Slightly Foxed

In this twentieth-century story of a quest for beauty, the writer Laura Freeman introduces us to Jim Ede, a man who, in creating Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, changed the way we look at art. We follow Jim from the trenches of the First World War to Lady Ottoline Morrell’s literary parties in Bloomsbury and a curating job at the Tate. He collected artworks by his friends Ben Nicholson and David Jones, acquired the estate of the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and designed a house in Tangiers that became a sanctuary for soldiers. These were stepping stones towards Jim turning derelict slum cottages into a home and gallery, a space for both tea and tours. And, as ever, we share recommendations for reading off the beaten track.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 45 minutes; 18 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.

A Way of Life: Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede is available from the Kettle’s Yard shop

Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale, Miranda Seymour is published in a Faber Finds edition. Second-hand copies are available. (12:59)

Savage Messiah: A Biography of the Sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, H. S. (Jim) Ede is available from the Kettle’s Yard shop

David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet, Thomas Dilworth (19:40)

Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert (37:55)

Lady into Fox, David Garnett (38:53) 

Indelicacy, Amina Cain (40:26)

Transient Desires, Donna Leon (42:15)

Living Art, Mark Haworth-Booth on A Way of Life: Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede, Issue 42 (28:00)Other Links

Kettle’s Yard House and Galleries, Cambridge

Tangier Days: the Edes in Morocco, 1936-52 (22.29)

Bookshop.org (2:16)

Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge (33:50)

With thanks to Kettle’s Yard and Paul Allitt for the photo used for this episode’s cover artwork.

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

The artist Barrie Cooke had fishing in common with Ted Hughes, and mud and art in common with Seamus Heaney. Dr Mark Wormald, a scholar on the life and writings of Ted Hughes, has brought to light an extraordinary haul of poems, letters and drawings documenting a decades-long triangular friendship and a shared love of poetry and nature. He describes the spine-tingling discovery of Barrie’s cardboard box stuffed with correspondence and traces its history, starting with the first supper at Barrie’s Kilkenny home, and then at Jerpoint, also on the River Nore, where the trio forged their friendship, Seamus began Station Island and a poet’s haven flourished. From Ted’s dream of a burning fox man, climbing into Carrowkeel passage tombs and visits from Robert Lowell and Tom Paulin to fishing diaries, pike spoons and a stuffed trout, subsurface treasures are dredged up as our literary sifting takes us off the beaten track.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 46 minutes; 20 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.

River, Ted Hughes (6:46)

Lupercal, Ted Hughes (12:56) 

Station Island, Seamus Heaney (14:34) 

On Seamus Heaney, R. F. Foster (15:09) 

Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes (20:13) 

Crow, Ted Hughes (20:42) 

Opened Ground, Seamus Heaney (25:15) 

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes, Janet Malcolm (39:50) 

A Celtic Miscellany, selected and translated by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (41:38) 

The Mission House, Carys Davies (43:12) 

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark (45:48)

Through the Looking Glass, Jane Feaver on life at Faber and Faber, Issue 55

Barrie Cooke’s portrait of Ted Hughes, National Portrait Gallery (5:50)

Kilkenney Arts Week (33:47)

Keats-Shelley House, Rome (37:34)

The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2020 (45:48)

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

Daisy Dunn, historian and biographer of Catullus and Pliny, sets our scene in ancient Rome and Greece, entertaining the Slightly Foxed team with literature of love and war, satire and myth, and amplifying echoes of the classics through the ages. We begin with Homer’s monsters and memorials of fallen men, then take a tour of the ancient world, from Catullus’ erotic poetry and Lysistrata’s sex strike to the eruption of Vesuvius and Suetonius’ lives of extraordinary emperors. In a more contemporary turn, F. Scott Fitzgerald borrows Gatsby from the Satyricon, and Mary Renault writes historical novels and lovers’ names in wine. And there’s the usual round-up of recommended reading from off the beaten track.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 39 minutes; 54 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.

Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn

In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny, Daisy Dunn

The Odyssey, Homer, translated by Emily Wilson (7:57)

The Iliad, Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu (8:08)

Homer on Life and Death, Jasper Griffin is out of print (9:02)

The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker (11:01)

Memorial, Alice Oswald (11:42)

The Last of the Wine, Mary Renault (16:37)

The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves (19:07)

I, Claudius, Robert Graves (21:00) 

Pompei, Robert Harris (22:15) 

The Satyricon, Petronius, translated by P. G. Walsh (23:48)

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (24:47)

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman and post-Roman novels, Slightly Foxed Cubs (28:19)

Candide, Voltaire (34:26)

When the Lights Go Out, Carys Bray (35:27) 

The Diary of a Provincial Lady, E. M. Delafield (37:03) 

The Emperor’s Babe, Bernadine Evaristo (37:40)

How Homer Taught Me to Read, Adrian Thorpe on Homer, Odyssey and Iliad, Issue 30

Hadrian to the Life, Caroline Chapman on Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian, Issue 2 (21:42)

Scaling Gibbon’s Everest, Richard Crockatt on Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Issue 68

Travels with the Father of History, Justin Marozzi on Herodotus, Histories, Issue 20

Brave Old World, Lawrence Sail on Voltaire, Candide, Issue 10 (34:26)

The Greek Play, Cambridge (28:27)

Gladstone’s Library (31:37)

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

Anthony Wells worked at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London for a decade. In this episode he leads the Slightly Foxed editors into the history of the library, which holds one of the most extensive archives on the Holocaust and the Nazi era. We travel to Germany, Amsterdam, New York and Tel Aviv, but it is people rather than places that the library remembers with its annals of personal stories. Dr Alfred Wiener, a German Jew who fought in the First World War, was one of the first to note the rise of the Nazi Party, and he began to assemble an archive of information in order to undermine their activities. From downfall by documentation in the Nuremberg Trial to a tracing service made up of millions of records, we learn how The Wiener Library ensures that those who disappeared are not forgotten.

With thanks to The Wiener Library for the image used for this episode’s cover artwork: Member of staff, Mrs Walter at The Wiener Library in 1952

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 37 minutes; 6 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.

The Ratline, Philippe Sands (11:39)

An Englishman in Auschwitz, Leon Greenman is out of print (14:25)

Dinner of Herbs: Village Life in 1960s Turkey, Carla Grissmann (28:00)

Hope against Hope, Nadezhda Mandelstam (29:42)

Defying Hitler, Sebastian Haffner (31:04)

An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris (33:53)

Comfortable Words, Anthony Wells on the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Issue 36

174517, David Spiller on Primo Levi, If This Is a Man and The Truce, Issue 43

The Hunt for Hitler, Adam Sisman on Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, Issue 61

One Tree Books, Petersfield (23:52)

The Petersfield Bookshop (24:45)

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

In this seasonal episode, the Slightly Foxed team are guided through a snowstorm of winter writing over twelve centuries by the literary critic and author of Weatherland, Alexandra Harris. The tour takes us from Anglo-Saxon mead halls and monsters to Renaissance bodily humours, then on through cool, translucent Enlightenment weather into the dark cloud of the nineteenth century and beyond. We visit frost-fair carnivals on the frozen Thames with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, brave the Brontës’ wild moorland, stay steamed up indoors with Jane Austen, sink into Dickens’s pea-soupers and see in the ‘year’s midnight’ with John Donne as we listen to a winter’s tale through literature.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 43 minutes; 19 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. 

‘A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day’, John Donne (5:02)

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (12:07)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Simon Armitage’s revised edition (13:54)

The Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare (17:08)

The Great Frost: Cold Doings in London, Thomas Dekker is out of print (19:36)

The Diary of John Evelyn (20:41)

The Seasons, James Thomson (22:00)

The Task, William Cowper is out of print. Read an extract from Book I: The Sofa (22:52)

‘Ode to the West Wind’, Percy Bysshe Shelley (26:16)

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (27:48)

Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (29:27)

Bleak House, Charles Dickens (33:14)

Letters from Iceland, W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice (36:53)

Winter, Ali Smith (38:20) 9780241973332

Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee, Slightly Foxed Edition No. 53 (41:19)

Cain’s Clan, John Harrison on Beowulf, Issue 13 (12:07)

Keeping Ahead of the Game, Christopher Rush on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Issue 60 (13:54)

The Abyss Beyond the Orchard, Alexandra Harris on William Cowper, The Centenary Letters, Issue 53 (22:50)

No Coward Soul, Christopher Rush on Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Issue 56 (27:48)

A Dickens of a Project, Laura Freeman on the works of Charles Dickens, Issue 41 (39:13)

The London Library (2:18) Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

The Scottish nature writer Jim Crumley takes the Slightly Foxed team on a tour of literary landscapes, from the lochs of the Trossachs and the mountainous Cairngorms to Aldo Leopold’s sand county in Wisconsin and Barry Lopez’s Arctic. Together they trace the chain of writers who have influenced Jim, from Robert Burns and Wordsworth to Thoreau and Walt Whitman, and see nature through the eyes of his hero, the great Scottish naturalist and photographer Seton Gordon. They discuss how folklore has demonized the wolf while Jim believes its reintroduction could hugely benefit the ecology of the Scottish landscape. And finally they venture off the beaten track with this month’s wide-ranging reading recommendations.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 40 minutes; 24 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. 

