BY SEAN WALSH If you are one of those people who still puzzle over the identity of Jack the Ripper*, then the Whitechapel Society might be right up your narrow, cobbled, and pitch-black street. Founded some thirty years ago, its membership includes former and serving police officers, academics, tour guides, psychologists, psychics, lawyers and miscellaneous representatives of all trades and none. It meets every other … Continue reading The English and Their Clubs
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Not long ago, dining in a Pimlico bistro, I was asked—by a ballet dancer, of all people—why I ‘waste’ so much time fly fishing. My answer went something along these lines: That when I stand on the riverbank, the sun rising over the horizon, I feel a calmness that is hard to articulate. The light glimmers on the surface, and in that … Continue reading A Lasting Addiction
BY CHARLIE DOWNES We hear a great deal about the various “communities” that make up the grand, disjointed patchwork of modern Britain. All of our country’s major institutions — the government, the civil service, the corporations, the NGOs, the media, academia, and so on — centre those communities who possess, as far as they are concerned, the requisite intersectional credentials. From the trans community to … Continue reading Centring the Experience of the English Community
BY ROGER WATSON I tend to listen to the BBC Radio Today programme, so others don’t have to. I usually pop it on while I am shaving, as I did this week. It has progressed over the years from being a terrible programme to being a truly terrible one. Well known for its commentators competing to be the person who interrupts interviewees the most it … Continue reading Less Sour Grapes
BY EFFIE DEANS It is expected that soon Nicola Sturgeon will announce her latest attempt to have a second independence referendum. Lots will be written about this, but it is not the most important issue facing Scotland. The most important issue is demographics, but almost nothing will be written about that. Alastair Allan SNP MSP for the Western Isles has admitted the importance of demographics. … Continue reading Voting with Our Feet
To be born English is to have won first prize in the lottery of life. To be English is to be part of the world’s richest culture. From this sceptred isle sprang talents as diverse as Orwell and Chaplin, Kipling and Shakespeare, Nelson and Joe Strummer. In every field, in every era, the evidence of English greatness is there for all to see, from the … Continue reading Happy St George’s Day
CSM EDITORIAL Now that the history is out, there can be no doubt that the London Mayoralty, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd were built to house Labour placers. Devolution was yet another New Labour ploy to perpetuate a gravy train for, and to quieten, their mates – not dissimilar to the placement of Labour cronies into quangos and charities. Now, like many of … Continue reading End Devolution Now
BY EFFIE DEANS Sir Keir Starmer wants voters to believe that Labour has rediscovered its patriotism and that it loves Britain as much as everyone else. He wants us to believe that Labour is different now than it was when it was led by Jeremy Corbyn. It is clear that Starmer is a much better leader than Corbyn. He is a more moderate leader and … Continue reading New Leadership, Same Fossils
BY PAUL T HORGAN Prince Harry has been in the news quite a lot, and the media seem to be in the process of casting him as the latest incarnation of the dissolute minor royal, a cause of embarrassment to the monarchy, perhaps even calling the monarchy into question. T’was ever thus. This is unfair. Harry has spent his adult life being overshadowed by his older … Continue reading In Defence of Prince Harry
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN DW: Good afternoon. Thanks for reaching out. Anti: You are scum of the earth! How can you sleep at night and be Editor of that hunt-supporting rag? DW: Hold your horses. I look at hunting as a neutral. I’ve never been on a hunt, although I was once dragged out on the Yorkshire moors in winter for beagling as part of a … Continue reading Chat with an Anti
BY EFFIE DEANS For a few years as a child while my father helped build an oil rig, I lived in a very remote part of the West Highlands near to where Boris Johnson tried to go on holiday with his family. There were less than twenty children in the school and around one hundred people in the village. The elderly people could speak Gaelic … Continue reading Losing Our Way Part I
Ingredients: 300g Short crust pastry (ready made) 8 Shallots 40 g Butter 500 g Shoulder steak, trimmed and cut into 2cm cubes (or larger) 25 g Plain four, seasoned with salt and pepper and a tablespoon of paprika 1 tbsp Sunflower oil 100 g Pancetta, diced 200 g Button mushrooms, halved 200 ml Red wine 200 ml Beef stock 2 tbsp Chopped fresh parsley 1 … Continue reading Shallot, Steak & Mushroom Pie
All you need to know about Point-to-Point horse racing: Point-to-point action, live at Whittington Racecourse. Photo by Extraordinary, CC BY-SA 3.0 Point-to-point horse racing is one of those things that most people don’t even question when they head into a bookmakers. That’s because most people prefer to watch horse races hosted at the major flat or National Hunt racecourses involving professional jockeys. The key difference between … Continue reading The Point to Point Horse Racing Guide
BY GRAHAM CUNNINGHAM One of the consequences of getting older is that things ain’t what they used to be. This is something often said of the English countryside – amongst many other things of course. You will regularly hear tutting about suburban sprawl, new road schemes, wind turbines, agri-business farms, poly-tunnels and endless fields of rapeseed. You are on pretty safe ground in the pub … Continue reading England’s Green & Pleasant Wilderness
WHAT have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do, England, my own? With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things and dear As the song on your bugles blown, England – Round the world on your bugles blown. Where shall the watchful sun, England, my England, Match the master-work you’ve done, England, … Continue reading England
BY MANDY BALDWIN I’d bet my flip-flops and tonight’s sausages, none of the regulars at Country Squire Magazine have ever donned a blue and white wimple – no, not even the ones who attended excellent schools – but Mother Theresas come in all shapes and sizes, and CSM most definitely saved my bacon, and my marbles, to whatever extent they have been saved. It had … Continue reading The English Seaside Project
BY BEN EAGLE ‘’And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England’s mountains green…’’ The feet in Blake’s reference above were of a somewhat holier order than you and me, but the words of a New Jerusalem have suddenly taken on new relevance in recent days, following George Monbiot’s radical tweet encouraging us all to get off the footpath and start trespassing. Monbiot … Continue reading Trespassing in England’s Green and Pleasant Land
BY HENRY LORD With Wales losing to the English at the Principality Stadium two weekends ago and the Kiwis desperately worried about both the rise of the English National Rugby team under Eddie Jones and the imminent British Lions tour to New Zealand (and the boss in hospital having yet another knee op), the brains trust here at Country Squire Magazine – empathetic as ever – decided … Continue reading For the Love of Sheep
