Dear Readers,
Good afternoon. This is The Fence, from London, bringing you our first newsletter of what is now awkwardly yet officially proclaimed the Third Carolean Age. The nomenclature, like just about everything else, will take a bit of getting used to, as we all adapt to what is without a doubt the most seismic historical event in British living memory. So we thought that, since you don’t exactly come to The Fence for heart-rending tributes to the monarch that you can find in abundance elsewhere, we’d use this newsletter to gather up a bit of ephemera from the day itself and its aftermath, scrunch it up into a ball, and toss it underarm into your creaking, leaking, neglected-since-Thursday inbox.
First, though, the house updates. Issue 13 is now being scribbled over by our crack team of illustrators, thoughtfully directed by our sweethearts at Studio Mathias Clottu in Canonbury, all on track for an early October release. This one’s a fun one; we’ve doubled down on the chaos, with a spread of stories and silly bits that we guarantee you wouldn’t find anywhere else. As much as we’d like to, we can’t let anything slip just yet, but keep your ears to the ground for updates, and buy a year’s sub – only £25, don’t you know! – to get your mitts on it first. Oh, and we have a book out at the end of the month too, Shit Literary Siblings, which you’re going to hear a lot more about in the weeks ahead. Snap it up from Amazon without a second’s delay: it’s funny, we promise.
Onwards toward business, and a selection of snippets from the week that London Bridge fell. Buckle in.
Black Tie Affairs
On what was originally a dreary, drizzly morning at the fag-end of summer, Thursday 8th September 2022 became, as Fred Durst would put it, ‘just one of those days’ – normal proceedings ground to a halt, office TVs were dusted off and switched on, and we all felt the weight of the historical moment impress itself onto the timeline of our lives. Even if we weren’t up to very much at all, we all took a note as to mentally prepare for the question of generations to come: where were you when Her Maj called it a day?
TF editor, Charlie Baker, “was buying an iced latte from Pret, funnily enough around the corner from the hospital I was born in.” Features editor, Séamas O’Reilly was already attendant at a bigger milestone – his son’s first day at school – but was dutifully “watching rolling news since it had been clear for about six hours that the Queen of England had died.” Editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie had spent the afternoon coaching a rugby session and was walking down Tonbridge high street trying to catch his train, something he concedes is “a very boring ‘where were you’”. Fiction editor, John Phipps “was at home, with the radio on. I heard the announcement and got a text from my editor [at 1843] that just read, ‘go!’”, and with that was dispatched to the Palace for days and days of vox pops, as was NYT gumshoe and Issue 12 contributor, Saskia Solomon. Deputy editor, Kieran Morris, was five minutes down the road at the Cask & Glass with the aforementioned man-about-town Ethan Croft of the Evening Standard, having wantonly squandered his prime spot at the front of the gates out of a lust for pints that hobbles him to this day.
Further afield, Free Lunch editor and features machine Ed Cumming “was in a box at the Oval as the guest of Journey's End – superior Stellenbosch winemakers – watching the rain fall and wondering how to balance availing myself of the hospitality with the risk that the Telegraph might send me to the Palace.” Francis Martin, perhaps in exile after calling for the Queen to be succeeded by her corgis in the last issue, was tucked away in republican Barcelona. “I was walking past a really basic bar on a street corner, which had the telly on,” he tells us, exclusively. “Asked a guy propping up the bar if the Queen had died, and he nodded gravely while drawing his hand across his neck. Went inside to see the screen properly, and the barman – who was wiping tables – turned to me. I said something, expressing my amazement at the news, and he fixed me with a stare and said ‘bivo o no?’ So I had an Estrella.”
After all this, it’d be rude not to ask – where were you when the news came in? Reply to this email, or to editorial@the-fence.com, and tell us what The Moment was like for you. We might turn this into a bit of a longer feature; we might just enjoy finding out for curiosity’s sake.
Annus Surrealis
It has been an odd few days and looks to be getting odder at a rate of knots. The obvious and heartfelt reaction to the death of the Queen was to be expected, as was much of the blanket coverage laid on by the entire news media. Aside from being an impossibly beloved and titanically famous figure in her own right, the tone, pattern, and quantity of such coverage has been laid out decades in advance, according to the Royal, governmental, and institutional protocols somewhat famously termed “London Bridge”.
