BY ROGER WATSON If you have a tendency towards depression, your lifelong marriage is on the rocks or if there are family skeletons that have long been locked up in a cupboard, this is not the film for you. Like most of the films in which he stars these days, this is another ‘Jim Broadbent and some other people’ film, such is the extent to … Continue reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
BY JAMIE FOSTER Tristan Voorspuy was a larger-than-life character. His obituary in the Daily Telegraph talked of: “a free-spirited alpha male. His greatest contribution was as a conservationist and safari guide, but he was always an engaging companion with great charm mixed with outrageous behaviour and glorious political incorrectness. Aged 61, born on 26th March 1955, he was shot dead on 5th March 2017 while … Continue reading Life on the Edge
BY ANDREW MOODY And then there was a new sound. A rhythm, dull and flat through the frozen air. Thud. Thud. Bang. Thud. Thud. Bang. I thought of the shields beaten by the Zulu impi. Thud. Thud. Bang. Thud. Thud. Bang. Many interesting successes of our social media led culture include the massively increased ability of the general public to both read and write more … Continue reading Cold
BY ROGER WATSON Having reviewed Philip Tucker’s book The Jasmine Sari in these pages, I was very keen to read his first novel An Englishman in Terror. It is an entirely different kind of book, but I was not disappointed. If asked to summarise this novel in one word, it would have to be ‘misery’. Still, this is the well-crafted misery of the main character … Continue reading An Englishman in Terror
BY JAMIE FOSTER In 1952, Norman Thelwell (1923-2004) penned his first cartoon for the satirical British magazine Punch, renowned internationally for its wit, irreverence, and for publishing the world’s best comic writers and poets. This led to a relationship that lasted for 25 years and over 1,000 cartoons, including 60 front covers. Thelwell was a master of sharp social comment and sheer zany humour, and … Continue reading The Effluent Society
BY ROGER WATSON Published in 2017, this book has had a recent publicity boost and one without which I may never have come across it. It is self-published by the author Philip Tucker, which may explain its obscurity, but the author has clearly and happily decided to invest in having it advertised on the London Calling and Weekly Sceptic podcasts, both of which feature journalist … Continue reading The Jasmine Sari
BY NIALL McCRAE During the recent World Cup, St George’s flags were conspicuous by their absence. There was little of the usual fervour when England reaches the later stages of the tournament. The reason for this is laid out, unwittingly, by Daily Telegraph chief sports writer Paul Hayward, whose book England Football: the Biography (2022) shows that there is no escape from woke ideology in … Continue reading Football Gives Way to Critical Race Theory
BY JAMIE FOSTER Surprisingly, this is only the second biography of Nicola Sturgeon ever published. The last one came out in 2015, and so has been overtaken by events. More importantly, this book is founded almost exclusively on what the First Minister said in parliament. It is not a collection of media stories, nor a bloodless academic “assessment”. It is the unarguable truth of what … Continue reading A New Book about Nicola Sturgeon
BY ANDREW MOODY Scarcely ten years after David O. Selznick had triumphantly opened Gone With the Wind, he was walking along a deserted street at dawn and saying to a companion: “Hollywood’s like Egypt. Full of crumbling pyramids. It’ll never come back. It’ll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands.” Another subtitle for Otto Friedrich’s superb, … Continue reading City of Nets
BY ALEXIA JAMES In 1975, David Shepherd wrote his autobiography ‘The Man Who Loves Giants’. Even though he was only 44, he had already achieved more than most could have in three lifetimes. Right up until his death in 2017, he continued to paint a huge variety of subjects; founded the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (which has, to date, raised over £10 million); renovated and … Continue reading David Shepherd – Artist and Conservationist
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Stephen Pax Leonard is Research Professor at Moscow State Linguistic University. Educated at Oxford and the Sorbonne, he previously held positions at Oxford and Cambridge. A writer, linguist and traveller, he is the author of six other books on the Arctic and sub-Arctic region. Lucky for us, Stephen occasionally writes for Country Squire Magazine and his articles can be found here. Stephen’s … Continue reading Annals of Solitude
BY QUENTIN PIGG Those familiar with George Monbiot’s journalism – to use the word in its loosest and most absurd sense – will know of his strange, almost pathological obsession with farmers. He writes endlessly about abolishing livestock farming and rewilding agricultural land, but shows little care or consideration as to what should happen to the families and communities for whom farming is not just … Continue reading Regenesis
BY ALEXIA JAMES If ever a factbook on deer were ordered by the CIA, then A Guide to the Deer of the World by lifelong naturalist and countryman Charles Smith-Jones would be it. This 320-page coffee table reference book is cutting edge – including several species of deer which have only recently become known to science. The book is beautifully illustrated with colour photographs. It … Continue reading A Guide to the Deer of the World
BY NICK PEARCE Providing a seasonal tour of a traditional farming year, passionate beef farmer Joe Stanley seeks to bridge this knowledge gap and inform the reader about the journey their food takes before it gets to the plate, revealing the realities of modern agricultural life for a British lowland farmer. Drawing on a lifetime of experience, he strips observations of the countryside and agricultural … Continue reading Farm to Fork
BY ANDREW MOODY In my younger days, I was introduced to The Smiths, the eighties guitar band founded by Morrissey and Johnny Marr. I was immediately drawn to their melancholy music, it spoke of a world of loneliness and poverty, of sexual ambiguity, of criminality. Johnny Marr was clearly a guitar prodigy, and Morrissey’s defiant vocal and poetic lyrics touched me in a way that … Continue reading Autobiography
BY JAMIE FOSTER Red Rag to a Bull by Jamie Blackett is a delightful read. It tells of the rural life experienced by Blackett when he leaves the army and comes home to take over the family estate in the lowlands of Scotland. Every aspect of rural life is covered from the frustrations of rodding the drains to the joys of raising cattle on his … Continue reading Red Rag to a Bull
BY MARTIN GRANGER The landing was terrifying. The crescent-shaped Pacific atoll was so small that they had built a concrete runway, like an aircraft carrier, on the side. We landed with only a few feet to spare. My cameraman and I looked at each other, took a deep breath, and walked out of the aircraft into the blazing heat. We had been commissioned by Channel … Continue reading Oceans on Fire
