Dear Readers,
Hello and welcome once more to Off The Fence, the searing weekly supplement to our staggeringly beautiful quarterly magazine. Deadline day is fast approaching (for us, not you) and discussions are abuzz in our Soho HQ on how best to present our latest selection of features and funnies for your reading pleasure. But in the meantime, and in-between time, we have another newsletter to keep you sated.
First, some updates on our web overhaul. The launch of our new-and-improved site is imminent, and with it, the looming paywall. A few of you have got in touch with us to ask what this new paywall might entail, and we thought that now might be a good time to let all of you know the details. From 28th February, we will be offering a digital subscription, giving you access to the entire back catalogue, giving you access to the juiciest scoops from our sold-out early issues, as well as all of the best from our recent vintage, as well as a swathe of new digital-only content, and the choicest cuts from newsletters past. In addition, we will be offering a combined digital-and-print package, and we’ll also be offering subscriptions to Ye Olde Printe Magazine just as we do now.
Two important things: This newsletter will continue to be free to read, and those with an existing print subscription will be furnished with a log-in to the website as a reward for their unswerving loyalty. Do get in touch with us if anything is unclear, we will be very happy to elucidate matters.
By quite some considerable margin, we are updating how much we put out – for free – on our social media channels, too. If you haven’t done so already, make sure to follow us on our Twitter account, where we are sharing vital and important journalism like this, the definitive list of passé media bollocks. The Instagram is getting active too, we’re posting whole articles on the grid, and we’re sharing some spicy stuff in the stories – like London’s 20 Rudest People, our controversial feature from way back in Issue 3. Follow us here so you don’t miss out on future treats.
Onwards! This week, we’ve got Roald-Dahl-a-mania, deranged Ugandan generals and a follow-up to last week’s Richard E. Grant debacle. But first, our editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie, with a sketch on the latest craze sweeping across American college campuses.
Those Protestants…
You probably haven’t heard of Asbury University, a small private college with no more than about 1,800 total students in the not hugely exhilarating Kentucky town of Wilmore. However, something is going on there which means that sociologists, theologians and scholars of the United States look set to be referencing it for years to come. In short, an evangelical prayer service in the Methodist tradition which began on 8th February is, well, still going. Tens of thousands of people have traveled across the US to join it and hundreds of thousands have joined live over social media; it is, tellingly, being called the first ‘TikTok’ revival (as per the video here) and has spread like wildfire among the supposedly godless Gen Z.
American religious history is littered with awakenings, revivals and renewals of varying degrees of political and social impact; in some ways Asbury is an example of plus ça change. What is interesting is that, inevitably, the religious conflict engulfing the American elite has just begun to take an interest in it as an adjunct of their forever war: with takes as diverse as Tucker Carlson’s statement that it represents a rejection of the ‘evil’ that has taken over the public sphere to the claims of progressives that it represents a turning point for queer affirming evangelicalism in the US. After nearly two weeks of solid prayer, song and worship, the college’s authorities are wrapping things up, citing capacity and safety concerns; however, if this is the first time you’ve heard of Asbury, we’d be prepared to bet it isn’t the last. And God only knows what fruits it will bear.
Dahl, Rice and Discourse Chutney
Last Friday afternoon, the free lunch editor, Ed Cumming was fiddling with iPhone in a Soho pub. ‘This will be exciting’, he said, hinting at a big story he had coming out the next day. Well it turned out that Ed was onto something: his feature on the Roald Dahl rewrites went big, with today’s Daily Star front page leading with the story, and quoting Salman Rushdie and Rishi Sunak’s reaction to Ed’s piece.
You’ve probably caught up with the reaction – and the reaction to the overreaction – to the story. But there are some interesting elements at play for the disinterested observer. Is it the latest example of overreach from a ‘woke elite’, too anxious about the gossamer-thin sensibilities of a Millennial/ Gen-Z audience? Or is it something more complicated?
One thing’s for sure: it’s very unclear who ordered the rewrites. The Dahl Estate was sold to Netflix last year for a mind-boggling sum, but it is reported that the rewrites predate the megabucks deal. It’s worth noting that the CEO of the Dahl estate, the author’s grandson, Luke Kelly, is just 37 years old – a Millennial himself. He is listed as a producer on the upcoming Willy Wonka origin tale, starring Timothée Chamalet.
While the bowdlerisations to the books are comically inept, the most recent cinematic adaptations of the Dahl universe – all of which have been shaped to appeal to contemporary sensibilities – have hardly been hits, with Spielberg’s 2016 The BFG bombing at the box office, and Anne Hathaway’s 2020 turn as the Grand High Witch was reckoned a pretty inferior version of Nicholas Roeg’s 1990 masterpiece (a film that Dahl himself hated). So fear not if you think that the Dahl estate is torching their patriarch’s legacy – Hollywood started that process long ago.
