One Week Free Trials Are Now Open for J’accuse

Closing on the 27th of December

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Free seven-day trials are now open on J’accuse for a limited amount of time. The paywall at the bottom should prompt you to take on the trial. Join us.

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Salve, comrades.

Many of our younger readers will have been on holiday from School and University for the better part of a month.

Others will now be making the faithful trudge back from that flatshare on the Caledonian Road to their parent’s six-bedroom house in Fuckinghamshire.

Then there will be the true Londoners, like the authors. Making the most of the soon-to-be deserted royal parks which line the wide avenues of the Capital.

Or perhaps you get your J’accuse from further afield. Paris. New York. Jeddah. Kuala Lumpur. Tokyo.

Wherever you are this Christmas, there is a good chance that you will have a lot of free time on your hands. Why not spend some of it reading through our extensive back-catalogue? Until the 27^th, you will be able to take out a free one-week trial of J’accuse. The many articles you have been unable to access over the past year will suddenly be visible.

I am often asked why we paywall our articles, a practice we have engaged in since the very beginning. Would it not make more sense to grow our audience for a few years before asking for money?

In all honesty, it is not just about the money. I think it is important that readers make an investment in us. It builds a sort of moral bond. A sense of obligation, in an increasingly deracinated and alienated world. One which flows both ways.

But I am painfully aware of the fact that there are many young people out there who might not have access to a debit card, or might not have the surplus income to take out a paid subscription.

The truth is that many of our best articles are completely behind the paywall, and free subscribers never get to enjoy them.

This is actually against best commercial practice. Substack advises writers to paywall their worst content and use the best to draw people in, but we think our paid subscribers deserve a reward.

But that does mean, sadly, that much of the deserving poor are missing out on the Gospel.

As a child, I was not even allowed to have a Club Penguin Membership, a resentment I shall be mulling over when I see my own family next week.

This compromise is the best I can do. Hopefully you are able to persuade your parents, or an older sibling that you will remember to cancel the paid subscription before we take a charge.

As sorry as I feel for myself, I do feel sorrier for younger people, particularly those who had years of education stolen from them by the pandemic. Everything we do, we do for you, to pay back the moral debt for failing to protect you from the hysterical parents and teachers who made your young life a misery in those dreadful years.

Here follows some excerpts from paid only articles which you will not have seen as a free subscriber this year.

Britain’s Red Summer, 1919 13/2/2025

St George’s day thoughts 24/4/2025

The Thick of It 1/8/2025

And now, for the paywall. Underneath it, a rare Carrie Johnson.