Off The Fence: Good Afternoon, 2024
We're back in business
Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to the first newsletter of 2024. This is ‘Off The Fence’, a free weekly mail-out from the team at The Fence magazine, and it’s a pleasure to have almost 13,000 of you with us.
Issue 18, our ‘coming of age’ special, has proved a mega-hit with readers, and we’ve been deluged with exotic snaps: Malika Browne has taken the mag to the Pyramids of Giza, Katy Hessel has supplied a shot from a Mexican beach and Harriet Fitch Little has obliged us with a photo from a regional David Lloyd club. Thank you all – please keep sending the snaps our way.
Hugo Gye, the political editor of the i, says that the latest issue has made him ‘laugh out loud several times’ and encourages you all to subscribe, and we very much echo that sentiment.
To business. Today we’ve got bits on the tube strikes, Westminster Abbey and rave music. But let’s kick off by discussing an old friend of this newsletter.
The Grand Old Duke of York
Prince Andrew, then, is receiving the full condemnation of the broadsheet press. But the most interesting pieces about the decorated helicopter pilot are in the remote shores of the internet, on blogs or on Substacks. Andrew Lownie, the Prince’s biographer, writes very forcefully of how his research efforts are being stymied: government papers relating to Andrew’s time as a trade envoy will be hidden until 2065. Michael Gillard has put together a compelling extended piece of reportage on the Earl of Rosslyn, the hereditary peer, who served as a policeman, and specifically as the commander for royal protection in the 2000s, and as such holds the key to the alibi for the Prince’s alleged assault on Virginia Roberts Giuffre in March 2001.
Should both these stories be more prominent in the current national discourse? We are going to go with: yes.
A Tent Underneath the Stars
If you’re looking to write for us, then there is no better time to send through a pitch – we’re looking to commission for Issue 19 and beyond. Now, there’s a detailed pitch guide here, that you should take some time to pick over before winging through an email to editorial@the-fence.com, where we will attend to you promptly. We’re open in every section, and it goes without saying that first-time writers are especially welcome.
Nervous Baby Steps
A hearty round of congratulations to Angelica Jopling, who has set up a new gallery, Incubator, with impressive eco-credentials. (A carbon neutral gallery, even). For those of you wondering if that name sounds a bit familiar to the art world, then yes, you are correct: Angelica is the daughter of White Cube supremo Jay Jopling, but according to this report here, the two operations will be ‘totally siloed.’
Some of you may remember that Jay Jopling likes to help young gallerists in their twenties – even if they’re not related by blood. Indeed, there was a young man called Inigo Philbrick who Jay once considered his protégé. And you may have heard of Inigo since in a series of mid-tier long-reads that profiled the gallerist-slash-highwayman, he is now serving a seven-year sentence in a US penitentiary.
One person who’s got the drop on Inigo is his erstwhile best pal and business partner, Orlando Whitfield, whose book, All That Glitters, tracks their 15 years of friendship and breaks down the opaque workings of the London art world. We’ve read an advance copy and it’s going to be one of the books of the year. Just look at those cover quotes…
Our First Atalanta
There is still a general sense of dumbfoundedness at Fence Towers that the legendary John Banville – one of the greatest living writers – not only agreed to write for our poxy quarterly, but to produce a shimmeringly beautiful reverie, in which he remembers his first love in 1950s Wexford. It’s the star feature from Issue 18 and available to read here.
Welcome to the Dog Pound
With the XL Bully now muzzled, their owners are truly off the leash, and have been producing some truly wonderfully mad reactions – such as this mournful freestyle rap. There’s little chance that this content tap will run dry any time soon, as the ban on the breed will be mighty difficult to enforce, as Patrick Galbraith explains in this dispatch from a Bully march in Birmingham from October last year. This week, we’re going to publish another piece by Patrick – it’s a very special piece, keep your eyes out for it online.
Sxcccccccccccc Treeeeeeeeeee
We’re a bit late to this, but it’s just been bought to our attention that artist Trevor Yeung recently made a scale recreation of NW3’s famous ‘Fuck Tree’, but in soap, and titled the artwork Soapy Fuck Tree.