Even so, the sheer scale and mien of the coverage has raised eyebrows. We need not speak of the public testimonials from brands as various as the LAPD, Johnny Rotten and ‘Big Jimmy’s Dildo Emporium’. Nor those from political correspondents taking the time to recommend posthumous acting awards, or merely gushing over Her Royal Eyebrows. The fact is, this near-total domination of the headlines takes place days after the installation of a new Prime Minister, in the middle of the worst cost of living crisis the country has ever seen, while sterling has dropped to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985. As we will get to later in this missive, world events too have not slowed down.
Hackles were raised about the canceling of a week’s Premier League football and the closing events of The Proms, both decisions which appear to lack not only logical consistency but even single digit public approval, but more severe by far is the suspension of parliament that will run up to its planned three week recess, resulting in a 35-day holiday from reality for the Commons until 17th October, more than two weeks after energy bills are projected to rise for every single person in the country.
With reports that police have been arresting people for voicing Republican beliefs in Edinburgh, there is very good reason to worry that order has already been suspended far outside the explicable bounds of solemn, respectful remembrance. We are four days into the reign of King Charles. When parliament returns on Day 40, let’s hope things have not turned stranger still.
Kremlin II: The New Batch
When the war in Ukraine kicked off back in February, , a veteran Moscow correspondent of many years standing, now plying his trade back in Blighty for a major news organisation. As Ukraine staged the most significant surge of the past nine months this weekend, he was obviously called into action to report on the one issue at the burning coalface of global news; events at Buckingham Palace, where he braved the rain, crowds, and inadequate toilet facilities bringing up-to-the-second news of the Queen’s passing.
Until late this weekend, many worried aloud that the seismic Ukrainian advances were becoming lost in a torrent of Monarchical memorialising, with constant updates and stories dominating every paper, website and newsfeed of Britain’s press. Until Sunday, events in Ukraine found no place at all on the BBC’s front page, with all 26 stories listed relating to the royal family. Once a Ukraine piece was placed there on Sunday, it quickly became the most-read story of the day, perhaps speaking to a misjudgement of the public’s monomania on royal affairs.
So, how does our correspondent feel about this odd reporting window, and how significant were those Ukrainian advances in the first place? We got on the big red phone to ask our favourite Kremlinologist for a second batch of eastward insights.
“Royal mania is inevitable,” he tells us, “given that the protocols were drawn up in the 60s and Diana’s death recalibrated what broadcasters had to do. The Queen is a beloved old lady who had a good life, though — this isn’t a national tragedy. The government hasn’t mandated cancelling all this stuff. I think we know this isn’t 1952, and we’re settling into our coverage which will plateau [eventually]”.
Not that it doesn’t have its own benefits for the UK. “This is soft power at its best,” he says. “I don’t think it’s bad for Britain in the long run. But the world is distracted, and that can be good or bad for Ukraine right now. I just don’t know. If Russia is indeed on the verge of a coup I would stage it now and topple Putin. Likewise, it could be a good time for the UK and allies to sneak some pretty serious weaponry into the country and help Ukraine consolidate gains”.
Is the situation really that changed for Russia?
“I think the Russian pushback has been pretty significant” he says, “but there’s a difference between recapturing and holding onto these areas. The Russians seem to have beaten a hasty retreat leaving loads of equipment. Russia will regroup and as long as they hold onto the Donbas, they can claim some kind of decisive win if it all goes to pot. Most interesting is what’s happening in captured areas in the south, north-east of Crimea, where kids have started school with a new Russian curriculum. Lots of resistance attacks are happening there”.
One odd facet of the timing of the Queen’s death is that it coincides with a growing unease inside Russia about the war, resulting in the curious sight of the notoriously partisan Russian media giving more credit to the Ukrainians than that nation’s British allies.
“Lack of press here doesn’t mean there’s lack of press in Russia,” he points out. “Russia seems to be slowly reintroducing entertainment TV while the usual jingoistic news chat-shows now appear peppered with pessimism about what the war can really achieve. Putin has also been lashing out at the west recently, annoyed he can’t sell fertilizer abroad. The Kremlin PR machine is under huge strain”.
Not that events in Balmoral hadn’t also got an airing.
