Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter giddy from another 12 months’ spin on the Earth’s crust. Now, before we get into proceedings, a reminder that The Fence’s Fighting Fund is drawing to a close, and your chance to win something truly incredible will pass five days hence. You can bag yourself lunch at the Michelin-starred Mountain, or an expensive handbag from KNWLS or a case of Chateau Musar 2018.
There are many, many more things to be won – do have a look at the 40-deep prize haul if you haven’t done so already, we really went all out with it. Now, we’re asking the same of our readers, as we are just a few donations short of our goal – if you’ve forgotten to enter, now is the time; if you love what we do, enter the fund today.
We are expanding the editorial mission in 2026, with more investigations, more cultural essays and a regular weekly slot for our ‘Capital Letter’. But we need your help to get there, we really do. Let’s, in the words of Delia Smith, be having you.
A reminder that there are still some tokens to be claimed that will give you 15 per cent off a subscription, that’s print, digital or both – simply enter the code PRINT15 at the checkout. This offer applies to gift subscriptions and will expire at midnight tonight, Cinderella-style. Here’s one of the many photos you’ve sent us this year that’s made us cackle, thank you for all the brilliant snaps.
So, here we go, the final newsletter of the year, and what a year it’s been, a zip, and a blast, and January, once more, is here again. We are going to take this opportunity to provide a short reviewette of the last 365 days, and also, in part, celebrate friends and contributors who have had a bonza year. But first, let’s generalise.
Dunce Cap
It’s hard to ascribe a ‘vibe’ to any given year, especially if one admits that one shares a planet with billions of co-inhabitants, but this definitely felt, in the words of a certain publication, like the dumbest year on record. If 2013 was the year that it dawned on everyone that they were becoming too online, then 2025 was the year when the corrosive effects of spending the week shuffling from screen to screen finally made themselves abundantly clear.
We’re not going to bore you with examples – but this article about Australian social media influencers quitting Oz is simply irresistible – but it definitely seemed that this was the year when people ‘woke up’ to what eight hours of screen time per day (low estimate) will do to your quality of life. What this means for those of us labouring down the content mines remains to be seen.
Diversifying Revenue Streams
That being said, this has been a year when many new publications have emerged out of the ether into the murky pond that is the British media ecosystem. We salute the indefatigability of Jim Waterson, whose publication, Londoncentric, is perhaps the most brilliant launch we’ve seen in some years. Jim’s profile of Terry Ball, the snail farmer who crops molluscs in London offices in the service of ‘tax minimisation’, is the best British piece of the year. (Though this was by far the greatest piece of 2025, full stop.)
Many of you will be familiar with Vittles, the food publication with whom we collaborated some years ago. This year, they joined us in the admin-bound limbo that comes with launching a print magazine, and what beauties their first two offerings have been. Their columnist Hester van Hensbergen’s piece about London’s take on New York’s dining culture is, as they say, an absolute must-read.
There was a lot of dross, too. Do we need ‘Mr Subway Takes’ presiding over the Tube with a jaunty new Oyster card microphone? No, we do not.
Roll, Log, Roll
Of all the creative industries labouring in the capital, the publishing world is by far the most creative and hard-working – and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. For there have been many superb releases this year, the most noteable being our own effort, The Pub, a book which many of you might have received in your stocking. It really is very good indeed, and you should buy a copy here.
Sophie Elmhirst once wrote about the joys of smoking cigarettes in these pages, and now her book Maurice and Maralyn was one of Barack Obama’s books of the year, which is quite the coup.
Three years ago, Harriet Rix socked it to Guy Shrubsole over his inane ‘Lost Rainforests’ project, and now her first book, The Genius of Trees, has been featured on the New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year, truly the most eminent listicle on the circuit, where she was joined by our editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie, whose 12 Churches made the cut. TF contributors Geoff Dyer and John Banville were both tipped for Homework and Venetian Vespers respectively. Elsewhere, Róisín Lanigan – whose article on the worst Tesco in London found an unlikely admirer in Michael Gove – bought out her debut novel to rich and deserved acclaim.