Calling All Authors
Some exciting news. Until Friday evening, we are open for submissions for the fiction slot in our next print magazine. We’re looking for stories that are funny, really, or just simply really funny. That’s the main thing, but one other important thing: the entries need to be from 2000-5000 words. The fee is starting at £200, and please send all pitches through to editorial@the-fence.com
If you require some inspiration, have a look at these pieces here – we’ve got Rebecca Watson’s playful yet precise masterpiece from Issue 7, or there is Tanjil Rashid’s unlikely tale of radicalisation (with some outstanding jokes!) in ‘Baby Donald’. Both of which are absolutely worth your time, so do give them a read if you’re yet to do so.
On the Griddle
Why do we still define female artists as wives, friends and muses? It’s a question that Katy Hessel asks in her must-read column this week in the Guardian. Katy’s Story of Art Without Men won the Waterstones’ Book of the Year, and she’s recently launched an excellent Substack which we recommend you sign up for, which is full of tips and links to what is going on in London’s art world – there are a lot of exhibitions we keep meaning to see and hopefully will find the time for soon.
We Have of Late Lost All Our Mirth
Last week’s deep dive into Richard E Grant’s Instagram account proved somewhat controversial – many of you felt that we were being harsh. And two friends of The Fence who know the actor told us that Grant is a very nice guy, albeit with a disposition to rock Crocs with socks away from the cameras.
So we won't comment on his hosting of the BAFTA ceremony last night, but we do encourage you to watch this excellent documentary on Bruce Robinson, the man who wrote and directed Withnail and I, and lived the life that inspired it.
The film – every geography teacher’s favourite comedy – still stands up pretty well. (One astonishing fact: Richard Griffiths was only 40 when he was in it.) For all its baroque one-liners, it’s a tight piece of drama that shows how friendships fall apart, and captures the nastiness of 1960s London: the gritty pubs and manky bedsits; the rampant alcoholism and untreated mental health disorders. As a slice of anti-nostalgia, it’s pretty unique in British cinema.
The Curse of St Custards
Congratulations to Will Rayfet Hunter, the third winner of Stormzy’s Merky Books award, which shows the growing audience for books by queer black authors. It was also an exciting moment for the marketing team at Shrewsbury School, the prestigious £14k-a-term public school, who tweeted the news stating that ‘it’s exciting to see our former pupils get the recognition they deserve.’ Floreat Salopia, indeed.
In Case You Missed It
For Eater, Noah Galuten explores the highly-secretive, possibly-scandalous and certainly-interesting world of manufactured chicken stock.
Stop what you’re doing and read James Wolcott’s return to the LRB, tucking in to the latest biography of Rudy Giuliani.
Not to be outclassed by that famous profile of Jeremy Strong from last year, Gabriella Paiella has written an even better profile of Jeremy Strong in this month’s GQ.
A barnstormer in The Nation this week as the legendary Vivian Gornick goes long on the equally legendary Janet Malcolm.
Our fiction editor John Phipps writing brilliantly in his newsletter, Paintings!, about the latest Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum.
And Finally
The march to Election Day 2024 has begun, and with it, the return of Donald Trump – a man who is, for all of his sins, one of the most effortless and intuitive shitposters to ever walk among us. Lord knows what life will look like as he snatches the wheel of the news cycle once more, although shifting his nickname strategy from the mealy-mouthed ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ to the short and stunning ‘Meatball Ron’ shows that there’s life in the old dog yet. Sadly, however, it does not look like he will be doing his campaigning through Twitter this time around, despite Elon Musk’s best efforts to entice him back to the platform. So while he pursues the worthless tinsel of presidency once more, he is giving up the far more worthy title of World’s Greatest Poster to anyone that can match his quality.
Enter General Muhoozi Kainerugaba: former Land Forces Commander of the Uganda People’s Defence Force, son of President Yoweri Museveni, and a tweeter of rare talent. Gen. Muhoozi has used his not-insubstantial platform of nearly seven hundred thousand to make repeated interventions into Ugandan foreign policy, announcing border resolutions with Rwanda where none had been agreed, threatening to invade Kenya, and as of last October, attempting to marry Italy’s fascist Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, with a dowry of 100 cows and the threat of conquering Rome where she to reject him. A cursory check of his most recent tweets finds him offering lessons on courtship to 'all East African men', with the promise of dance tutorials for the kids of Kampala on his birthday.
The General might have some way to go before he reaches the heights of Trump in peak form, but he already harbours a deep respect for his shitpost forebear, describing him in gushing terms as 'the only white man I have ever respected'.
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Et voila! Another week’s newslettering done and dusted and sat right here in your inbox in time for the last few hours of the working day. We do hope you’ve enjoyed this edition, and as ever, please let us know if you have any thoughts, tips, premonitions or pointers prompted by anything above, or anything at all, at any time, by replying to this email. Catch you next week.
All the best,
TF
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