“Putin chimed in with a respectful comment about the queen - [In a letter to Prince Charles, the Russian premier wrote that the Queen "rightfully enjoyed the love and respect of her subjects, as well as authority on the world stage… I wish you courage and resilience in the face of this difficult, irreparable loss. May I ask you to pass on sincere condolences and support to members of the royal family and the entire people of Great Britain.”] – and the royals are generally well liked in Russia, the Windsors and Romanovs being related and all. Putin and the Orthodox Church are keen to rehabilitate their own royal family to help the nation’s identity crisis”.
So where to from here?
“Putin has an inner circle of three or four,” he says, “and there were whispers of an FSB attempt to hobble him a few months ago which led to a purge of a handful of top intelligence agents. Not sure where he might face other pressures. The business world has no real power, the sheer scale of military losses is definitely slowing the war, and within 6 months the Russian economy will be really screwed. One to watch is Ramzan Kadyrov. He’s a plucky gobshite and has been slamming Russia’s military failures and saying weird enigmatic things about Putin. I really think there’s something going on behind the scenes”.
So, as Charles ascends in England, only time will tell if there is a throne to be watched to the East as well.
Changing of the Guard
For some in the Royal household, the passing of a monarch can mean more than mourning – it can mean redundancy, relocation, and a rapid change of rank and status. Feasibly, given that the new King has the right to retain as many or as few of his late mother’s staff as he pleases, the accession of Charles III could be one of the larger mass redundancies that London has seen in years, the kind of thing more suited to the pages of the Morning Star than the Daily Telegraph. Anxieties have spread. From sources familiar with the changeover, we’ve heard that some are “relatively concerned” that Charles will call upon his extant staff at Clarence House to fill new roles and responsibilities, while citing that right now, they’re “not sure” of official plans. Interestingly, however, TF can confirm that the crown’s head honcho for all things operational has been asked to stay on, signalling that a root-and-branch revamp might not be top of the King’s agenda.
The Wizarding World of Charles Windsor
We’ve tussled for days over whether to release this information; whether, with the national mood as it is, and the far-reaching implications of the story at hand, we might be better off keeping schtum. Alas we are duty-bound not to any monarch, state, or creed, but to Truth. And the truth is: King Charles III is really into magic. Or at least he was in 1975, when he passed his entrance exam into The Magic Circle with a cup-and-ball trick, and was then featured on the cover of their newsletter, The Magic Circular.
Stranger still, Lord President of the Council, Penny Mordaunt, who presided over Charles’ accession to the throne on Saturday morning, was once the on-stage ‘glamorous assistant’ to Will Ayling, former President of the Portsmouth Magical Society, and of the International Brotherhood of Magicians (British Ring). If that’s not enough to send you down an Aleister Crowley rabbit-hole, well, we don’t know what is.
We approached The Magic Circle for comment, and at the time of publication, couldn’t get any, but if you’d like to see the new King’s cup and balls, they’re on display for the general public at the Centre for the Magic Arts by Euston Square.
In Case You Missed It
After years of anticipation, features editor, Séamas O’Reilly, got to settle into Michael Flatley’s self-funded spy thriller, Blackbird, for the Irish Examiner.
There’s nothing else. Haven’t you been watching the news?
And Finally
Queen Elizabeth II was not the only grand old dame we lost on Thursday 8th September – Mavis Nicholson, the irascible interviewer extraordinaire, passed away aged 91, and we thought to give this little spot to her. Nicholson was sharp, curious, and an expert on wheedling quotes out of truculent slebs; as such, we have her to thank for wonderful clips of David Bowie, Dudley Moore, Elizabeth Taylor and so many more. Our favourite Mavis sit-down is this one here, with yet another national treasure who still thankfully walks among us, Tom Baker, about life, love, space, and all the rest of it. If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare, you won’t regret it.
*
And so there we have it. We hope you enjoyed this week’s dispatch, and that it proved a nice break from the endless refreshes of the Guardian live blog you’ve been cycling through since Thursday lunchtime. If you’re not one for all this palace intrigue, don’t fear – we’ll be in your inboxes again next Tuesday, after the funeral, with a slate of content that will decidedly not be about the King, the Queen, or any of the House of Windsor. You will have had quite enough of that by then, we expect.
If you’d like to drop us a line about anything – tips, queries, gossip, comment, insult, et cetera – then reply to this email here; and as mentioned above, tell us where you were when the news came in, as we’d love to hear from you. Have a great week, a fun bank holiday, and we’ll catch you on the other side of it.
All the best,
TF
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