Let’s congratulate the various artistic bodies for this inspired piece of patronage, and also revisit Bron Maher’s dispatch from Hampstead Heath which so many of you enjoyed last year.
It’s Good Stuff, Really
It’s been a genuine pleasure to see so many of you sign up for a sub this week, it gives us great heft as we put together the upcoming issue. And we were absolutely delighted to see that Jeremy Leslie, the founder of Magculture and magus of all things print, has nominated The Fence as one of his (two) magazines of the year in his annual round-up, which is a real and very significant honour indeed. It’s onwards and upwards for 2024 – there are lots of exciting things that will be announced soon – but the thing that really keeps us ticking over are subscriptions to the print magazine. At £30 for the year, it’s quite ridiculous value, too.
Khan’s London
In other news this week, four planned days of tube strikes were suspended with minutes to spare on Sunday evening after encouraging engagements with the trade unions were made. The positive result caused outrage from many Londoners who were looking forward to a week of festering in bed with MS Teams open, pretending to work until their plans were thoughtlessly canceled without prior notice. One took to Twitter to remark on the exacerbated effects of the Sunday scaries knowing that a week of tolerating his colleagues in real life now awaited him. Another commented that suspending the strikes isn't the flex Sadiq Khan thought it was. We were all looking forward to WFH and he ruined it. A third commented: ‘The mayor is a pathetic little man’. It seems reassuring to us that, in this era of constant last minute changes, however the negotiations between TfL and RMT go, we will persist in being dissatisfied regardless of the outcome.
A Grave Pleasure
There are some five-star exhibitions closing soon. It’s the last week to catch Sarah Lucas at Tate Britain. Philip Guston’s briefly cancelled show has only a month and a bit left to run over at what was the Bankside Power Station. But as we trudge into January, and the city is free(r) from marauding schoolchildren and shuffling tourists, it is the best time to make your visit to Westminster Abbey, the non-metaphorical cathedral of Englishness that comparatively few English people ever bother to visit. But you really should go there, not only to and see the tombs and memorials to kings, queens, poets and prime ministers, but also the gaudy marble monuments erected by the shysters, frauds and mercenaries who paid their way into the abbey for eternity. As Miranda Carter writes, ‘it’s a vivid and unsentimental tour’ of the way national identity evolved over almost a millennium. It’s also quite funny, too. Tickets are £29 but very much worth it.
In Case You Missed It
Camila Batmanghelidjh died on Sunday. Years after her charity was hounded out of operation by its critics, why do so few people know that she, and they, were almost totally exonerated?
Emily Glazer racks up Elon Musk’s drug use, which has executives and shareholders anxious. (Who wouldn’t be made anxious by the concept of Elon Musk taking ketamine?)
In a rare foray online, Private Eye have made their special dispatch on the Post Office scandal available on their website.
On Christmas Day, Patrick Radden Keefe dropped another unmissable profile, this time with legendary screenwriter Scott Frank.
Tom Scocca writes with startling, terrifying clarity about the onset and legacy of his mystery auto-immune disease.
Tim Stokes relays the story of Christine Granville, the Polish aristocrat who was ‘Churchill’s favourite spy.’
And Finally
We’re kicking off the year by doing what we do best: finding a dusty old classic from the YouTube archive and smashing those ‘copy and paste’ buttons.
It’s 1993, and Britain is building towards the crescendo of the ecstasy panic, as rave music has left the fields and taken over clubs all around the country. Shelley’s, in Stoke-on-Trent, is the one of the Midlands’ biggest nightclubs, and ravers from up to 70 miles away drive all day to stay up all night grooving to some four-to-floor beats. But Staffordshire police have the club in their sights. What follows is a particularly choice half-hour documentary which we commend to you entirely.
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That’s it for this week, and we look forward to joining you next week, and at the same time. A reminder that if you’d like to speak to us about an order that you should email subscriptions@the-fence.com, and if you’d like to send us a pitch that should go to editorial@the-fence.com – and we will get back to you quickly. Enjoy the bracing January weather and we’ll speak soon.
All the best,
TF
I confess I get my best character name inspirations from The Fence; Celestine Stoot, Gwythian Prins, and Platty Joobs... but I daresay the very WASPY-looking Inigo Philbrick surpasses all.