Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome back to Off The Fence, a newsletter that begins where it means to and ends where it shouldn’t. And a briefish edition is today, too: the penultimate of the year. We’ll be back three days hence with what we hope will be a bracing review of 2025, the year that was.
There have been two articles about this very publication that have come out lately that are yet to be shared on this mail-out. The first is an interview with art director, Mathias Clottu, about how he put together the beautiful magazine that is Issue 26, and how he has cohered the visual identity so far. Then there is a longish piece on Press Gazette with Charlie Baker, where the editor talks about our year so far (not that there’s much year left), what we are looking to achieve with The Fence’s Fighting Fund, and what 2026 holds for us.
On that note, we are now three-quarters of our way to our goal, and we really do need a few more of you to take the plunge and join the prize draw, not least as the appeal ends in nine days, and then your opportunity to win something truly incredible will have gone. Those glittering prizes really are too good to be true.
So do enter, and if you’ve already done so, please do share the appeal on social media – some of you have made some lovely Instagram stories with a nice link, which has been helpful indeed.
Now, as with all other times in the calendar year, there has never been a better time to subscribe to the magazine, and with the code PRINT15, you can get 15 per cent off all subscriptions to the magazine, that’s print, digital or both.
In three days, we’ll be taking a look askance at 2025, but first, let’s look at the top hitters of the year for The Fence.
Top of the Tree
We have published some real gems this year, with two entries in the FT’s ‘Best non-FT articles’ of the year list. Here are the top ten (11) most popular pieces we’ve run this year, in no particular order apart from the top two.
Georgia Brown’s feature about the Borstal Boys in her life – her brother, her father and her grandfather were all locked up as children, and it marked them for life – is one of the most searing personal essays we’ve ever published.
Abutting the sylvan glades of Hampstead Heath, you will find a brutalist compound of unremitting ugliness. This is the Russian Trade Delegation, regarded by the British government as a ‘nest of spies’. But what’s really been going on inside its walls? John Phipps tried to ring the bell.
Lotte Brundle wrote the two most popular pieces we published in 2024, and even though she is now a full-time staffer at Country Life, that didn’t stop her from storming back into this list with a dispatch from Battersea, and the most basic night in London.
Eva Wiseman’s short story made the cover of Issue 24, and was by some distance the most popular piece of fiction we’ve carried all year.
Can we pull you for a chat? Snake Denton’s piece about his near-career as a Love Islander, and how auditioning for the show made him come to terms with his sexuality, was an all-time TF classic.
The Lebedev-skewerers, Miles Ellingham and Cormac Kehoe, returned at the start of the year to profile Justin Welby, possibly the worst Archbishop of Canterbury since Thomas Arundel.
Jack Beaumont worked as a teaching assistant in a south London SEND school – his account of his troubles and joys there was one of the most impactful pieces of our year, and one of the greatest ‘insider’ pieces we’ve ever run.
We must draw a discreet veil on how Bron Maher’s long-read on the Tina Triangle was commissioned. Suffice to say, it’s a magic piece of reportage.
Katie Lewis’ account of her relationship with the don of indie sleaze, Pete Doherty, is a terrifying insight into what it’s like to date a rock star, but is also, somehow, pretty funny too.
Now the second most popular piece we published all year was something we ran last year… Tim Wyatt’s investigation into corruption in the Diocese of London enjoyed a second life when Sarah Mullally was elected as Archbishop of Canterbury. (On which more in three days.)
By far our biggest piece of the year, though, was… Hotel Britannica. What this all goes to say is that if you’ve got an amazing story to tell – or you know someone who does – please do get in touch at editorial@the-fence.com.
We’re looking forward to joining you in three days with a bumper round-up of the year. Remember that you can score a subscription at a discounted price for friends and family and foes, and that we are almost there with The Fence’s Fighting Fund, but do need your help with the final push. Until the next time.
All the best,
TF