BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The first herald of oblivion was not a sound, but a scent. It crept into the sanctum of Chandrakant Deshmukh’s slumber like the ghost of a forgotten epoch, a primordial musk of sun-scorched earth and overripe fruit, an olfactory violation of his whitewashed walls and the sterile geometry of his meticulously ordered existence. He surfaced from the depths of an afternoon nap … Continue reading The Unsealed Window
BY NICHOLAS ENGERT In a world of over abundance and hence over consumption, we increasingly fail to discern between what is truly beautiful and yet functional and the cheap or vulgar alternative. Consider three simple objects we use around our homes, namely a pencil, a flower pot and a tea towel. So pedestrian and mundane are these articles we fail to appreciate that their elegance … Continue reading Simple, Elegant & Functional
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The English countryside does not shout. It simply is. Consider the hedge. Not the clipped suburban thing, but the ancient wall of hawthorn and bramble, wild rose and blackthorn, woven against wind and time. The hedge-layer knows what we have forgotten. He bends the long whips nearly to the ground, wounds them so they send up thicker shoots. Strength lies not in … Continue reading The Wisdom of Entanglement
BY ALEC SWAN There comes a time, usually when the first frost bites hard and the last curlew’s call fades across a barren moor, when one must ask serious questions of those entrusted with the guardianship of our natural world. Are they merely incompetent, or have they, in the words of a more cynical age, simply come to see the public as an endless cash … Continue reading Hoarding, Hypocrisy, Hollow Promises
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I have been thinking, this week, about the quiet rebellion of doing nothing. In a world that constantly demands more—more productivity, more output, more engagement—the act of simply stopping feels almost dangerous. We have forgotten how to rest. We treat our Sundays like any other day, filling them with chores and errands and the endless scrolling of screens. The … Continue reading A Prayer for the Gift of Rest
BY ALLISON LEE The Ryedale Show is held annually on the last Tuesday in July; this year, it fell on the 28th. Established in 1855, it is a traditional agricultural show run for the farming and local communities, and it truly has something to offer everyone. Though much smaller than the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate, Ryedale remains highly popular. Set against the picturesque Duncombe Park … Continue reading The Ryedale Show
BY STEPHEN PAX LEONARD The Arday scandal is a chance to ‘restore’ academia in Britain Following the tragic death of Jason Arday, the Prime Minister has called for a period of reflection. I agree. We need to reflect on how we can avoid such a tragedy happening again and how we can restore the intellectual rigour of academia in Britain. Instead of removing the systemic … Continue reading From DEI to Dystopia: Reclaiming the University’s True Purpose
BY NIALL MCCRAE Passing Port Talbot en route to Pembrokeshire for a family holiday, I gazed across the vast complex of furnaces, chimneys and warehouses, all lying silent since the Net Zero axe was wielded by Ed Miliband (until recently Keir Starmer’s minister for energy rationing). Most of the heavy industry of South Wales has disappeared, leaving rundown towns with high streets occupied by vape … Continue reading Who Rules Best? Lords of the Manor or Marxist Milibands?
BY ALEX STORY The Progressive haunts our public square. You will find him effortlessly promoting his creed on our screens, our universities, the HR departments of our largest companies, our civil service and our parliament. He is part of our “new establishment“, according to Andrew Neil, the veteran broadcaster. He is everywhere. You know him because he tells you, shamelessly, when he introduces himself. He … Continue reading The Progressive
BY DR ALEX BARATTA As George Bernard Shaw famously said, “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him”. In 2026, this quote still has arguable validity, though it’s perhaps not about hatred per se. Rather, accent bias is more to do with believing that certain accents are a bad fit for specific professions and … Continue reading Accent – The Last Taboo in Britain
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a madness peculiar to the over-educated, chronically online progressive—a psychosis of over-correction, not always malice, though the post-Widdicombe-Kirk strain is real and includes those capable of more than mere cruelty. It is the fever of a machine built to measure injustice, running so hot it melts its own circuitry. Thankfully, we are hearing its death rattle. But death rattles can … Continue reading The Eradication of Difference
BY MANRAJ ATWAL The King is dead; Long live the King! Or so the media declare as Britain faces up to its seventh Prime minister in a decade. The seemingly ritualistic axing of our head of government has been accompanied by all the usual rites. The choir of voices declaring “The grownups are back in charge”, the scuttling of MPs as they preach the virtues … Continue reading Devolution Is a Deflection, Not a Diagnosis
CSM EDITORIAL Amidst a political landscape saturated with gaffes, scandals, and the dystopian reality of an unelected Prime Minister in Andy Burnham, one might expect the Conservative Party to be capitalising on every Labour misstep with ruthless efficiency. The resignation then reappointment of Louise Haigh amidst her fraud conviction, the myriad of CV mistruths emanating from the inexperienced Labour frontbench, and the sheer illegitimacy of … Continue reading A Gift to Death-Spiral Labour
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, escaped the gallows at Nuremberg by convincing the court he had known nothing of the Holocaust. It was in his 1971 BBC interview, where his evasions were most apparent. What does Speer’s later life reveal about the gap between public performance and private torment? Drawing on historical scholarship and the testimony of those closest to Speer, the … Continue reading The Architecture of a Lie
BY ALLISON LEE I had the pleasure of visiting the Great Yorkshire Show again this year, and it was another fantastic experience. Due to high demand, the number of tickets increased from 35,000 per day to 37,500, and all four days sold out. Despite the lengthy queues to enter the showground, our usual hour-long journey took almost three times as long. The event was well … Continue reading The Great Yorkshire Show
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a silence that falls over a Devon wood in high summer. Not an absence of noise, but an absence of argument. The oaks on the Taw Valley do not hold referenda on whether to unfurl their leaves. The badgers on Dartmoor do not form working groups to reconsider the velocity of their digging. The River Exe does not consult a … Continue reading Nature’s Unwritten Constitution
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Why Gary Stevenson’s Crusade is Economically Illiterate In the crowded marketplace of economic punditry, Gary Stevenson has carved out a profitable niche. With the zeal of a convert, he stalks the media studios, wielding his LSE and Oxford credentials like a cudgel, proclaiming himself a ‘proper economist’ while peddling a simplistic, morally grandiose solution to a problem he has defined entirely in … Continue reading The Inequality Con
BY PERCY THORLEY When I was at school, many decades ago, it was considered a cardinal sin to ever deploy the word “nice” in an English essay or composition. It is a word of no real intent. One hears it all the time – “I will have a nice cup of tea” or “That Andy Burnham seems like a nice chap”. From such sentences we … Continue reading Honourable
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a primal brutality to the schoolyard pick. It is a distillation of human worth, stripped of all social veneer and political correctness—a moment of unvarnished truth where utility is measured in cold, kinetic terms. At prep school, the scholarship cohort was a tragicomedy: thirteen of us, anointed as the brightest, yet a mere four could coordinate hand and eye well … Continue reading The Charity Draft
CSM EDITORIAL The old certainties have taken a battering this week. One of British politics’ most gloriously unrepentant characters has been snatched from us in circumstances so dark they seem to belong to another world entirely. There will be those who never cared for Ann Widdecombe’s views. She would have been the first to acknowledge that, probably with a theatrical sigh and a brisk “so … Continue reading Ann Widdecombe: A Singular Voice Falls Silent