An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, Roger Hudson (1:14)

A Boy at the Hogarth Press & A Parcel of Time, Richard Kennedy (6:40)

The Cairngorm Hills of Scotland, The Charm of Skye and Amid Snowy Wastes, Seton Gordon are out print, but some Seton Gordon titles are available from Trieste Publishing (14:11)

A High and Lonely Place, Jim Crumley (15:49)

A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold (18:14)

Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez (18:43)

The Last Wolf, Jim Crumley (22:54)

Highland River, Neil Gunn is currently out of stock at the publisher (31:07)

Featherhood, Charlie Gilmour (33:28)

The Silver Dark Sea, Susan Fletcher (35:13)

A Month in Siena, Hisham Matar (36:12)

The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley (38:00)

Word from the Wood, Galen O’Hanlon on A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, Issue 54 (18:14)

Northern Lights, Penelope Lively on Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez, Issue 4 (18:43)

An Englishmans’ Commonplace Book ‘launch party’ at John Sandoe Books (1:19)

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

Dr Felicity James, author of Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth: Reading Friendship in the 1790s and current custodian of Charles’s writing chair, introduces the Slightly Foxed editors to siblings at the heart of a literary circle. In their Tales from Shakespeare, gentle-hearted drunken-dog Charles wrote the tragedies and Mary, often chided for laughing, the comedies, and together they penned letters using different coloured inks. From a murder in the home and time in private asylums to conversations with Coleridge at the pub, dissertations on roast pig and salons in their London lodgings, we explore the lives of the Lambs and their friendships through books.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 43 minutes; 43 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. 

An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, Roger Hudson (2:03)

Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Wordsworth: Reading Friendship in the 1790s, Felicity James is out of print (2:44)

Tales from Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb (14:33)

Mrs Leicester’s School and Poetry for Children, Charles and Mary Lamb are out of print (14:44)

Essays of Elia, Charles Lamb is out of print (16:46)

A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb, Sarah Burton is out of print

The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel (39:12)

Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss (41:00)

Streets, Streets, Streets, Felicity James on the letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, Issue 65

A Delight in Digression, David Spiller on Essays of Elia, Issue 64 (16:46)

The Charles Lamb Society (36:28) 

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

The food writer and chef Olivia Potts joins the Slightly Foxed editors for a literary banquet. Olivia was a barrister for five years before enrolling at Le Cordon Bleu, becoming a cookery columnist on The Spectator and writing A Half Baked Idea, a memoir with recipes. From finding consolation in cooking and precision in pâtisserie to nostalgia-soaked blancmange and family dinners in the Cazalet Chronicles, the conversation flows, welcoming Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David, Charles Dickens and the extraordinary Fanny Cradock to the table along the way. And in this month’s taste from the magazine’s archives, Rachel Khoo’s cookbook conjures up feasts in an attic in Paris.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 43 minutes; 21 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. . Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.
- Frontier Wolf and The Lantern Bearers, Rosemary Sutcliff: Slightly Foxed Cubs (0.50)- Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford: Slightly Foxed Edition No. 52 (0.53)- An Englishman’s Commonplace Book, Roger Hudson (1.00)- A Half Baked Idea, Olivia Potts (15:40)- The Little Library Cookbook, The Little Library Year and The Little Library Christmas, Kate Young (21.08)- The Cazelet Chronicles, Elizabeth Jane Howard (22.33)- Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee: Slightly Foxed Edition No. 53 (23:33)- Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant (24:18)- Jumping the Queue, Mary Wesley is out of print (25:04)- The Little Paris Kitchen, Rachel Khoo (28:53)- The Diary of a Nobody, George & Weedon Grossmith (35:41)- Good Things to Eat, Lucas Hollweg is out of print (37:53)- The Pedant in the Kitchen, Julian Barnes (39.17)- The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (39:35)

Related Slightly Foxed Articles
- Haikus among the Pears, Olivia Potts on Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book, Issue 62- Cooking with a Poet, Sue Gee on Paul Roche, Cooking with a Poet, Issue 8 (1:43)- The Fanny Factor, Laurie Graham on Fanny Cradock, Coping with Christmas, Issue 64 (1:47)- Attics with Attitude, Elisabeth Russell Taylor on Rachel Khoo, The Little Paris Kitchen, Issue 36 (28:53)- At Home with the Pewters, Antony Wood on George & Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody, Issue 32 (37:17)

