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Remembering Roger Scruton

Happy new year. I kicked off 2022 by reviewing a collection of the late Roger Scruton’s journalism for the Sunday Telegraph. It was a pleasure, not least because it reminded me just what a good writer he was.

Here are three sample paragraphs that caught my eye:

Nevertheless the victims of Communism tried to hold on to the things that were sacred to them, and which spoke to them of the free and responsible life. The family was sacred; so too was religion, whether Christian or Jewish. So too was the underground store of knowledge – the forbidden knowledge of the nation's history and its claims to their loyalty. Those were the things that people would not exchange or relinquish even when required by the party to betray them. They were the consecrated treasures, hidden below the desecrated cities, where they glowed more brightly in the dark. Thus there grew an underground world of freedom and truth, where it was no longer necessary, as Havel put it, 'to live within the lie'.

(Spectator, 2014)

Left to his own in a godless universe, modern man sees no reason to deny himself and desires only the excuses that will justify him in the eyes of creatures like himself. And since he recognizes no authority higher than science, it is to science that he turns for his exculpation. The sciences that are chosen as his idols are those which are most prodigal of excuses, which rain down upon him a stream of whitewashing explanations and which tell him in one and the same breath that he deserves our sympathy and that he cannot be blamed.

(Times, 1986)

I first encountered hunting in my early 40s. It was quite by chance that I should be trotting down a Cotswold lane on a friend's old pony when the uniformed centaurs came galloping past. One minute I was lost in solitary thoughts, the next I was in a world transfigured by collective energy. Imagine opening your front door one morning to put out the milk and finding yourself in a vast cathedral in ancient Byzantium, the voices of the choir resounding in the dome above you and the congregation gorgeous in their holiday robes. My experience was comparable. The energy that swept me away was neither human nor canine nor equine but a peculiar synthesis of the three: a tribute to centuries of mutual dependence, revived for this moment in ritual form.

(Telegraph, 2012)

The book will be out later this month but you can pre-order it here.

Happy new year. I kicked off 2022 by reviewing a collection of the late Roger Scruton’s journalism for the Sunday Telegraph. It was a pleasure, not least because it reminded me just what a good writer he was.

Here are three sample paragraphs that caught my eye:

Nevertheless the victims of Communism tried to hold on to the things that were sacred to them, and which spoke to them of the free and responsible life. The family was sacred; so too was religion, whether Christian or Jewish. So too was the underground store of knowledge – the forbidden knowledge of the nation's history and its claims to their loyalty. Those were the things that people would not exchange or relinquish even when required by the party to betray them. They were the consecrated treasures, hidden below the desecrated cities, where they glowed more brightly in the dark. Thus there grew an underground world of freedom and truth, where it was no longer necessary, as Havel put it, 'to live within the lie'.

(Spectator, 2014)

Left to his own in a godless universe, modern man sees no reason to deny himself and desires only the excuses that will justify him in the eyes of creatures like himself. And since he recognizes no authority higher than science, it is to science that he turns for his exculpation. The sciences that are chosen as his idols are those which are most prodigal of excuses, which rain down upon him a stream of whitewashing explanations and which tell him in one and the same breath that he deserves our sympathy and that he cannot be blamed.

(Times, 1986)

I first encountered hunting in my early 40s. It was quite by chance that I should be trotting down a Cotswold lane on a friend's old pony when the uniformed centaurs came galloping past. One minute I was lost in solitary thoughts, the next I was in a world transfigured by collective energy. Imagine opening your front door one morning to put out the milk and finding yourself in a vast cathedral in ancient Byzantium, the voices of the choir resounding in the dome above you and the congregation gorgeous in their holiday robes. My experience was comparable. The energy that swept me away was neither human nor canine nor equine but a peculiar synthesis of the three: a tribute to centuries of mutual dependence, revived for this moment in ritual form.

(Telegraph, 2012)

The book will be out later this month but you can pre-order it here.

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Christmas Cocktail: Smoking Bishop

Sip: on a Smoking Bishop – as featured in the final heartwarming scene of A Christmas Carol

Christmas Holiday Browsing:

Listen: Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home), Lady A

To the lights on the tree

I’m watching them shine

You should be here with me

Baby please come home…

Have a wonderful Christmas. Regular posts will return in the new year.

Sip: on a Smoking Bishop – as featured in the final heartwarming scene of A Christmas Carol

Christmas Holiday Browsing:

Listen: Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home), Lady A

To the lights on the tree

I’m watching them shine

You should be here with me

Baby please come home…

Have a wonderful Christmas. Regular posts will return in the new year.

Read More