CSM EDITORIAL Labour’s Inheritance Reforms Are an Act of Rural Cleansing There is a certain kind of politician who views the British countryside not as the nation’s larder or the keeper of its ancient traditions, but as a spreadsheet of undrawn capital gains. For seventeen months, we in the rural community warned Westminster that Labour’s ‘Family Farm Tax’ would drive a dagger through the heart … Continue reading The Ploughshare and the Guillotine
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 SEAN WALSH The Devil’s science? The philosophers who believe there are no beliefs. Paul Feyerabend did not think consciousness is a thing. “Is our basic conception of human cognition and agency yet another myth, moderately useful in the past perhaps, yet false at edge or core?” – Paul M. Churchland Paul Feyerabend Eliminative materialists are the philosophers who claim that consciousness does not exist. This seems … Continue reading Eliminative Materialism
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
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust this Easter Sunday finds you in reflective spirits, perhaps with the first light of dawn breaking over the fields and the promise of spring stirring in the hedgerows. There is something profoundly hopeful about an Easter morning, isn’t there? The daffodils are nodding their golden heads, the lambs are testing unsteady legs in the meadows, and the … Continue reading A Prayer for Easter Sunday
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 TOBIAS GRUB ‘Reginald’ – Straw-Stuffed Independent Takes 63% of Vote on Anti-Pigeon, Anti-Party Ticket LITTLE PIDDLECOMBE, DEVON – In what is being described as the most shocking upset in Devon politics for years, a scarecrow erected outside Piddlecombe Village Hall has been elected to the parish council. “Reginald” – a burlap-headed figure dressed in a moth-eaten tweed waistcoat and one broken welly – stood as … Continue reading Scarecrow Wins Election
BY JACK LANG You have to understand the type. In Kipling’s India, you would meet him at a hill station, a man who would explain the local customs to you very slowly, as if you were a mildly defective coolie. He had a small moustache, a smaller sense of humour, and a profound belief that the universe would reorganise itself if only everyone filled out … Continue reading The Dragon-Slayer of Ponders End
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 DEREK TURNER Lancashire: Exploring the Historic County that made the Modern World In his classic 1902-1904 Collecteana, folklorist Vincent Stuckey Lean cites a proverb which has since passed into cliché – “Lancashire thinks today what all England will think tomorrow”. Travel writer Chris Moss’s task in this highly personal book is to show how his home county helped make modern England – and so … Continue reading The North for Greatness
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
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
