BY ALLISON LEE Coxwold is a picturesque village in North Yorkshire, not far from where I live, and I have visited it on numerous occasions. Although small—there are fewer than 300 inhabitants and around 100 dwellings—it has a lot to offer visitors. Many of the houses in the village still retain their garths: long strips of land behind each property. (A little bird tells me the … Continue reading Coxwold
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN I have never much liked the Elgin Marbles debate. Not because it is unimportant, but because it is the wrong battlefield. It is a quarrel about beauty, about national prestige, about who paid for the boat. Lord Elgin, whatever his faults, did not tear the pediments from the Parthenon while holding a gun to Athena’s head. He took them with a dodgy permit from an … Continue reading Of Gods, Dust, and the Limits of Imperial Curatorship
BY ALEXIA JAMES Jeena Raghavan is a rising force in contemporary art, and her name – which fittingly means “to live” – already says much about her work. In a world where so many artists are shaped by formal education and traditional career paths, Raghavan stands out as a refreshing anomaly. Her story begins unconventionally. Born in London and raised in Bangalore from the age … Continue reading Jeena Raghavan
BY CALUM CAMPBELL The Scottish Government has made peatland restoration a cornerstone of its climate change strategy. Through the NatureScot Peatland ACTION team, and in close partnership with the Cairngorms National Park and the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park, a major programme of landscape-scale intervention is underway. With over 20% of Scotland’s land area covered by peat, the stated goals are ambitious: improve water … Continue reading The Peatland Paradox: When Restoration Becomes Destruction
BY JACK WATSON For less than the price of a couple of cocktails (£7 / 25 East Caribbean dollars), you can step into 44 acres of Caribbean adventure, history, and jaw-dropping beauty at Pigeon Island National Park. During my college trip to St. Lucia, we discovered Pigeon Island—and it ended up being the highlight of our two weeks. This national park packs in 18th-century British fort … Continue reading Pigeon Island: A National Treasure
BY PAUL T HORGAN The ‘Guilty Men’ narrative in the Britain of July 1940 was a necessary myth. The state had given itself such massive powers in the wake of the Dunkirk evacuation as to be a revolution from above, so a superficially credible legend had to be created, as is the case for all revolutions, to justify the legal appropriation of so many traditional liberties. The rapid German … Continue reading Ponzi, Panzer, and Plunder
BY DAVID CAMPBELL I hail from Western Pennsylvania, that fertile crescent of gridiron greatness known to Wikipedia as the Cradle of Quarterbacks. Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Joe Namath—the list runs to three dozen and more. There are probably more professional American football players from those few counties than from anywhere else on earth. I grew up in the era of the Pittsburgh Steelers … Continue reading An American Who Became a Football Fan
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The town thinks the British farmer was born to be ruled. They imagine him touching his forelock. They see him shuffling aside for the lord’s carriage. Nothing could be further from the truth. The British farmer did not inherit the land. He won it. And he has had to win it again in every century since the first plough bit the soil. … Continue reading The Farm
BY ALLISON LEE Whitby Wildlife Sanctuary started in 2009 when Alexandra Smith recognised a growing need for a safe, permanent place for injured, orphaned, sick and displaced wildlife in the local area. Alexandra’s journey began when she started volunteering at her local veterinary practice and chose to care for two pigeons that needed long-term care. As most veterinary practices are unable to house wild animals … Continue reading Whitby Wildlife Sanctuary
BY PAUL T HORGAN The news from what is being described as the ‘Iran War’ is that there is no news, well none about the actual fighting. This is normal. A study of war reporting, especially of the wartime periodicals that would emerge for every major conflict up to WWII, demonstrates that the actualité of the combat would take at least several days if not weeks or … Continue reading The Hormuz War
BY NICHOLAS ENGERT It is at once nonsensical but utterly pleasurable. And it is this pastime which has stolen my leisure, not to mention my writing time, during the past two months. I of course blame my younger son who, inventively, gave us a rather charming jigsaw for Christmas. It is not as if we do not have a cupboard full of the darn things … Continue reading Wasgij
BY ALEX STORY By Munich, on the Isar, a fast-moving river, every summer, mostly in the sun, hundreds of large rafts float down one after the other, transported by the stream. Each carries up to forty people, a sausage & beer stand, and a music band. Men wear lederhosen, women dirndl, the traditional dress that shows just enough to make you wonder but too little … Continue reading The Fragile Raft
BY SEAN WALSH The scene. From time to time the dialectic gets feisty and on rare occasions almost physical. A meeting of the Cambridge 1946 Moral Science Club, according to some of those present, was one such occasion. Note that recollections differ, as they say1. What might have happened is this: the very intense Ludwig Wittgenstein threatened the visiting speaker, Karl Popper, with a fire poker, in the course … Continue reading Wittgenstein, Popper and the Poker
CSM EDITORIAL There is a rhythm to the countryside that city clocks do not measure. It is marked not by the chime of the hour, but by the turn of the season, the rise of the beck, and the quiet, relentless work of those who manage the land. For generations, that rhythm has included a practice that, to the uninitiated, might appear jarring: the row … Continue reading Keep Them Hanging
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust this Sunday finds you well, perhaps with a fresh pot of tea at your elbow and the week’s newsprint scattered about you. As I look out from my window, the countryside is putting on its finest show. There is a particular quality to the light on a Sunday morning, isn’t there? It’s a light that seems to … Continue reading A Prayer for Peace
BY SLOBODAN ANTONIJEVIC Growing up in a country where inflation was measured in thousands and banknotes displayed billions, while at the same time trying to avoid the supposedly democratic, friendly, and for-our-own-good NATO bombs, was certainly a tough and challenging experience for a young man in his late twenties. However, every crisis inevitably produces its adaptive mechanisms; after all, people are, by nature, designed to … Continue reading A Ray of Light from the Balkans
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a particular species of academic for whom the English countryside exists only as a theoretical inconvenience. They view it through the steamed-up window of a train carriage hurtling from one metropolitan seminar to another, or perhaps through the carefully curated lens of a BBC costume drama they once dissected in a journal article. It is a landscape of the mind, … Continue reading The English Countryside Does Not Exist?
BY ALEX STORY “Whose you for?”, asked the rotund lass with a swarm of multi-hued father-less children running around the front porch. “Cambridge”, I replied. “Tough luck, chuck. I’m Oxford”. The colours had a lot to do with it, I discovered, and the fact that the Boat Race, like the Old Queen, had always been around. The lady and her children watched it every year, … Continue reading Ignorant Self-Righteousness
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN I walked past the Old Town Hall, now a museum, its neat neoclassical facade a monument to certainties dead and buried. He was sitting on the war memorial steps opposite. A tramp, unquestionably. His face was a geological survey of the West Country; crevasses of hard winters, upheavals of cheap cider. His hands, wrapped around a can in a paper bag, were … Continue reading Before the Noise Began
BY CHRISTIAN McKEEFE A recent investigation by the Guardian and its European partners has laid bare a uncomfortable truth about the British countryside: it is disappearing at an alarming rate, with the UK ranking fifth-worst in Europe for the loss of green space to development. For readers of Country Squire Magazine, who cherish the very landscapes now under threat, the findings of this cross-border journalism … Continue reading Britain’s Disappearing Countryside
