Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome. We are announcing something special: The Fence’s Fighting Fund, a prize draw where you can wine something incredible, and help turbocharge our future.
As with everything we do, we’ve gone all out on this, and our top prize is an experience at Britain’s best restaurant, Osip in Bruton. You’ll get a night’s stay in the gorgeous auberge and a signature tasting menu for two, accompanied by the wine pairing. That’s 10 courses from chef Merlin Labron Johnson’s Michelin-starred kitchen, for you and your lucky accomplice. If you’ll permit us to be vulgar, the whole thing would cost you about £1,500, but you’ll be able to get the whole thing for free, you devil.
Don’t think les bon temps end there either. We’ve got vouchers of £250 each at two of the hottest spots: at Mountain in Soho, where chef Tomos Parry has created perhaps the most exciting new restaurant in London, and you can have a weekend of it at Updown Farmhouse, just outside Deal, where delicious Anglo-Italian fare is served in the Kentish countryside. Glamour magazine are calling it the ‘perfect English retreat’ – and who are we to argue?
Now we’ve gone down to the cellar and fetched up something really special: a case of Chateau Musar 2018, an iconic wine from Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, a great vintage and one you will be able to enjoy in the years to come, not least as you’ll have six bottles of the stuff to work through.
Attention, please, fashionistas: there’s a KNWLS Razr bag (RRP: £945) to be won here, and two beautiful cashmere shawls from Maharani Trading are up for grabs. For those of you who like a night out of it, there are two tickets to see The Streets perform at Alexandra Palace on 16 July next year, where Mike Skinner will perform the whole of A Grand Don’t Come For Free front-to-back.
Our pints correspondent, Jimmy McIntosh, has become a social media superstar in the last couple of years, and you can win a pub crawl with him and your friends on a booze cruise of your choosing. Our editor-at-large, Fergus Butler-Gallie, will be taking someone on a tour of the churches of the City of London the editor-in-chief, Charlie Baker, will be leading a walking tour of Soho, which will be followed by drinks.
There are lots of smaller prizes too. But should we say a lifetime subscription to The Fence magazine is a small prize? Either way, there are three of those ready for the taking. There are two units of our board game, ‘Pandemillions’, available, and we’ve got two signed A2 prints of Paul Cox’s ‘Pride of Merseyside’ to hang on your wall. Then there’s 15 gift subscriptions (lasting for a year) and 15 ‘2025 Boxes’, which comprise of a tote bag and all of the magazines we’ve made these last 12 months, which really would make for a very generous post-Christmas present. So there we have it: a ludicrous assembly of prizes, all waiting to be won.
Why You Should Enter
Six years ago, when the magazine was started, we had no idea that the magazine would become so beloved with its subscribers, and would win praise from the likes of Graydon Carter, Marina Hyde and Patrick Radden Keefe. In 2026 and beyond, we’re looking to turbocharge The Fence’s growth, and help it reach brave new heights in the quality of journalism it delivers.
There is a real sense of pride in how we’ve produced a magazine of genuine ambition at an affordable sum in deeply challenging market conditions. But now we’re looking to raise money for two specific things. Over the years we have become known for our investigations, which have ranged from Mark Blacklock’s barnstorming deep dive into the decades of scandals at Queen Ethelburga’s School, or this profile of the bizarre figure that is Evgeny Lebedev, proprietor of the Evening Standard. We would like to bolster our schedule, to publish more frequently and especially to report on the many untold stories around Britain, where local news outlets have been in retreat.
Over the years, we’ve had many brilliant young staffers come and join us for a week, and sometimes longer – many of them have gone on to better things, at the London Review of Books, at the Times and Country Life, not to mention innumerable bylines and book deals. Any decent publication must have an injection of youth to sustain it, so we would hire two more editorial assistants on a part-time basis next year, to help the current team deliver stories from London and further afield.
Our quarterly magazine has reached a circulation of 6,000, and it is joined by two newsletters, one that arrives weekly and another fortnightly. All of this is done with one full-time member of staff. So the more you give, the more we can do in 2026 and beyond.
The Nuts and Bolts
The premise is simple. £25 gets you one entry into the prize draw. £50 gets you three, £100 gets you eight, and if you’re feeling generous with £250, we’ll match your beneficence with 25 entries – enough to put you in with a chance of sweeping the board.
If you’d like to enter for free, there is a route for you, as detailed below: please remember, though, that the free route limits you to one entry only, and must conform to the guidelines specified in our Terms & Conditions.
The prize draw window is open today, and closes on Tuesday 6 January 2026, whereupon we will draw the winners and start doling out the prizes – a boon for the new year to all lucky winners. All entries will expand our editorial mission, and could land you something seriously sweet in return. Buy in, tell your friends, and best of luck.
Now we are indebted to all our readers who share and publicise our work on social media. We would love it if you could share the appeal on X, which you can do so here.
Or you can do it on Bluesky as well. Thank you so much for everyone who’s helped us along the way
We’ll back on Tuesday for a conventional ‘Off The Fence’. Until then.
All the best,
TF