On the face of his experience Dominic Wightman is an unlikely character to have founded a free speech mag to challenge politicos on behalf of the countryside. Wightman is one of seven children, Ampleforth educated, a former rugby player, and LSE scholarship graduate and third to follow in his family’s banking footsteps, Wightman cut his teeth at Deutsche Bank in Berlin.
In 2006 he moved to London to work in asset management while concurrently providing homeland security advice to a Tory Shadow minister, and counterterrorism analysis to think tanks in Westminster.
After he married a Venezuelan beauty queen and started a family the corridors of Westminster paled, a rural idyll in Devon beckoned and fortunately assets could be managed remotely. With the 2016 referendum on EU membership Wightman became involved in “Brexit” activism thus Country Squire Magazine was conceived as a platform for “voices from the overlooked Great British Countryside”. Wightman discovered that politically the countryside was not a Tory idyll but full of nitty gritty issues that needed pressure applying on the key characters to make Brexit happen. Today 21 years on from the 2002 Countryside March, Country Squire Magazine (CSM) aims to represent the unresolved and under-appreciated issues of a rural minority. CSM readership is not just farmers and fishermen, politicos and city types of every political hue have come to enjoy its punch and edge; online subscriptions have built up rapidly and a hard copy magazine was introduced in December 2022 with further exclusive content, CSM is now regulated by IPSO the independent regulator of most of the UK’s newspapers and magazines.
Wightman gathered together an eclectic collection of small c conservatives/classical liberals and CSM provided a platform for their regular writings. Effie Deans was one such brilliant find, her reporting on Scotland and the SNP, who are notoriously anti-countryside, was both shocking and entertaining; Stewart Slater’s opinion pieces range from international finance, politics and society, to history; the City Grump Stephen Hazell-Smith reveals any nonsense from the Bank of England and wokery from the Civil Service; and the late Tarquin/Tamsin Sutherland wrote from experience about the gender culture wars and the victims of policies of gender transition, reassignment and drugs. CSM is bravely ahead of the curve.
Wightman has one unwritten editorial rule, that small c conservatives should not oppose or attack other Conservative factions, unlike their opponents on the left. Wightman’s editorial line is deliberately cutting edge on social issues pertaining to the countryside, his contributors are all authorities from specific rural environments and prepared to challenge Westminster group think.
Future plans include opening up new markets for CS readers, including India. Wightman has a special fondness for India arising from a six-month sojourn based in Mumbai in 1992, his best friend from Ample forth was the British Deputy High Commissioner’s son and on these coat-tails the youngsters travelled through Rajasthan, Chennai, Ooty, Bangalore and Mysore. This trip offered him genuine Indian generosity and hospitality, it opened his eyes to the everyday struggle faced by ordinary Indians, the impression has never left him; nor have the Indian friends that he made at that time. Country Squire India (CSI) will focus on culture and events, it is still in its infancy with only an intermittent online presence, but the initial feedback indicates a positive response and Wightman is relieved to find there is still a great affection for and enjoyment of the English language across India.
Finally a heads up for Wightman’s new book, written with international Cornishman John Nash, “Dear Townies” will be published in March 2024. This is a heartfelt plea from the countryside to urbanites, the book explains how and when the British Countryside began to feel oppressed and not respected by British Townies, and how it got to this dire point of polarisation between rural groups and urbanites. The UK general election is due in May 2024, “Dear Townies” sounds like essential reading for the next prime minister.