The Fence's Future

What 2026 holds...

Dear Readers,

I hope you’re all very well on this icy blue winter afternoon. Earlier this week, the Financial Times released their annual list of the best non-FT articles of the year, which featured not one, but two articles published in our pages. The first is ‘Hotel Britannica’, a coruscating insider account from a medical professional working in an asylum hotel in regional England. Bron Maher’s dispatch on the ‘Tina Triangle’ was also nominated, a deeply empathetic long-read on drug use among the queer community in south London.

For a small magazine like ours to be recognised by the country’s leading broadsheet is a wonderful thing. I am very proud of the four issues we’ve put out this year, but there is, of course, room for improvement.

Next year, we will be expanding our investigative reach, and will hopefully be hiring some more younger staff on a part-time basis, not least so we can make Capital Letter a weekly affair.

As you may have seen, we are running a Christmas prize draw, entitled The Fence’s Fighting Fund. We have spent no little energy assembling a tantalising array of trophies – cases of delicious wine, lunches at Michelin-starred hotspots and nights at the country’s best restaurant – but I really would emphasise that reaching our goal of £25,000 will make a world of difference to our editorial mission in 2026.

We are publishing two newsletters and four print magazines (and a very good book), all with only one full-time member of staff. At present, we are about 200 tickets away from the summit, and it would be extraordinarily beneficial to even exceed it. I would also like to thank everyone who has entered so far, and for the lovely messages that have come through as well.

It has been such a pleasure, dare I say an honour, to watch this publication grow from a pet project being put together in a Camberwell bedroom to the fully-formed thing it is today, with an office in Soho and contributions from my childhood literary heroes.

If you would like to gift a subscription for the year to friends or family, we have also just released some tokens, which will give you 15 per cent off with the code PRINT15 at the checkout. That applies to print, digital or both.

I’m wishing you all the best this Christmas, and a very Happy New Year.

Warmly,

Charlie Baker