Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to the last newsletter of the year. We hope you are enjoying what has become unfortunately known as ‘Betwixtmas’. We certainly are. It’s such a pleasure to see that Issue 18 is landing so sweetly with readers. There have been some wonderful, suitably festive reactions to our Coming of Age on social media. Joe Fattorini said we were both daft but also ‘the only people with the minerals to publish some seriously powerful investigative pieces too’. Colleen Cheetham-Gerrard’s corgi thinks The Fence is the perfect Christmas, or indeed Betwixtmas, read. And Louis Elton, creator of the Based Evil Turbulence Index, smuggled Issue 18 as precious cargo through Gatwick North.
We’re in the final stretch towards our goal of reaching 1,000 new subscriptions for the year. We are now up to 994, so if you’ve been waiting to sign up, now is the moment. It would be the perfect New Year’s Resolution (to read more).
I Resolve to Support Independent Media
146 Questions with Dolly Alderton
After just two short years, our famed 146 Question series – in which we force some poor soul to answer as many of our 146 questions as they can manage in 146 seconds – is back. Stepping into the fray this time is Dolly Alderton, who took on the big topics of the day. That’s everything from how many XL bullies she thinks she would be able to murder, whether Malala should get divorced, and how many of society’s current problems we can attribute to Tony Blair. She actually answered that last one as well. Read the other 143 questions here, and then email editorial@the-fence.com to tell us what we missed.
This Is How She Wins
The trick with a good dating app profile is to essentially lie to all potential matches by presenting a version of yourself that is slightly less weird than the person you actually are. Or you pick the photos you look hottest in, even if they’re slightly out of date now. If you don’t believe us then believe NYC It Girl Julia Fox, who was spotted recently on celebrity, starfucker and network dweeb dating platform Raya, looking suspiciously normie. In one photo she’s wearing a tiara! Either someone is catfishing as mid-2010s Julia Fox, or Julia Fox really knows what she’s doing now she’s done with the fashion-adjacent men and ready for Raya’s worst finance bros.
The Fence Is not Just for Christmas
We’re always saying (and we’re right to do so) that a subscription to the UK’s only magazine would make a perfect gift. And we’ve even made some lovely prints over the years. But we’re delighted to discover readers are getting creative with their gift-giving too. One subscriber told us she uses back issues of the magazine to wrap her Christmas presents in. And @ ashmrae went one step further, framing our Fleet Street Kids heights list herself. If we ran a limited edition illustrated poster run, would you be interested in buying one? Do let us know.
In Case You Missed It
In one of the punchiest bits of criticism we’ve read all year, Hannah Williams asks whether Taylor Swift’s uncritical reception demeans us all.
Before Ripley, Patricia Highsmith was a successful comics writer – cartoonist Ali Fitzgerald goes in search of lost panels.
A moving essay on grief and friendship over Christmas from Jonn Elledge
The strange case of the Jan 6th rioter nabbed by his dating profile.
From the Intercept: did a legend of True Crime frame an innocent man for murder?
And Finally
We lost a lot of greats in 2023, including the late Martin Amis. So it was a delight to rediscover this gem of an interview with the author and veteran broadcaster Jeremy Isaacs where he talks, among other things, about his insecurity with his own height and his belief that writers who encourage their children to become writers are inherently egotistical. A particular highlight here, wherein Isaac pauses before asking ‘do you like women’. Amis, after another pause, says ‘yep’. Glad we cleared that up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcXaRr36ijo
God we really did like Mart. What a loss. We’ve had a pretty exhausting December, so we’re going to take a week off and join on Tuesday 8 Jan, and we’ll be keeping it slow and steady from there on in. Until then.
All the best,
TF