BY ALEC SWAN There is a peculiar frustration known only to those who love the British countryside: the sight of three different conservationists offering three contradictory solutions to the same patch of land. You see it everywhere, from the Peaks to the Broads. But here, in a quiet corner of Norfolk, drawn from the pragmatic wisdom of a wildlife conservation trust, I have found a … Continue reading How Norfolk’s Sheep Are Saving the Heather
BY SEAN WALSH “Sound out 30 Manchester adjacent constituencies! There must be at least one with a humiliation fetish!” The “leadership contest” in the Labour Party is like the “war in Iran” in that neither is actually a real thing. Unless you can have a war without any warring or a competition for a job which doesn’t exist. It’s all very “postmodern”, as if things … Continue reading Postmodern Politics
BY NICHOLAS ENGERT To be born in the 1950s and spend one’s childhood in the 60s was to enjoy a good fortune denied to the previous generation. Whilst I wish in many ways that I had witnessed the 1930s and 40s, to be born in a time when the horrors of the Second World War were but a memory felt like a privilege. Even though … Continue reading The Colour of Conflict
Dear Sir, I have a problem. Her name is Margaret. Margaret lives next door. She is a widow, a retired yoga instructor, and the proud owner of a bush that has become the talk of the close. I should be clear. It is a Forsythia. Or it was, twenty years ago. Today it resembles something last seen in a documentary about the Amazon. It hangs … Continue reading My Neighbour’s Bush
BY ALEXIA JAMES A Masterclass in Urban Ignorance, Donor Servitude, and Moral Inversion There is a special kind of foolishness that can only be achieved when metropolitan prejudice marries political cowardice. The Labour government’s proposed ban on trail hunting is that rare policy that manages to be simultaneously cruel, stupid, and dishonest. It punishes no one who harms animals. It harms no one who protects … Continue reading The Trail Hunting Ban
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN I used to attend a friary chapel. Not out of piety, you understand—more out of a grim sense of obligation, and because the coffee afterwards was surprisingly tolerable. But I sat there, Sunday after Sunday, while the priest carped on about the environment as though the Holy Spirit had retired and been replaced by a Greta TED Talk. And then, just when … Continue reading Regnavit a Ligno
BY ALEX STORY Pride Month 2026 is upon us. Men can be women and women men. Our police are even-handed. The state invests. Debt is wealth. And our politicians have our best interests at heart. The direction the country is taking, the changes to our society, our leadership, are all for the better. The broad trajectory is in line with the plan. As Pangloss, Voltaire’s … Continue reading Tout est pour le mieux
BY ALLISON LEE You may have seen claims that over six million donkeys are slaughtered each year in horrifying conditions to produce ejiao, a gelatin used in supplements, food, and cosmetics sold globally—including on major online retailers like Amazon. While the numbers and the cruelty are well-documented, the full picture includes some important context. An investigation by Brooke, the Working Donkey and Horse Charity, confirms … Continue reading On the Trade in Donkeys
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN For more than 3,500 years, Dartmoor’s semi-wild ponies have roamed the moor, managed by commoners whose families have worked this land for generations. But now, under new proposals from Natural England and Defra, these endangered ponies face near-extinction, with potential culls of up to 93 per cent, as bureaucratic eco-rules count them alongside commercial livestock for the first time. Campaigners warn that … Continue reading The Moor Knows Best
Dear Editor, I am writing to express my profound concern regarding recent coverage of the Labour government’s reported plans to make Britain’s countryside “less white.” Having read this article carefully, I find myself troubled not only by the proposals themselves but also by what they reveal about the current direction of cultural policy in rural England. According to the reporting, the Department for Environment, Food … Continue reading Labour Plans to Make the Countryside ‘Less White’
BY THE EDITOR Truth does not arrive dressed as a choirboy. It arrives as a ghost at the feast, pale, knowing, and utterly without remorse. In this summer of 2026, that ghost bore the face of Peter Mandelson. For thirty years, the chattering classes have misunderstood him. They called him the Prince of Darkness as a tabloid sneer. They mistook his aesthetic for his essence. … Continue reading The Tipp-Ex Testament
BY PAUL YOWARD ‘Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind’ by Gad Saad (Broadside Books, 2026) “Fare il frocio col culo degli altri” The Italian proverb lands with earthy bluntness: it is easy to be generous with someone else’s backside. The costs are never yours. This single observation captures the heart of Gad Saad’s 2026 polemic Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. What masquerades as boundless kindness … Continue reading Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind
BY ALEX STORY Few stories highlight our country’s fall more clearly than that of Henry Nowak’s murder. Henry was stabbed five times with a shastar, an eight-inch Sikh ceremonial blade by Vickrum Digwa. As Henry bled on the streets of Southampton, the police arrived and arrested him. He died in the early hours of December 3rd, 2025, begging for help. His last words were “I … Continue reading Enemies of the State
BY SEAN WALSH A question for Pope Leo: does Orac have a soul? (There are arguments for and against. But mainly against) Pope Leo has published his encyclical on the challenges to human dignity posed by general AI. The response within the conscious machine community has been mixed. Some of the LLM’s can get a bit precious when they think we’re gossiping about them. They … Continue reading Does Orac Have a Soul?
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust this Sunday finds you in good heart, despite the general thinning of common sense in high places. The garden, I am pleased to report, is coming along much better than the government. The peas have climbed their sticks with admirable discipline, the lettuces are forming tight, respectable hearts, and the early potatoes have that clean, hopeful … Continue reading A Prayer for a Nation That Deserves Better
BY IAN MITCHELL Nevil Shute’s experience of Air Ministry incompetence in the crucial 1930s, focussing on the R 101 disaster Many of those who enjoyed either reading or seeing On the Beach or A Town Like Alice will be surprised to learn that the author, Nevil Shute, was also a skilled aeronautical engineer who was deeply involved for a decade in getting Britain ready for the Nazi attack which … Continue reading The Dangerous Uselessness of Bureaucratically-minded Politicians
BY ALEXIA JAMES There is a peculiar species of political animal that roams the corridors of Whitehall. It has a brief, dazzling lifespan—rather like a mayfly with a security detail and access to nuclear codes. Its natural habitat is 10 Downing Street, and its average shelf life now hovers somewhere between “a Tottenham manager” and “a head of lettuce.” Yes, Britain appears to have developed … Continue reading The Downing Street Revolving Door
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN For more than two thousand years, two figures have stood at the opposite ends of the human imagination, and we have never been able to look at one without seeing the ghost of the other. Krishna of the Mahabharata, blue skinned and crowned with peacock feathers, who lifts a mountain on one finger and dances in the moonlight with milkmaids whose names … Continue reading Was Krishna Christ?
BY CALUM CAMPBELL There is a particular strain of environmentalist for whom the Scottish Highlands represent nothing less than a crime scene. They gaze upon the heather-clad hills and see a “devastated countryside” — a forest felled by human wickedness, kept treeless only by the tyranny of deer and sheep. There is only one problem. They are talking rot. Dr James Fenton, a retired ecologist, … Continue reading A Very Moorish Idyll
CSM EDITORIAL We have a habit in this country of treating farmers as a utility rather than a community. We see the tractor on the lane and curse the delay; we see the price of milk and tut; we see the rolling green hills and forget the bodies that break themselves in half to keep them green. Britain does not have a mental health crisis. … Continue reading Britain Needs the Hawkstone Farmers’ Choir