Other Links
- Olivia Potts: www.ahalfbakedidea.co.uk

- Olivia Potts’s The Vintage Chef column in Spectator Life (12.50)- FEAST catering by Olivia Potts and Kate Young (21:01)

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach
Additional music: French Waltz by Sam Bikov from the album Dance the Night Away via www.freemusicarchive.org

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

Small but discerning, choosing passion over fashion, Little Toller Books shares an independent spirit with Slightly Foxed. Jon Woolcott joins us from this publishing house based in a converted old dairy in Dorset, and charts the rise from cottage industry origins to a wide, prized backlist. With roots in rural writing, Little Toller has branched out to seek unusual voices, resurrecting the life of the wood engraver Clifford Webb, turning landfill into prose, uncovering Edward Thomas’s hidden photographs and finding a bestseller in the diary of a young naturalist along the way. We turn to the magazine’s archives for John Seymour’s advice on cheddaring, sparging and gaffing, and there’s the usual round-up of recommended reading from off the beaten track.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 37 minutes; 45 seconds)

Books Mentioned
- Four Hedges, Claire Leighton. Available from the end of August 2020 (2:44)

- Men and the Fields, Adrian Bell (2:48)

- The Unofficial Countryside, Richard Mabey (4:30)

- In Pursuit of Spring, Edward Thomas (4:56)

- Diary of a Young Naturalist, Dara McAnulty (7:27)

- The Life and Art of Clifford Webb, Simon Brett (12:52)

- The Fat of the Land and The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, John Seymour (15:23)

- Landfill, Tim Dee (17:51)

- Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School, Ysenda Maxtone Graham (19:35)- Stand by Me, Wendell Berry (30:35)

- Here We Are, Graham Swift (33:13)- Anton Chekhov’s short stories (35:00)

Related Slightly Foxed Articles
- These Fragments, Jon Woolcott on John Harris, No Voice from the Hall in Issue 66 (6:34)- Cheddaring, Sparging and Gaffing, Rowena Macdonald on John Seymour, The Fat of the Land and Self-Sufficiency in Issue 26 (22:50)

Other Links
- Little Toller Books

- Blue Moose Books (10:05)

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach
The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

Justin Marozzi, a travel writer, historian and journalist who’s lived in Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Darfur, joins the Slightly Foxed editors on a journey through North Africa and the Middle East. His discovery of a nineteenth-century account of an expedition to Libya in a bookshop in Tripoli led to his crossing of the Sahara by camel, against the advice of Wilfred Thesiger. From dual chronicles of the desert penned by Rosita Forbes and Ahmed Hassanein Bey and tales of books hurled into the Tigris to the picaresque life of Ibn Battutah and travels with a Tangerine, the conversation ranges far and wide, and there are the usual recommendations for reading off the beaten track too.

Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 40 minutes; 22 seconds)

Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Anna in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.
- South from Barbary, Justin Marozzi (3:09)
- The Secret of the Sahara, Rosita Forbes is out of print (7:08)
- The Lost Oases, Ahmed Hassanein Bey is out of print (7:46)
- The Travels of Ibn Battutah, ed. Tim Mackintosh-Smith (11:57)
- Travels with a Tangerine, The Hall of a Thousand Columns and Landfalls, Tim Mackintosh-Smith  (12:03)
- Arabs, Tim Mackintosh-Smith (12:26) 
- Tamerlane, Justin Marozzi (14:20)
- Warriors, Gerald Hanley (15:43)
- Islamic Empires, Justin Marozzi (20:11)
- Kim, Rudyard Kipling (25:40)
- The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk (33:37)
- Consolations of the Forest, Sylvain Tessant (36:09)
- The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf (37:15)

Related Slightly Foxed Articles
- Not Your Average Englishwoman, Justin Marozzi on Rosita Forbes, The Secret of the Sahara in Issue 62 (7:08)
- An Irishman in Somalia, Justin Marozzi on Gerald Hanley, Warriors (15:43)
- Small Player in the Great Game, Amanda Theunissen on Rudyard Kipling, Kim in Issue 57 (25:40)
- Confessions of a TV Tie-in, Tim Mackintosh Smith on Ibn Battutah, The Travels of Ibn Battutah in Issue 18 (11:57)

Other Links
- Justin Marozzi: www.justinmarozzi.com

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach
The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable