Dear Readers,
We are with you on the Lord’s day. After a few days of frenetic distribution, Issue 7 has slinked through letterboxes across Britain. We would love to see photos of the mag ‘in the wild’, so if you use Instagram or Twitter, then go right ahead and share snaps of your favourite bits. As our subscribers are an insatiable bunch, there are only 110 copies left available for retail. You can pick up your copy here, through our beautifully designed webshop.
Laurels of Praise
When we started this dubious project, one of our aims was to provide space for expansive, playful works of short fiction from up-and-coming authors. So we’re delighted to see the longlist for the Desmond Elliot Prize, which is awarded to the outstanding debut novel of the last 12 months. A K Blakemore – who wrote a bitingly funny satirical piece for us last year – has been nominated for The Manningtree Witches. Rebecca Watson is also longlisted for little scratch, and she has pride of place in our fiction slot in Issue 7. Both books have been rightfully garlanded by critics on both sides of the Atlantic.
Six Pound Pints
Last week, we asked our Twitter followers a question. ‘What is the most mediocre pub in London?’ in order to compile a list of the most indifferent drinkeries in the capital. We published our results online, which tickled the cream of the metropolitan commentariat, with Caitlin Moran calling it ‘the most British thing ever’. After two years at the content coalfaces, a Twitter-list of 5/10 pubs is now the most popular thing we’ve ever published... which is weirdly satisfying.
The Lex Factor
Back in July 2020, we profiled five investors who operate within the spicier side of finance – Lars Windhorst, Akshay Shah, Edward Bramson, Carson Block...and Lex Greensill. You can read the whole of this feature in Issue 4, which is available to buy here. It also features a Samuel Pepys diary, a letter from the ICU and two sterling works of fiction. But no other works of prophetic financial journalism.
Reachable Moments
This week, The Face published a deep and extremely moving account of a murdered 14-year-old boy and the agony felt by all those he left behind.
For her excellent piece, Clare Considine spoke with Moodie’s family, as well as community leaders and industry reformers, while examining the opportunities missed to reach him – and thousands of other young people – when help might have been afforded. We spoke with Clare to ask her about the piece, and what we might learn from it.
TF: This is a heart-breaking, well-rounded portrait of a young life lost, and all the people touched by his death. How were you first introduced to the story, and how did you go about reporting it?
I live in Leyton and have two young boys. So, I would find myself thinking about Jaden really regularly and wondering how his mum was feeling. When I first approached her to talk, she was understandably reluctant. She’s had bad experiences with the press. Plus, she’s just struggling to get on with her day-to-day as best she can. It reminded me that, for us, this is a news story from two years ago, but for her she is still in the very early stages of a life of grief.
I explained that I wanted to do something that I felt the press hadn’t done before and show Jaden as an individual, not another knife crime stat. I’m still unsure as to whether this was journalistic ‘good practice’ but I promised Jaden’s mum that I would let her see anything that I’d written before it was published. I wanted the family to understand that my priority was creating something that they would feel happy to read.
When I first showed it to them, they didn’t want it to be published. I wasn’t expecting that at all! And I learnt a lot about my perception of myself as a certain kind of well-meaning journalist. Their insights and input were invaluable in terms of creating something that didn’t fall into lazy stereotypes.
The typical ‘feral youth’ coverage, which Londoners will know too well, comes up in the piece. There's a tendency to dehumanise youths who become entangled in gangs, even as young children. How do you feel about the press' role in all of this?
We’re at a point in the UK where certain sectors of the press have a scary amount of control over government decision-making. It benefits the Tories to have a media that dismisses certain deaths as less avoidable than others. If Jaden’s death is filed neatly under ‘inevitable’ by the media, then there’s no public pressure on the government to make changes.
It’s also bizarre in this country that we talk about things happening to young teenagers through a crime lens, when it is clearly a public health issue. You can trace this right back to the James Bulger case and probably for years before that. Nicola Boyce, a social care expert I spoke to for the piece, talked a lot about an overly simplistic victim-perpetrator dichotomy in media coverage.
Having gained an insight into police and government procedure around exclusions, outreach and gang violence, do you think there's anything that can be done to change the current approach to these issues in London?
I’m concerned that the pandemic has created a situation where youth issues are more of a concern than ever before, while at the same time, being right down the bottom of the list of priorities.
I don’t want to sound defeatist though. We all know that real change can happen if people get angry enough. Jaden’s family have a petition you can sign. We need to engage with young people’s lives as opposed to just turning away.
A Lifetime of Service
Now that Prince Philip has been entombed in St George’s Chapel, expect a less reverential approach to the royal family from parts of the British media. Indeed, The Fence hears that a major broadcaster is planning a warts-and-all investigation into the life of the Duke of Edinburgh (and no prizes for what the focus of this documentary will be). Distinguishing between what is imagined and what is real in the royal world is no easy task for the ambitious journalist. In 1997, American author Kitty Kelley wrote a door-stopper concerning the private lives of the Windsors, that despite being unobtainable in the UK, still came in from vicious reviews from the Mail and the Express and so on, but also scored a frenzied hatchet-job from David Cannadine in the London Review of Books.
Kelley’s book was littered with outrageous stories, like Princess Diana and the Duchess of York visiting a brothel in the US. For this unbelievable scoop, Kelley had even provided a source in the endnotes – Talbot Church, a correspondent known ‘the man the royals trust’. The only problem? Church was a satirical creation dreamed up by Willie Donaldson and Terence Blacker, a parody of the tabloid gossip hacks who oil up to courtiers. But Church didn’t just fool credulous Americans, though, ‘he’ also tricked Paul Dacre, the famously short-tempered tabloid editor.
In Case You Missed It
History Workshop have collated some of the remarkable letters as part of the Free Angela Davis Campaign during her 16-month imprisonment in the early seventies.
A full report into the Horizon scandal, which saw hundreds of post office workers unfairly dismissed, prosecuted and even imprisoned – victims of which received justice in the courts this week.
A truly wonderful account of a truly horrible holiday as South China Morning Post reports on the worst cruise this side of the Bermuda Triangle.
Elle has an eye-opening, eye-watering account of the barriers to entry one young black woman found when she landed her dream job working for her favourite TV show.
Tomer Hanuka shares her illustration students’ submissions for a post-pandemic New Yorker cover.
From the wreckage of Chernobyl, BBC Future checks back in with the ‘dogs of the zone’ – the radioactive descendants of pets abandoned in the disaster’s aftermath.
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A shorter and more slimmed-down version of the newsletter this time out. But we will be back with more investigations and features in a fortnight. In the meantime, if you would like to speak to us, you can do so by replying to this email. If you want to chat shop or shoot the breeze, please do get in touch.
All the best,
TF
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