tying, parcel-wrapping, card-writing, envelope-stuffing and posting (not to mention dog-walking and tea-making) on the go.
We’re also having fun planning the shop’s New Year facelift and have been thrilled to hear nice things about both the shop and SF from the literary world.
Maggie Fergusson drops in on 84 Charing Cross Road • Quentin Blake and Travis Elborough celebrate the fox • Oliver Pritchett recites rude rhymes in the bath • Grant McIntyre recalls another self • Roger Hudson cherishes Mr Pepys • Michael Barber returns to the murky world of Eric Ambler • Andrew Lycett reads a double life • Sue Gee visits a little house at the edge of the wood
We’re thrilled to have Quentin Blake as our Winter 2009 cover artist.
Sighs of relief at SF Towers this morning as we heard the news that the Royal Mail won’t be striking again before Christmas. We were even more cheered when Brian (our man with a van) arrived from the printers with our Winter leaflets and new stationery for the bookshop. We’re already looking forward to Brian’s next visit in a couple of weeks’ time when the new Slightly Foxed Edition, James Lees-Milne’s Another Self, is due to be delivered. If you’d like to order your copy now, we’ll dispatch it to you as soon as stock arrives.
James Lees-Milne, writer and architectural historian, is probably best remembered for his mischievously perceptive diaries, which chronicled the doings of upper-class English society from the Second World War onwards in twelve addictive volumes. Another Self, his fanciful, funny, yet poignant account of his early years, has the same gripping quality.
A deeply religious child, Jim spent much of his boyhood wandering dreamily in the grounds of his parents’ medieval manor house in Wickhamford, Worcestershire. It gave him a nostalgia for the past and a love of historic buildings which would lead to his later distinguished career with the National Trust.
His father, however, had no time whatsoever for such arty attitudes. He determined that, after leaving Eton in 1926, Jim should ‘stand on his own feet’ and accordingly enrolled him in Miss Blakeney’s Stenography School for Young Ladies in Chelsea where, as the only male student, he spent a lonely year learning shorthand and typing. Thanks to his mother he escaped to Oxford (a disappointment) and thence to London, where he had another searing experience as assistant to Sir Roderick Jones, the boorish and dyspeptic chairman of Reuters. Droll, shy and sexually ambivalent, Lees-Milne wrote that he ‘always felt an outsider in every circle’. It was this, combined with his eye for detail and highly developed sense of the ridiculous, that made him such a wonderful comic writer. John Betjeman compared the impact of Another Self to that of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall.
The bookshop is looking very cheerful indeed and although it won’t be fully ‘foxed’ until the New Year it’s already looking more SF (thanks to the efforts of Tony, Aimi, Jane and David) with some excellent new stock, a furniture shuffle and a charming new (old) shop bell. Do pop in if you’re in the area, you’ll be warmly received.
We’ve also had another piece of good news this month - a mention of Slightly Foxed in The Times– albeit a small one!
Slightly Foxed at the Gloucester Road Bookshop
This month we’ve celebrated our sixth successful year by taking over the Gloucester Road Bookshop at 123 Gloucester Road, South Kensington.
For several decades this second-hand bookshop – previously owned and run by Graham Greene’s nephew Nick Dennys and in a great position within a hundred yards or so of Gloucester Road tube station – has been a popular stopping-off point for booklovers. For Slightly Foxed, running this cosy and welcoming shop is a natural extension of what we already do – broadening people’s horizons by introducing them to interesting books that have stood the test of time, many of which are now out of print.
The shop stocks an eclectic but carefully chosen range of old books, a selection of new books and classic reprints from interesting small publishers, and a range of unusual artists’ cards. It also provides a showcase for Slightly Foxed and for its successful limited-edition pocket hardback series Slightly Foxed Editions.
Run by manager Tony Smith and his friendly, well-informed staff, the bookshop is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays, and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
The Gloucester Road Bookshop
123 Gloucester Road
South Kensington
London SW7 4TE
(3 minutes’ walk from Gloucester Road tube station
on the Circle, Piccadilly and District lines)
tel: 020 7370 3503 • e-mail: enquiries@foxedbooks.com
www.foxedbooks.com
The relative calm of August is over, the rain has returned (did it ever go away?) and the office is full to bursting with copies of the Autumn issue of Slightly Foxed and the latest Slightly Foxed Edition, Michael Wharton’s The Missing Will. Its author was better known as Peter Simple, whose satirical ‘Way of the World’ column in the Daily Telegraph featured such deathless creations as Julian Birdbath, the unsuccessful writer, the psychoanalyst Dr Heinz Kiosk, and Dr Spacely-Trellis, the go-ahead Bishop of Bevindon. This first, absurdly entertaining volume of autobiography describes his early years in Bradford and the path that finally led him, via a lamentable Oxford career, army service in India and years adrift in post-war bohemia, to Fleet Street.
We’re furiously stuffing books into envelopes and filling postbags to get copies off to waiting subscribers, and Chudleigh the office dog is adding to the chaos by raiding the waste-paper bin and stealing whatever he can lay his paws on. Thankfully he seems to know that books are off limits!
Here he is in a rare quiet moment.
Chudleigh the Office Dog
