Young Romantics
We thoroughly enjoyed our launch party for Daisy Hay’s Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (Hb, £20). Daisy dispels the myth of a poet struggling away in a lonely garret; these writers led wild and sociable lives. Well-researched yet highly readable, this book offers a unique insight into a fascinating period of literature where rivalry and passion combined to produce some of the greatest poetry ever written.

At Home
Bill Bryson’s new book At Home (Hb, £20) is published at the end of the month. In it he looks at the domestic side of history, rather than the grand events and devastating battles. He takes a journey round his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. From the spice trade to crinolines this book shows us that all our homes have a history that is fascinating, extraordinary – and even a little dangerous.

Puffin by Design
Another book we are eagerly awaiting at the end of the month is Puffin by Design by Phil Baines (Hb, £20). This celebrates the 70^th anniversary of Puffins, the series that started as ‘Puffin Picture Books’ in 1940 and expanded into ‘Puffin Story Books’ in 1941 with the publication of Worzel Gummidge. With over 400 illustrations and details on the individual titles, this is a book that will transport you back to the very best bits of your childhood.

Plenty
Plenty is another collection from Yotam Ottolenghi of brilliantly do-able recipes (Hb, £25). Tomato and Potato Tatin, Crusted Pumpkin Wedges and Aubergine Croquettes are among the dishes that will tempt even the most hardened carnivore. We have already cooked and eaten from this book and cannot recommend it enough.

The Central European Classics Collection
Penguin have reissued an exciting collection of ten Central European classics (Pb, £9.99‒£12.99) including memoirs, essays and novels. They cover the twentieth century from the optimism preceding 1914 to the horrors of the Cold War. Karel Capek’s War with the Newts, Josef Skvorecky’s The Cowards and Ota Pavel’s How I Came to Know Fish are three we have enjoyed so far.

In Young Romantics, Daisy Hay challenges the myth of the romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, telling the story of the communal existence of an astonishingly youthful circle which included Leigh Hunt, Shelley and his wife Mary, Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont, who became Byron’s lover and the mother of his child; and Hunt’s charismatic sister-in-law Elizabeth Kent.

Young Romantics explores the story of the group, from its inception in 1813 to its ultimate disintegration in the years following 1822. This smouldering combination of relationships would inspire the drama of Frankenstein, the heady idealism of Shelley’s poetry, and Byron’s own self-loathing, self-loving public persona. The characters are drawn with marvellous vitality, and the book is a fascinating read from a young biographer of great promise.

‘A most impressive achievement’  Michael Holroyd

Daisy Hay in The Telegraph

For the Love of an Orchard
We were pleased to launch Jane’s new book (co-authored with Chris Kelly) For the Love of an Orchard: Everybody’s Guide to Growing and Cooking Orchard Fruit (Hb £25). It covers all the practical aspects and also includes a wealth of historical and literary information about the fruits. You don’t even need a big garden; Jane and Chris assure us it is perfectly possible to grow a fruit tree in a pot on a balcony!

Web of Air
We are all enjoying Philip Reeve’s new book Web of Air (Hb £12.99, Pb £8.99). Confusingly, this is the sequel to Fever Crumb, which is the prequel to the Mortal Engines Quartet. But you needn’t worry: Web of Air stands perfectly well on its own and you can then work backwards or forwards within the series. Like many fantasy writers, Philip Reeve creates a world that is similar to, but not quite the same as, the one we know. His skill is in describing that world. In turns terrifying, amazing and amusing, it forms the backdrop for an exciting adventure story. (Recommended for 10+, but we are all well past that)

Trespass
Many books cover the ‘we went and lived abroad, had a good time and wrote about it’ theme, but Rose Tremain’s new novel Trespass (Hb £17.99) looks at the idea from a different perspective – that of an elderly Frenchman hoping to make a fortune by selling his run-down house to an English antique dealer. Set amongst the beautiful but remote hills and gorges of the Cévennes the story heads towards a chilling climax as events spiral out of control.

How the British Fell in Love with Food
How the British Fell in Love with Food, compiled by Lewis Esson (Hb £20), celebrates the 25^th anniversary of the Guild of Food Writers. With members including Katie Stewart, Alan Davidson, Claudia Roden and Raymond Blanc the Guild brings together the best writers on food and drink in this country. Their articles and recipes chart the history of food in Britain over the last twenty-five years – from the arrival of avocados on supermarket shelves to the rise of the celebrity chef.