The Vale Valley
Tom Stoppard. Jilly Cooper. Pam Hogg. Martin Parr. Diane Keaton. We lost a lot of TF-coded legends this year, and, of course, we felt the loss of John Carey particularly hard. The emeritus professor of English literature at Merton College, Oxford, was kind enough to field our responses for the ensemble piece ‘Why Are You Asking Me This?’ all the way back in the spring of 2021. We print our full correspondence with Professor Carey below.
Great Glittering Hearts
We’re sure that you’ve ignored what we said at the beginning of the newsletter about a ‘vibeshift’ about tech companies and reading and attention spans, as we would like to draw your attention, once more, to a social media account that has brought us no little joy this year. Vuncle is a TikTokker from the suburbs of Montgomery, Alabama, and has dedicated his life to celebrating the quotidian joys of England, the wonderful country in which we live.
Though if you’re looking for something a little more upmarket, might we direct you to a late(r) entry: ‘Dukie Tours’, which has provided many people with much happiness over the festive period.
Dine & Dash
The most exciting restaurant of the year? Bruton’s Osip (though it did open in 2019, truth be told). Both Giles Coren and the Time Out crew acclaim it as the best restaurant in Britain. Now that a Sunday visit to an unremarkable north London gastropub checks in at just under £100 per head, it is genuinely astonishing how chef Merlin Labron-Johnson catapults you to the frontier of English cuisine for double that price. He will not have one Michelin star for long, nor will you be able to go there when he receives his due garlands. But for now, you can win a whole evening (for two!) at the Somerset auberge, the whole tasting menu, with the wine pairing, all for free – you just need to enter our prize draw to bag yourself the most memorable evening of next year.
All in the Game
Many of you will remember our investigation into malpractice in the heart of the Diocese of London, in which Tim Wyatt spoke to more than ten priests who had their lives upended by a convicted fraudster’s confected dossier. Published in April 2024, our piece built on the excellent work already done by Private Eye and the Church Times, so we were pleasantly surprised to see Channel 4’s Cathy Newman blaze the story as an EXCLUSIVE just before Christmas. It’s great to see more people cover this story, and we hope it might lead to some justice for the victims, and maybe a nice prize for Cathy, too, for all her hard work.
Lord Iveagh’s Conceit
Guinness is a wonderful drink, of that there can be no doubt. But the 9/10 beverage has, over the centuries, been accompanied by an 11/10 marketing campaign, and their latest effort might well be the most devilish yet. For the release of a ‘Harp Guide’ listing the pubs that serve the best Guinness is a masterclass in brand positioning. There is no sliding order for a pint of Guinness. It can either be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – it’s made in a factory and shipped in kegs. The quality of the drink in the pint depends on a small number of factors too boring to list here. If the French started traversing the planet marking up which restaurants serve the best glass of Badoit under some ‘Santé List’, they would be duly and deservedly mocked. Imagine if the denizens of Atlanta started to mutter about which burger bar in Paris offers the best glass of Coca-Cola. You catch the drift.
All that being said, this was the year that the great British boozer came rocketing back – where we go, fashion follows. The best pub of the year? It’s been going for quite some time, but we’re going to plump for The Cock Tavern, the RMT’s local, one of the last unvarnished pubs left in Zone 1. Waddling back to the gleam of St Pancras after four pints there is to experience London at its best.
There we have it. Do please remember to enter The Fence’s Fighting Fund – this is the last chance saloon, so to speak. The office is open again, so if you’d like to speak to us about an order, you can do so at support@the-fence.com, and all pitches to editorial@the-fence.com please. The postcode with the highest number of TF subscribers is SE5, followed by SE15. We look forward to joining you again in the new year.
All the best,
TF