Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to our weekly newsletter-slash-propaganda vehicle. Issue 9 arrived with subscribers earlier this week, and after a few days of hectic sales, there are now only 80 copies remaining. The next time we join you, the magazine will likely be unavailable for retail purchase. So, if you’d like to get your hands on our most popular issue yet, then do visit the webstore here to assure yourself of a copy.
There are some bits on Michael Vaughan, Barbara Pym and Bari Weiss, but first, here’s a dispatch from Wales.
A Promising Vintage
‘So you’re here for the carnage of Boojaloo, then?’, my Airbnb host asked. I was. I had travelled some three hours across the south-west, from Paddington to Swansea, on the much-venerated Third Thursday of November: Beaujolais Nouveau Day. It’s a naff concept to begin with, this day, performed ably in France each year but imitated in London at the height of the 80s wine bar boom – the new year’s Beaujolais is mandated by French law to be released immediately on the stroke of midnight, whereupon it is rolled into the city (or sold by the bottle) and consumed at rapid pace. I’ve been a steady celebrator of this novelty holiday for a few years now, as I’ve grown older, uglier, and more pretentious. It’s a laugh, typically – an excuse to get late-lunch drunk with a partner of some description on cold young wine at the end of a miserable autumn. But in Swansea, it’s a different beast entirely.
The occasion took hold, so the legend goes, through the ingenuity of retired Welsh rugby player, Clem Thomas, who owned a bar on the high street and a holiday home in Bordeaux. Thomas decided to use one frivolity to fund the other, importing cases and cases of the new year’s Beaujolais from 1967 onwards, piled high and sold cheap to Jacks chasing a taste of continental chic. Like all good salesmen, Thomas spurred imitators in the city, who could offer a bigger, more bombastic party than one merely fuelled by cheap wine. And lo, a pissup was born. My host conceded to me that this foundational myth has been largely forgotten by the city; nobody knows why they’re out, but nobody really cares. They’re just out, on the third Thursday of November, every single year.
Because psychogeography is all the rage among you intellectual types, I decided that I would walk in the footsteps of Dylan Thomas, Kingsley Amis, and the great Keith Floyd – three patron saint pissheads who once called the city their watering hole – in an effort to understand the importance of this day to the city. The occasion was well underway when I arrived just after lunchtime. Men walked in scrums, decked out in an extraordinary variety of suits: everything from sleazy prom date. to youth footballer at an award presentation, to employment tribunal attendee. In scruffy blue chinos and a green Tommy Hilfiger shirt I bought second-hand in Hull this summer, I was the worst dressed man in Swansea by some considerable distance. In a shameless bit of flattery that I’m afraid to say worked on me, a bucket-rattler told me I looked like a rockstar – a lie, no doubt, but I’ll pay £3 not to hear that I resemble Jay Rayner or Michael McIntyre again.
I could already tell that the day wouldn’t be about Beaujolais. Nobody had any, nobody was even drinking wine by the looks of things. I had emailed a host of places to see if someone could ‘show me the ropes’, so to speak, but heard nothing back from anyone, so I started safe and steady in the Wetherspoons, where an 11-year- old girl was being dragged out by four security guards for threatening to shoot them. Even by the trading standards of the profession, the Swansea bouncers were gargantuan. They were working as a pack like their own paramilitary force, surging in to back each other up when things got a bit tasty. In this instance, they didn’t seem to take the girl’s threats as deadly serious, her removal was more like an attempt at ex post discipline, a teachable moment for what happens when a child throws a tantrum in a pub.
With no wine in sight in the Wetherspoons, I went on the hunt for an actual glass of Beaujolais – that was the reason I’d come down, after all. Next door was the only bar on the street that asked for COVID passes, something I’d expected to see more of. There wasn’t much to report here: they only did Beaujolais by the bottle, so I settled for an Amstel and watched a distinguished old fella in cords do the ‘shagging thrusts’ to Blame It On The Boogie.
Across the way, there was some huge all-things-to-all-people ‘space’, selling wine, coffee, cocktails, bao buns, curries and poutine to what felt like 4oo people. Again, no Beaujolais by the glass here either, but there was a woman playing a saxophone in the crowd which really did feel like a strangely intrusive throwback to the early-10s.
At last, I managed to find Beaujolais by the glass at the No Sign Wine Bar – the very same bar Clem Thomas started selling from nearly half a century ago. £6.25 bought me a walloping pour, a veritable bucket of the new stuff, to work through while the in-house band played weepies on stage. It’s always worrying when someone dances alone to Jolene, Dolly Parton’s paean to envy and powerlessness, and it’s yet more concerning when they’re swinging elbows at bouncers as they do so. I think at this point it was about 5pm.
One of the very funniest sights I have ever seen in my entire life came tucked away between the two busiest bars on the high street, where a barely open Brewdog flickered away, deserted save for a handful of blokes – you know the type – holding out against the tyranny of the orthodoxy surrounding them. I steered clear, accepted that by this point I was just on a night out, and kept moving from place to place in an effort to keep up with the Swansea faithful.
I did well enough until night fell; the mood shifted, the crowds tired, and the bouncers got a little more selective. Not to get too ventriloquising about it, but there really is something about the way a Welsh doorman says ‘you’re not getting in hyur’ that cuts you to the bone. By this point I was thankful to have been curtailed... I’ve been on enough provincial nights out to know that you should leave when the going is still good.
I did try to get quotes for this, I really did, but when I asked someone in a smoking area what they thought about Beaujolais Nouveau Day, they yelled ‘Fucking Swansea! Fucking hammered!’ and then burst out laughing. And that, I think, is the moral of the story.
Kieran is the deputy editor of The Fence, and you should follow him on Twitter here.