Second-hand stock is pouring into the shop all the time and we now have the space to display it properly. We have made one or two changes to the layout which we hope will make it easier for you to find the subjects you are interested in. Recent purchases have included: Stella Kramrisch: The Art of India through the Ages (Phaidon Press, 1954, Hb in very good dust wrapper) with the ownership inscription of E. M. Forster, King’s College, Cambridge. £500

Among the highlights this month, we are looking forward to launching Jane’s new book (co-authored with Chris Kelly). The party will be on Tuesday, 30 March, and we’ll be offering glasses of perry to suit the subject matter. For the Love of an Orchard: Everybody’s Guide to Growing and Cooking Orchard Fruit is published at £25 and is available to order now.

Another reason for getting in touch is that we would like to send customers regular emails with news of recommended books. If you are interested in receiving this information, please let us know at enquiries@foxedbooks.com.

We hope you’ll be able to pay us a visit very soon and see for yourself  but here’s a preview . . .

Photographs by Tom Bunning

Another nice snippet of news is that one of our customers has just started a book blog and we’re honoured to be the subject of one of her very first posts . . .

[In September 2009 Nicholas Dennys sold his London business. He had opened his shop, near Gloucester Road tube station, in 1983, and it became a neighbourhood fixture, notable for its all-too-rare catalogues and, particularly, for its hospitably long hours of opening.]

The new buyer of the shop is Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly. The Gloucester Road Bookshop, now under the management of Tony Smith, formerly of Heywood Hill, will be rebranded under the magazine’s name (and as ‘The Real Reader’s Bookshop’) in Spring 2010. Slightly Foxed was launched in 2003 by Gail Pirkis, a publisher formerly with John Murray, and sells itself as ‘a rather unusual form of book review, informal and independent-minded’, and consisting of articles of ‘personal recommendation’ (by established writers, journalists, booksellers and publishers) that are not confined to titles on publishers’ current schedules. She forecasts that new titles will, similarly, only account for around 20 per cent of the bookshop stock – the rest being ‘really good’ second-hand books. ‘We are going back to the old-fashioned type of bookselling, with knowledgeable staff who know their stock,’ she told The Bookseller. ‘The indie bookseller is set for a return for various reasons: people value a knowledgeable bookseller, they like an individual shop which does not look the same as every other, and they are tired of the hard sell.’

This is a bold and imaginative venture. The winter issue of Slightly Foxed contains pieces on 84, Charing Cross Road. At 123 Gloucester Road, perhaps, a new Frank Doel will emerge at the desk.

The shop has just taken delivery of its first wood engravings. These are supplied by the Society of Wood Engravers which is celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of its re-launch this year. We are delighted to support living artists in this way and to act as a gallery for their extraordinary art.

We have also added Penguin tea towels to our stock and are particularly excited by the Great Penguin Bookchase which is a board game the company has produced to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the introduction of Penguin paperbacks. It’s hours of fun, beautifully designed and something of a snip at £29.95. Just the thing for family get-togethers this season . . .

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.

Robert McCrum in the Guardian

Boyd Tonkin in the Independent

We wish you all a very happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

Tony, Aimi, Jane & David

The Christmas Fox I

Ghost Writer, by Tim Mackintosh-Smith £5

Most readers of Slightly Foxed will be aware that books, as Milton put it, are not absolutely dead things. Few of us, however, realize quite how alive and talkative our libraries are. Ghost Writer is the voice of an insider, 800 years old but still going strong – an autobiography straight from the shelf. Speaking via its ghost-writer, Tim Mackintosh-Smith, the Arabic manuscript of Abd al-Latif’s Book of Useful Information and Admonition tells its own true, if admittedly incredible, story. Set in medieval Cairo and Aleppo, seventeenth-century Oxford and 1960s London, it is a tale of cannibalism, a curse, and an authorial voice from beyond the grave. Beautifully produced with decorations by David Eccles, Ghost Writer is a perfect, stocking-sized Christmas entertainment. It not only redefines the meaning of a talking book; it may even make us listen to our libraries.

The Christmas Fox II

The Reluctant Biographer, by Jeremy Lewis £5

When Jeremy Lewis was booted out of his comfortable job as an editor at Chatto & Windus he never imagined he would become a biographer. But a bibulous lunch with a friendly fellow publisher and former Olympic fencer set him on the path to a new career. As the authorized biographer of Cyril Connolly he soon found himself sitting at the bedside of the tetchy, pyjama-clad historian A. L. Rowse, helping Connolly’s wayward and flirtatious ex-wife Barbara Skelton move her cats and chattels home from France, and engaging in some delicate negotiations of a personal kind with Lord Weidenfeld.

Anyone who has read Kindred Spirits, Jeremy Lewis’s hilarious memoir of his time in publishing – or indeed his biographies of Connolly, Tobias Smollett and Allen Lane – will know that The Reluctant Biographer, an account of the pleasures and problems of his second career, will make for delightful winter reading.