Dear Readers,
We are with you on a Saturday again, having been hard at the screens this week finessing and filleting articles for Issue 9, which is scheduled to come out in October. If you would like to receive this magazine, which marks our first sustained foray into the land of the long-read, then you can subscribe at this link here. And that’s not the last of the news: we have just moved into an office in central London. We’ll have more details on the new set-up soon – but it’s an absolute joy to have a place to make our own after two years of pandemic-spliced remote work.
We’ve got the usual bevy of tips and links, and a little interview with one of our favourite journalists, but first, here’s a little number on that straight-shooting Duke of York.
Dieu et Mon Droit
Prince Andrew is currently in Balmoral Castle, the Scottish home of his mother, the 94-year-old Queen. Last night, lawyers acting for Virginia Giuffre – who accuses Andrew of sexual abuse and is launching a civil case against the prince in New York – claimed these papers were served at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park on the 27th of August. Andrew, who denies all the claims, was seen driving up to Scotland with his ex-wife earlier this week.
Speaking to a Buckingham Palace insider on Thursday, The Fence was informed that Andrew was unperturbed by the legal issues facing him, that no efforts had been made to serve papers on the royal personage, and that the break to Balmoral was a planned visit.
Well, either we are being fed fake news by a tricksy courtier, or those wily Manhattan lawyers are spinning their own story, as a response to the affidavit is due by next Friday.
What we do know is this: the Sun were the first publication to report Andrew ‘bolting’ to Balmoral, and last night the Daily Mail claimed that Andrew is attempting to have the case thrown out on a ‘technicality’, as the papers were allegedly served to a royal protection officer.
As Prince Harry hinted during his dynamite interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year, the relationship between the royal family and the tabloid press is one of mutual self-interest: the Windsors need the papers to bolster their image as worthy rulers but with human foibles; the papers need to sell papers. It’s an uneasy relationship, one that is brokered between the editors and private secretaries, neither of whom trust each other. Stories get spiked, access gets granted. In these grim trade-offs, Buckingham Palace has more leverage than you might imagine. Indeed, The Fence has heard some extraordinary allegations on this very subject at an earlier date this year. We wait to see whether they will see publication yet.
Archie Bell & The Drells
As we embrace the rhythms of autumn, we have a strategy in place. Issue 9 is scheduled to come out in mid-October, with Issue 10 following hard on its heels, landing in the first week of December.
Last time out, Issue 8 sold out in a month. We are not going to increase the print run for the upcoming iteration, so if you would like to bless your palms with the next copy, then you can subscribe through our webstore here. If you work for an institution who might like to bedeck their lobby with a copy of the magazine, then do get in touch by replying to this email and we can arrange a special deal at a special price.
As the project goes forwards, we are trying not to rest on our laurels. There is a unilateral goal to expand the ambition of the project while keeping this newsletter free, and to place the choicest articles online for everyone to read. Do support us if you can.
Cosa Nostra
Everyone can agree that journalists talking about their journalism at length is a product with a limited audience. We are rather more zealous in that credo, especially when it applies to editors waffling about editorialising. In that spirit, we have tried not to talk about our project in granular detail here, elsewhere or on our social media channels.
However, Jeremy Leslie of MagCulture offered a chance to talk about The Fence in broad, detailed strokes. What’s our working day like? What’s our biggest creative inspiration? Can I see a grainy iPhone photograph of the editor smiling grimly on a Sunday night? Yes, you can, all in this interview here, which also tips its hat to the many, many other exciting publications currently labouring in the content mines alongside us.
BIG SEA CONSERVATIVES
If you haven't already read Sophie Elmhirst's riveting, and intermittently hilarious, profile of the doomed MS Satoshi, you should rectify that now. It tells the tale of a cadre of mega-rich libertarians determined to escape the rules and regulations of modern life by setting up a city-state at sea. As part of the so-called seasteading movement, they were committed to pioneering into the open water in a cryptocurrency powered cruise ship, equipped with 777 rooms, two swimming pools and multiple waterslides. It’s a tragicomic nautical treat, filled with dazzling details, so we struck pennants and gave hail to Sophie in the hopes she might tell us a little more about it.
TF: First things first, how did this story come across your desk?
I'd been wanting to write about private islands (there was a big uptick in sales during the pandemic, obviously) and during my long internet binge on the subject, discovered all sorts of far-fetched man-made floating island schemes, of which the Satoshi was one. Whereas a lot of these plans were absurd and shadowy at best, the beauty of the Satoshi was that they'd actually gone and done it, or at least tried.
TF: Your subjects are people who complain about tax laws and maritime regulations, but still happily mandate labyrinthine documents banning microwaves and heavy pets on board for any prospective shipmates. Did you ever get a sense that this experience made any of your subjects re-think their black-and-white deregulatory zeal?
I don't think so. I mean, I only spoke to one of the trio, sadly, as the other two weren't keen to talk. And he – Grant Romundt – was probably the least politically motivated of the three: he genuinely loves the idea of living in a floating home on the ocean off the coast of Panama. If anything, I sensed he wanted to distance himself from the libertarian aspects of the Satoshi, and saw his SeaPods (individual floating homes) as more of a lifestyle choice than a statement of political intent. (This might also be a way of distancing himself from the rather public failure of the Satoshi project). But at the same time, his SeaPods still represent an attempt to create an offshore floating community, just on a smaller scale. My sense of the seasteading movement more widely is that it is still alive, well and ambitious in its hope to form a scaled-up ‘seavilization’, just not that much closer to actually doing it. And if you read Chad Elwartowksi's Reddit posts, you'll discover his personal brand of libertarianism is still going strong; he's just acquired a new antipathy towards cruise-ship regulation.
TF: Finally, were there any nuggets of treasure you dug for the piece but couldn't fit in, and would like to share with our readership?
Oh yes, plenty. A random selection:
* A fellow occupant of the late 90s San Francisco frat house was Luke Nosek, one of the Paypal founders.
*If you'd bought a cabin on the Satoshi, you would have been allowed to customise it, there would have been an optional maid service and a self-service laundry. (Ideally I'd have quoted both the Viva Vivas FAQ and the pet policy in full.)
* The number of cruise ship brokers in the world is ‘fewer than the fingers of one hand and they are apparently quirky by nature.
* As well as all the booze left on board the Satoshi, there were still medicines and foot braces in the medical bay and plates and glasses in the kitchen. The effect, I was told, was spooky.
I accept that possibly no one else would have found those interesting.
Filthy Lucre
It’s been a hazy, memorable week for those of us who relish literary criticism in essay format. Andrea Long Chu’s cool, close reading of Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom won plaudits across the board, while Sean O’Neill serves this much-needed notice on the importance of Sally Rooney’s Irishness, which you can match with a characteristically sharp review from Brandon Taylor, and if you still want more after that, then there’s this caustic number on ‘gay sincerity’ in literature as typified by Garth Greenwell and Ocean Vuong.
Publications that didn’t use to make space for talking about books at near-book length have now made it a central plank of their identity. And in the interests of full disclosure, we should also add that the two most popular articles we’ve ever published in terms of web traffic – by some distance – are an essay on a certain young novelist from County Mayo and an enquiry into the state of British nature writing. Why this uptick in 5000-word-plus articles analysing a niche artistic form? Who knows. We’re just happy to go along with the ride.
In Case You Missed It
Our features editor, who is an unabashed Enya fanatic, sings the praises of Ireland’s greatest ever musical export, for the New York Times.
Dale Peck eviscerates the bad faith and abysmal style of Andrew Sullivan.
The immortal Davey Jones remembers literary critic Cyril Connolly on his birthday.
We were once again reminded of the endlessly wonderful Photos Of TV, a cavalcade of, well, photos of TV.
The courageous life and death of Rick Rescorla, a 9/11 hero from Cornwall.
And Finally
Want to watch OJ Simpson jokingly re-enact the murder of Nicole Brown with a banana? Would you like to see Imelda Marcos’ reserve shoe closet? Or to gawk at Pamela Anderson demonstrating – with a cackling laugh – her bedroom technique with a middle-aged comedienne? Then get yourself on iPlayer, where Ruby Wax’s interviews from her 90s heyday have been collated into a three-part series that makes for compulsive viewing. But if you want to see a moment of antic genius, then skip to the end of the last part, and watch the short section with a then fresh-faced Jim Carrey trash a hotel suite and impersonate, in his words, an ‘outraged British person.’
*
Over the last couple of months, we had wondered why so few of you had been replying to these emails. Last weekend, we clocked that all your brilliant responses had been going to our junk: which is not where they should be. After a bit of wrangling, we managed to save a few of them and respond in kind. Needless to say, we will be monitoring the mainframe like hawks this weekend. So, please, do get in touch with us, if you’d like to speak with a member of the editorial team about the magazine or the website or whatever. It’s genuinely a pleasure to chat to you all, and we look forward to joining you next Friday.
All the best,
TF
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