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
BY SEAN WALSH I couldn’t be what’s known as a political libertarian because the version of freedom assumed doesn’t seem to me to be worth getting excited about. To borrow the language of the Dominican Thomistic theologian Father Servais Pinckaers, I’ll take freedom for excellence over freedom of indifference. I understand that libertarianism isn’t particularly sensitive to that distinction, or many others now I think of it, which is why … Continue reading Holy Faces
BY CSM STAFF WRITER Master the Tong It Game the Best on GameZone with smart strategies, rules, and all online variants for an exciting Filipino card experience. Tongits, a classic Filipino card game, has long been cherished for its fast-paced gameplay and strategic depth. Traditionally enjoyed in social settings across the Philippines, its popularity continues to thrive, especially with the rise of digital platforms like … Continue reading Mastering the Tong It Game the Best Way on GameZone
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust this letter finds you with muddy boots in the hallway and the hopeful sound of birdsong greeting your every dawn. Spring is upon us in earnest now. The hesitant promise of March has burst forth into the full-throated declaration of April and May. The land is donning its garment of green, and every hedgerow is a … Continue reading A Prayer for the Greening
BY FRANK HAVILAND Today is my youngest daughter’s fifth birthday, but I am not allowed to see her. I begged my ex-wife – then the court – for five minutes, at any time or location she chose, so I would not let Isabella down on her big day. Neither replied. The phone calls I make this evening will be blocked, as they always are. So … Continue reading Counting the Cost of Parental Alienation
BY SEAN WALSH Before doing the relevant analytical deeper dive let me make two remarks, by way of qualification. First, the condition known as “Tourette’s Syndrome” should not be trivialised, and it’s not my intention to do so here; second, what I suppose we must call “BAFTAgate” (or maybe “f@@@@@g BAFTAgate”, given the subject matter) is the funniest thing to happen at an awards ceremony … Continue reading Anscombe and that BAFTA Incident
BY NICK PEARCE Farmers and landowners across the UK have been given a last-minute opportunity to take part in the national census of farmland birds, as the organisers extend the deadline due to adverse weather. The Big Farmland Bird Count (BFBC), an annual event coordinated by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), will now run until March 1st, 2026. The extension comes after the … Continue reading Big Farmland Bird Count
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The first thing you notice about Pune is that nothing has been erased. I don’t mean this in the sentimental sense—the sort of thing travel writers reach for when they want to make decay sound charming. I mean it literally. Walk from the Kasba Peth police station towards Shaniwar Wada and you pass through three centuries in about four hundred yards. The … Continue reading An Ode to Pune
BY ALEXIA JAMES For decades, if you wanted to see the British countryside on screen, you had to sit through yet another dreary adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel, all doom and gloom and women in bonnets looking miserable in the rain. But something rather wonderful has happened. The boot is now on the other foot, and our green and pleasant land has become the … Continue reading Green and Pleasant Land
BY NIALL MCPHERSON From the Fabian ‘Wolf’ to the Communist Fist, the Left’s Long Romance with Violence In a quiet corner of Lyon, a young man lies dead, his skull fractured by the boots of masked militants. Quentin Deranque, a nationalist student whose only crime was to stand in defence of women exercising their right to peaceful protest, has become the latest offering on the … Continue reading Crimson Tide
BY NICHOLAS ENGERT I have always been fascinated by symbols, badges and logos. These designs act as a gateway to a sub world of brands, clubs and memberships. They confirm identity and belonging. In the days of beautiful cars – now sadly almost a distant memory – it was not unusual to see a car adorned with enamel badges. These badges indicated memberships of motoring … Continue reading Badges of Distinction
BY SEAN WALSH Like many people, possibly even the majority, I don’t have much time for Nazis. Norm MacDonald said of Hitler that he “didn’t really care for him at all”. I see no reason to disagree with this. There might have been some early years comedic opportunities but these had pretty much run dry by about 1933 and now seem very tired, very “been … Continue reading Are there Nazis in Devizes?
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a peculiar and necessary cruelty in the language we reserve for our exhausted public men. When we reach for the ornithological, we are not being poetic; we are being clinical. To be termed a ‘lame duck’ is to be diagnosed. It is to be marked not merely for failure, but for a kind of biological irrelevance. The image is precise: … Continue reading The Lame Duck
BY ALEX STORY “You are 6’8.31” inches tall,” said the nurse. “We measured you just before the operation.” That’s 0.31 inches taller than I thought I was. “I keep on growing,” I smiled. The good news never stops, I thought, in a half-comatose state. In the practical world, there are really no advantages to being a giant. Rarely will you be fashionable or sit comfortably … Continue reading In Another State
BY ROGER WATSON This apocalyptic film is entirely about the journey and most certainly not about the ending; there isn’t one. That isn’t a spoiler, but established common knowledge from existing reviews. A House of Dynamite (2025) adopts a familiar theme: an ‘incoming’ threat. An unidentified aggressor—presumed to be North Korea, though China and Russia are considered and dismissed—launches a suspected nuclear missile from somewhere in the … Continue reading A House of Dynamite
BY RICHARD DUWELL-TRUMBELL Over the past two years, something unexpected has happened in Britain. Across architecture, politics, culture, religion, and even the digital sphere, a new seriousness has emerged — a revival of tradition, form, hierarchy, Christian identity, and civilisational ambition. This essay attempts to map the moment. Not nostalgically, but as the first field report of a real intellectual shift. There are moments in … Continue reading Britain’s Post-Liberal Awakening
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN One must, in this digital age, develop a hide as thick as a Hereford bullock’s to withstand the daily onslaught of technological ‘marvels’. The latest abomination to clatter regularly into my inbox, courtesy of some Silicon Valley simpleton who doubtless thinks a wellington is a type of pastry, is the ‘animation’ of old family photographs. Using some devilish algorithm, these grinning ghouls … Continue reading Animated Atrocities
