A probation officer details their life working with murderers.

Directors and generals run the show at Broadcasting House.

Séamas O’Reilly unpicks the last four years of Remainiac delusions.

Another round of clerical dispatches from Stoke Newington.

Short fiction by Sophie Mackintosh.

Five stars for this anonymous critic!

Want to know how much bankers earn? A veteran investment banker lays out the unblushing figures.

A short story from Rob Palk.

A former campaign manager has spent their life tending to a brood of unruly politicians.

A tipster’s guide to who forced through the grouse shooting exemption.

In a world exclusive, The Fence is delighted to publish three extracts from Martin Amis’ newest novel.

We take the actor-turned-activist to a steak lunch in Mayfair.

Do good novelists have to write good novels?

We praise canonical authors for their boundless imagination. Then why do all their plots feel the same?

Oxford is where ideas go to die: an essay by Fergus Butler-Gallie.

The government is wasting £350 million on a foolish policy. Our education insider believes it will have disastrous effects for the country’s poorest pupils.

A short story from Omar Al-Khayatt.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was cancelled this year. Rob Oldham wonders whether this might be a good thing.

A story by Lamorna Ash.

Lockdown has been hard for all parents, but especially challenging for one particular correspondent.

He’s going to subtitle it for the Yanks.

What’s in a name? John Phipps fires up his LinkedIn and investigates.

A military insider explains why the SAS is permitted to act with deadly impunity.

Imogen West-Knights imagines what her life will be like when she moves to New York after all this is over.

An account from one of the team who helped the beloved Brixton cash and carry to ward off an avaricious property developer-turned-DJ.

An interview with the New York Times Correspondent for The New York Times.

Are the Calabrian mafia in London? Anna Sergi and Claudio Petrozziello investigate.

Our political correspondent is that peat-hearted Hibernian, Flann O’Brien himself.

All the plague-centred book trends that you need to know now!

Dizzy will do anything to see his name emboldened within print.

Endless lay-offs and cocaine goody bags: inside a famous new media publication.

An author of unimpeachable literary integrity is dishing out flat whites in Soho.

A must-read dispatch from a doctor working in a major London hospital.

Ethan Croft profiles some truly egregious parliamentary candidates: over-promoted dunces, liars, gainfully employed lobby-fodder and supercilious nobodies.

Dr Rachel Hawke, a couples therapist and consultant, tries not to take her work home with her. No easy task.

But there sits an avatar of her visage, a mere two decades old, gazing out at me, inviting me to delve deeper into her oeuvre. Come on, sir. I’m prepared.

An essayistic slog dedicated to the revolutionary vanguard: Tomiwa Owolade makes his tribute.

Podcasts are strange. We live in uncertain times. Sydney Lima on starting a podcast in these strange and uncertain times.

An anonymous NHS insider reveals how regulation has left the institution unprepared for the pandemic.

The music industry is a champagne affair. Well sort of. But not really. Al Doyle gives you the tough truth.

In a new series, The Fence hears from young industry leaders as to how their business is bearing up under the coronavirus. First up is Daniel Willis, co-founder of The Clove Club, Luca and Two Lights.

A Private Eyevent! Featuring the rt. hon. Lord Poshlip and many more.

Every contemporary short story ever published – as imagined by A.K. Blakemore.

A trio of ghoulish dates, replayed for your reading pleasure and moral instruction.

Alex Marraccini compares past dates with women to trendy London coffee shops. And a bit more.

The London restaurant world is fucked. Jonathan Nunn tells who is the most fucked.

O, to languish upon my couch, and see my nation prove themelves to be mere cowards!

Laurence Sterne meets Adrian Mole in this clerical dispatch.

Rob Palk reports live on Photogenica Moneyshire, seen last at Hampstead Ponds.

Ella Cory-Wright provides an epistolary inquiry into the zeitgeist and herself.

Thence I to my office, and all afternoon opening and closing the Guardian homepage.

Our anonymous insider at Broadcasting House relays the bizarre working practices of this beleaguered institution.

The Fence has hired a Michelin-starred restaurateur to go undercover and analyse the critics.

Do. Not. Open. The. Door.

For 11 months a year there's nothing on at the cinema. Then in February, there's suddenly far, far too much.

The lonely search for perfection.

Fergus Butler-Gallie provides a conceit upon the history of our rail service.

Our guide to the thrusters and strivers issuing a vibe-downpour on the capital and its barely breathing clubbing scene.

Daniel Defoe photoshops Marina Hyde articles, and Chaucer just has a bizarre obsession with Anna Soubry.

Richard Benyon. Owen Paterson. Antoinette Sandbach. All present and correct at Chuka Ummuna’s silent disco.

An adventure through an impossible quest: a half-cooked trilogy of films on a long-haul flight.

Slay Rayner!

When you come to think to it, you realise that there is nothing special about this ridiculous country.

We provide a pre break-up post-mortem.

Our exhaustively researched compendium of the upstart myth-makers scribbling their way up the metropolitan ladder.

Here is the unvarnished and unimprovable guide to getting published, by a member of The Fence in a senior position at a major publishing house.

The tales of glamour and glitz are just a front. Our insider tells it like it is.