Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence, a newsletter that welcomes heatwaves, but within reason. We will have a slightly slimmer newsletter for the next few weeks as we send Issue 29 to design. This is a reminder that we do have space for a late-entry five-star feature, so if you have one handy, do drop a line to editorial@the-fence.com and we will attend to you there.
Issue 28 continues to be seen around and about. It has received a dose of praise from legendary art director, Robert Newman and it’s been lined up against a wall in Soho. It’s been pictured alongside some quite doleful cats in a trendy apartment and at WH Smith Victoria. Here it is enjoying a slap-up breakfast and here at the San Francisco Art Book Fair and now sunning it up on the island of Hydra. It’s all happening!
Keep sending your best snaps through to editorial@the-fence.com or tagging us on social media, and you might win a bottle of Bollinger, an OTT reward from a small magazine.
On that note, there is a declining bundle of Issue 28s left at the depot, so please bag yours, or even better, score a subscription at the link below.
Our sister title Capital Letter has a review of the latest (excellent) outpost of the Jackson Boxset mini-empire and there are some less positive words for a new bar in Mayfair. It’s really very good and worth signing up for, if we don’t mind saying so ourselves.
As we said, a shorter outing this week, let’s get it going.
The London Fencimonic
Thank you to all the professional classical musicians who have got in touch with us for our planned piece. If you pluck an instrument for money, then we want to hear from you – send through an email to editorial@the-fence.com as we are very keen to hear from a couple more of you.
Homes for Heroes
Phin Jennings writes regularly for Capital Letter and spent months on the long investigation into Stuart Semple, which was the lead feature in the last issue.
Phin and his girlfriend – who is lovely, by the way – placed an ad in the LRB backpages, which we produce below.
Have you got more bedrooms than you know what to do with? You would do well to drop Phin a line, he is a responsible yet charming man who doesn’t deserve to pay four figures a month on the rental market.
No Comment
In light of the Groucho gracing headlines yet again, we feel inclined to remind you of Fonie Mitsopoulou’s fantastic deep dive into the dramatic demise of the once-lauded members club from issue 27 – available to read on our shiny new website.
Fuck Literature – How Were the Sausages?
Alongside our shiny new website, we have a shiny new columnist, John Niven. The O Brother author met Wendy Erskine – Belfast’s answer to Joan Didion – for supper in her hometown, taking on the elegant menu at OX. Pull up a chair.
Get Off the App
Fergus Butler-Gallie’s brilliant piece on Rory Stewart and his big bet is now on Instagram in its entirety. You can read it here. This piece really is too juicy to be ‘socials-first’ so we don’t really know what we’re doing with regards to editorial strategy… the heat is getting to us.
Soup to Nuts
It’s a family affair in John Banville’s latest piece, paying tribute to a beloved Dublin institution alongside his daughter, Ellen Quinn Banville. Charting the lifespan of Dunne & Crescenzi, an effusively charming Italian restaurant operating since the turn of the century, the pair recommend just about anything on the menu, settling in, and, for certain guests, sitting with your back to the wall.
In Case You Missed It
Some excellent work on the hideous Astley Warehouses, courtesy of Zoe Bread.
Emily Wilson reviews Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
An enjoyable piece from Jay Caspian Kang, about downwardly mobile children living at home with their parents in their 20s and 30s.
And Finally
One figure from that time who still stands the test of time is Gordon Ramsay, who in 2026 looks comfortably a decade younger than he did in the 1990s. All of his early TV programmes are as good as it gets, but for our money, Beyond Boiling Point might be the finest of them all, and the whole series is available to dig into here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC6dHoEvhEo
That is indeed that for this week, and we will be back in a week’s time – all technical questions are to be directed to support@the-fence.com. The oldest living Olympian is the wonderfully named Rhoda Wurtele-Eaves, a Canadian skier who is 104 years young.
All the best,
TF