Winter 2018 'A Dickens of a Riot'

Slightly Foxed is still going strong after 15 years. Issue No. 60 reviews the following:

The Unwomanly Face of War, Boys in Zinc, Chernobyl Prayer and Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson
Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
The Little White Horse and Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge
A is for Alibi and the rest of the Alphabet series by Sue Grafton
Virginia water, Harriet, The Tortoise and the Hare, Brightness, Dr Gully's Story, A Silent Joy and The View from Downshire Hill by Elizabeth Jenkins
War Horse, Why the Whales Came, Kensuke's Kingdom and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
The Quincunx by Charles Palliser
Drawn from Memory and Drawn from Life by E. H . Shepard
The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
The Letters of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester ed. by Jeremy Treglown
Play in a Day by Bert Weedon
The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf

Several very popular works here led by Gawain with over 6000 copies. Sue Grafton's A is for Alibi has well over 5000 but there are over 71000 copies of the individual books in the series and a few thousand more anthologised volumes. Her total obviously comes a long way behind Dickens but Barnaby Rudge is not well represented on LT with only 1886 copies. Lots of The Uncommon Reader (4694), Elizabeth Goudge's books (1687 / 442) and Morpurgo's (2171/227/986/1016) as well as 1994 of The Quincunx. None of the others exceed three figure with the rarities being Elizabeth Jenkins' work - only single copies of Virginia Water and A Silent Joy - Wilmot's Letters (16) and just 7 copies of Bert Weedon's 1957 guitar tutor. Weedon was a household name in the 1950s (in England, anyway) and was session musician of choice for the likes of Sinatra and Judy Garland. His slim book is the best selling guitar tutor in the world and has never been out of print. On his death at the age of 91 in 2012 Eric Clapton, Mike Oldfield, Hank Marvin, Paul McCartney and Mark Knopfler all acknowledged the value of Play in a Day in their early years.

I am a new subscriber and this is the first issue I have received; it certainly did not disappoint. I read most of Lionel Davidson back in the early eighties, I missed Kolymsky Heights which is now on my reading list. Somehow Sir Gawain and the Green Knight sounds much more interesting that what I vaguely remember reading in an undergraduate English class, and Uncommon Reader sounds amazing. So it has fulfilled it's hoped for function of answering the question: what to read next.

By the way, your appreciations in LT were part of the reason I subscribed. Thank you.

I enjoyed Kolymsky Heights but I couldn't quite see what pleased Pullman so much. I thought The Rose of Tibet and The Night of Wenceslas were better.

I am always glad to spread the word about Slightly Foxed - I have subscribed ever since I bought the first issue to read over a solitary lunch.

ETA Do check out Simon Armitage's recent translation of Gawain. I do like the way he has done it.