Slightly Foxed

About Slightly Foxed

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 (https://www.foxedquarterly.com)

Publisher

Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader's Quarterly

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Nov 2018

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

5 of 61 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026TRANSCRIPT

   59: Rosemary Sutcliff and the Magic of Childhood Reading

   Rebeka Russell and Sam Leith discuss Rosemary Sutcliff's enduring magic in children's literature and the profound impact of childhood reading.

2. 

   15 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT

   58: The Other Mitford Girl

   Biographer Rachel Trethewey and writer Frances Donnelly discuss Sydney Redesdale, the influential matriarch of the Mitford family, in this interview.

3. 

   15 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   57: 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 (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/julian-evans-undefeatable/), 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 (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/naples-44-norman-lewis/), he wove the experiences of his worldwide travels into many other magical books such as A Dragon Apparent (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/norman-lewis-dragon-apparent/), Golden Earth (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/norman-lewis-golden-earth-travels-in-burma/) and Voices of the Old Sea (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/voices-old-sea-norman-lewis/). 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 (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/joseph-o-connor-my-fathers-house/) and The Ghosts of Rome (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/joseph-oconnor-the-ghosts-of-rome/), and Justin Webb’s childhood memoir The Gift of a Radio (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/justin-webb-the-gift-of-a-radio/). And for an introduction to Norman Lewis, A Quiet Evening (https://foxedquarterly.com/shop/norman-lewis-a-quiet-evening/), a selection of his best articles introduced by John Hatt.

Inside a recent episode

59: Rosemary Sutcliff and the Magic of Childhood Reading

Published 15 Oct 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And that's why they enter those worlds so deeply. And sometimes those worlds, it seems to me, that are imagined so fervently are kind of compensatory fantasies. You know, they're imagining a childhood that's happier and less lonelier than they had. I mean, Kenneth Graham is a kind of type specimen of this. His mother died when he was young. He had an alcoholic father. He was farmed out to a succession of aunts and he invents in the riverbank and wind in the willows this completely hermetic kind of golden world in which notably and slightly sadly there are you know no women whatsoever and for some authors it's not that they're trying to recover their own childhood or make up for a childhood they didn't enjoy but they're trying to get back to a childhood that they couldn't ever quite get over the pain of having to leave That was beautifully put, Sam. […]

Who has been a guest on Slightly Foxed

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Rebeka Russell
• Sam Leith
• Rachel Trethewey
• Frances Donnelly

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

268 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

97 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 52 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

77

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

67

Contact Slightly Foxed

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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