Gavin Hills Wannabees
The Face is one of only two magazines that people care about outside this country. It’s energy, verve and very title was a guiding force in setting up The Fence, so we were shocked and delighted in equal measure when editor Matthew Whitehouse commissioned us to report on Frieze Week.
Our dispatch is accompanied with bonza photography with Alexander Coggin. Other stories include a real interview with a vampire, a great feature on British lairiness from Clive Martin, and there’s a cover interview with Adele by Candice Carty-Williams. Do pick up a copy from your local newsagent.
Breakfast with Lucian
Why did Geordie Greig get the old heave-ho as the editor of the Daily Mail? While some conspiracy theorists reckon it might have something to do with his genuine, 30-year-strong friendship with the alleged child-trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, others point out that it is likely something to do with corporate restructuring as Lord Rothermere tries to take the holding company, DMGT, private after buying out the last few sceptical shareholders.
As has been reported elsewhere, Greig was unpopular with fellow execs, many of whom were loyal to retired editor Richard Dacre. But The Fence hears that he lost the confidence of the boardroom with this interview with the FT, in which he misquoted William Butler Yeats and failed to provide the requisite fealty to the Mail’s political energies. Who’d be a gentleman journalist in this day and age?
Broady, Swanny and Anderson-y
Azeem Rafiq’s heart-rendering testimony to the DCMS Committee about the vicious racism he suffered at Yorkshire County Cricket Club was one of the most upsetting things we’ve watched in quite some time (and you can read the transcript here, if you have the stomach for it).
It marks the final disgrace for former England captain Michael Vaughan, who denies saying ‘there are too many of you lot’ to four teammates of Asian descent during a match in 2009, though two of those players, including current international Adil Rashid, corroborate Rafiq’s allegation.
For those of who like cricket, and first developed a passion for the game in the 90s (when the England team offered little else besides slip catching practice for Glenn McGrath’s teammates), there was something rather wonderful about Vaughan’s early 00s ascendancy: a batsman who matched elegant cover drives to pugnacious determination; the mastermind of the glorious 2005 Ashes victory.
Since his retirement from the field, Vaughan has become a vulgar social media addict, a supporter of Donald Trump and an irritating and opinionated broadcaster. And he’s been particularly keen on commercial deals, too, as you can see in this truly surreal and vividly embarrassing piece of brand content he made for Kentucky Fried Chicken while strapped to a chair suspended 100 metres in the air.
H. Samuel & Co
Over this weekend, the general public have been admitted to the Fabergé exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Over the last six months, we have been working on a story about the bizarre oligarchical set-tos that surround these tiny, precious jewels. You can read Tomas Weber’s bravura long-read here.
And while extended reportage doesn’t cost tens of millions, it is expensive to write, edit and legal these pieces, so please do subscribe to the magazine if you value this sort of thing.
Flowers for our Friends
In the spring, novelist Rebecca Watson wrote a fantastic short story for Issue 7. As we mentioned a month or so ago, her book little scratch has been adapted for the stage for the Hampstead Theatre. It’s had genuine five-star reviews from the critics, and we hope it will soon transfer to the West End when its first run ends.
Since Issue 4, John Broadley has worked as one of our in-house illustrators, and his work adorns our words with a scabrous, beautiful wit. So, we were delighted to see him win the New York Times Illustrated Children’s Book Award this week – the only award given by the Grey Lady. You should follow John on Instagram here.
Barbara Pym & Drum and Bass
As long-standing readers of this newsletter know, we are big fans of the London Review of Books (indeed, one young centrist hack was recently heard to remark ‘The Fence is just full of people who want to write for the LRB’). Duh!
Anyway, when we found that you could search for individual words in the magazine’s decades-old archive, an idea formed in our minds. Why does Diana Mosley outrank Keith Richards? And what’s with Terry Eagleton’s obsession with fisting? Read our full and exhaustive report here.
In Case You Missed It
Tayo Bero looks at the stat that 43% of Harvard's white students are either athletes, legacy admissions, children of staff or massive donors and wonders whether Harvard students are that smart after all.
Bari Weiss' Substack University appears to be imploding, which is good news for its prospective audience of gullible reactionaries, but bad news for satire as good as this from David Roth: I will create a winning basketball program at University of Austin.
Lauren Oyler finds herself desperately seeking Sebald.
Caspar Salmon pinpoints a wonderful definition of the word ‘luck’ from Nigel Havers.
The inimitable Michael Gillard turns his eye to Ali Dizaei, disgraced Met cop turned PI- to-the-super-rich, in a tale which has more twists and turns than you might expect.
Cory Doctorow dives into the alarming fact that a US televison manufacturer makes substantially more money from surveilling its customers than it does selling TVs.
And Finally
Comptroller of the Household. Ravenmaster at the Tower of London. Fitzalan Pursuivant Extraordinary.
21st-century Britain is still full of archaic titles from the feudal past. While they may add a sense of continuity in this unarmorial age, most of these jobs are of little practical value.
But that is not always the case. The bay around the Lancashire town of Morecambe is freighted with danger: 21 Chinese cockle-pickers died in the sifting currents in 2004. For over 50 years, Cedric Robinson was paid £15 a year to guide people through the area, in his role as the Queen’s guide to the Sands.
This week, he passed away. While this country isn’t too strong on deserts, typhoons and poisonous snakes, there is a tendency to forget the wild brutality of the island’s shores, and how that peril continues to this day.
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Over the next week, we are going to publish the most exciting piece of reportage we’ve ever worked on. Alongside that, we’re also going to put up some of the sillier material from Issue 9, so we can balance the long-reads with the general lols.
If you’d like to speak to a member of the editorial team, or you’d like to talk about some postage admin, then please do reply to this email and we will come back to you swiftly. And if you’d like to support our project, then there’s a link just below.
All the best,
TF
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