The Hindu, the Muslim and the Christian
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a strip of concrete in a yard that slopes so sharply that the word ‘pitch’ feels like a courtesy. It runs uphill. It has grooves in it, scars from some forgotten building project, and when the plastic ball with the seam lands on one, it spits up at your throat like it has taken personal offence. The stumps are plastic. … Continue reading The Hindu, the Muslim and the Christian
If I Were a Carpenter
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE John Musgrave spells out the importance of this winter’s hunting season. The last two weeks of October see the opening of the Hunting Season 2026/27. This may well prove the most important for the future of Britain. Packs of foxhounds, beagles and bassets take to the Field of Honour as torchbearers of resistance against the woke-joke authoritarians stamping down on the face … Continue reading If I Were a Carpenter
Dale Vince and the 25% Fiction
BY ALEXIA JAMES Take a look at this nonsense from Cwis Packham’s mate, Dale Vince: Dale Vince wants you to believe he is a brave truth-teller standing athwart the water industry, but a line-by-line look at his claims shows a man who has mastered the art of the ideological gobshite: take a real problem, inflate the numbers, conflate categories, and shout it loudly enough that … Continue reading Dale Vince and the 25% Fiction
The Thornberry Derangement Syndrome
BY SEAN WALSH The late Michael Wharton was the genius behind the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Simple column. Therein he created a dystopian hellhole, fantasy when he wrote it, inhabited by a collection of ghastly Leftist caricatures (or at least they were at the time). This was all very prescient pre-lanyard cultural anticipation, and Wharton was smart enough to die before it all happened. The most … Continue reading The Thornberry Derangement Syndrome
A Prayer for Mid-October
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, we are halfway through October now, and the countryside has settled into the deep, golden hush that only autumn can bring. The mornings are sharp with frost, and the leaves are falling in earnest—not the gentle drift of early October, but a steady cascade of gold and russet and bronze. The hedgerows are stripped of their berries, the … Continue reading A Prayer for Mid-October
Autumn on the Smallholding
BY ALLISON LEE Autumn is a busy time on the smallholding. It’s time to plan ahead for the winter months and complete all essential jobs before the weather turns. Autumn is one of my favourite times of year. Because the weather is unpredictable, it can feel like the end of summer rather than the beginning of winter. With animals and a smallholding to keep, I … Continue reading Autumn on the Smallholding
The Great Sheep Run
BY ED ANDERSON With national elections and political drama in Spain it may be easy for rural issues to get pushed to the edges of the national debate but as luck would have it, (what we are christening) the Great Sheep Run from Trashumancia Foundation will be taking place on 25th October in the heart of Madrid. From not existing 33 years ago before naturalist … Continue reading The Great Sheep Run
All is Flat
BY ALEX STORY So, Trump brought the big boys to town. More than $15 trillion sat around the table for the White House Artificial Intelligence summit, represented by twenty-one of the world’s biggest companies at the end of September. Robotics, artificial intelligence and the economic impact of both were on the agenda. It led, Trump said, to the signing of a morally binding document, “almost … Continue reading All is Flat
The Quietest Virtue
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Civilised England, what remains of it, makes a sound, and it does not. The sound it makes is weather, the clink of china, the murmur of a nation waiting its turn, and, when pushed past all endurance, the sharp, righteous crack of incivility, delivered once and never unnecessarily repeated. The sound it does not make is the horn. Watch a country road. … Continue reading The Quietest Virtue
A Walk Along High Holborn
BY ANDREW MILNE Holborn and St Pancras is a strange place and not indicative of the wider country. I worked there once and indeed was a student up the road at the polytechnic in Kentish Town. Disconcerted at the bizarre by-election as the dust settles, squires should take heart from several little-reported facts. First: In a constituency with 70,000 registered voters just 12,000 turned out … Continue reading A Walk Along High Holborn
Was I Brainwashed by Russian Bots over Brexit?
BY SEAN WALSH I voted for Brexit because it seemed to me that the Russian bots who were trying to persuade us to leave the EU had better arguments than the UK officials who were cajoling us to stay. I judge these things on merit. I have seen nothing that has changed my mind. And one of those things I haven’t seen is Brexit, probably … Continue reading Was I Brainwashed by Russian Bots over Brexit?
A Prayer for Early October
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, October is upon us, and the countryside has begun its slow turn towards winter. The mornings are cool now, and there is a mist in the valley that lingers until the sun burns it away. The hedgerows are heavy with berries—haws and hips and sloes—and the swallows have gone, leaving the skies to the rooks and the redwings. … Continue reading A Prayer for Early October
Masham Sheep Fair
BY ALLISON LEE The famous annual Masham Sheep Fair takes place in Masham Market Square and around the town on the last weekend of September. In 2026, it was held on 26 and 27 September, and I went along to see what it was all about. The weather was a perfect blend of sunshine and a gentle breeze, with not a drop of rain in … Continue reading Masham Sheep Fair
An American Runs with the Bulls
BY DAVID CAMPBELL Back in the days when secondary school still demanded actual reading and the accompanying book reports, the literary canon was imposed upon us with all the subtlety of a blunt instrument: Steinbeck, Orwell, Melville, Wilde, Miller, Chaucer, Dickens, Brontë, Austen, and — looming over the lot like a Shakespearean ghost — the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare himself. Among these compulsory … Continue reading An American Runs with the Bulls
Law and Violence
BY IAN MITCHELL In the course of a long and thoughtful review of my book Russia and the Rule of Law, Dom Wightman wrote in Country Squire Magazine: “This is a monumental, eccentric, often maddening, and utterly indispensable work of historical synthesis that dares to ask the largest possible question: how does law deal with violence?” That question is key. How do peaceable folk deal … Continue reading Law and Violence
Quangos Out, Accountability In
BY BERT BURNETT The Conservatives’ vow to scrap Natural England and the Environment Agency and bring their powers back under direct ministerial control has set the cat among the pigeons at Defra. Victoria Atkins, the shadow Defra secretary, announced at the NFU breakfast briefing at the party conference that a Tory government would “restructure Defra completely” and abolish both quangos as the first stage of … Continue reading Quangos Out, Accountability In
A Mandate of None
CSM EDITORIAL Sir Jim Ratcliffe cannot run a football club. Manchester United have been a shambles under his stewardship, and no amount of petrochemical billions has bought him a clue about how to pick a manager or a sporting director. On that, the whole country is agreed. But on Britain, he is not wrong. Ratcliffe says the country is “on the slide.” He says high … Continue reading A Mandate of None
A Trillion Abaci
BY SEAN WALSH The discussion about machine intelligence is ramping up in the US as it starts to dawn on people that AI might be planning to destroy the planet. As with all things US, the argument is settling on political lines. Yes, really. President Trump has had it with people treating Artificial Intelligence with less deference than it deserves. He has solved the problem … Continue reading A Trillion Abaci
A Prayer for Autumn
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I’ve been thinking, this week, about the turning of the year. The mornings are cooler now, and there is a mist in the valley that lingers until noon. The hedgerows are heavy with berries—haws and hips and sloes—and the swallows are gathering on the wires, preparing for their long journey south. The leaves are beginning to turn, not … Continue reading A Prayer for Autumn
Goathland
BY ALLISON LEE Goathland is a picturesque moorland village in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. It attracts visitors from all over because it is renowned for being a filming location for ITV’s Heartbeat and the Harry Potter films. Goathland is about nine miles from the coastal town of Whitby and roughly an hour’s drive from York. It can be reached by the North Yorkshire … Continue reading Goathland