He wrote in Gentle Regrets (2005): "Friends come and go, hobbies and holidays dapple the soulscape like fleeting sunlight in a summer wind, and the hunger for affection is cut off at every point by the fear of judgement." Īfter passing his 11-plus, he attended the Royal Grammar School High Wycombe from 1954 to 1962, leaving with three A-levels, in pure and applied mathematics, physics, and chemistry, which he passed with distinction. Scruton's, indeed the whole family's, relationship with his father was difficult. Although his parents had been brought up as Christians, they regarded themselves as humanists, so home was a "religion-free zone". The Scrutons lived in a pebbledashed semi-detached house in Hammersley Lane, High Wycombe. He was a research fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge (1969–1971). father set out with considerable relish to destroy". He described his mother as "cherishing an ideal of gentlemanly conduct and social distinction that . Scruton told The Guardian that Jack hated the upper classes and loved the countryside, while Beryl entertained "blue-rinsed friends" and was fond of romantic fiction. Jack was raised in a back-to-back on Upper Cyrus Street, Ancoats, an inner-city area of Manchester, and won a scholarship to Manchester High School, a grammar school. Scruton wondered whether she had been employed at the former Scruton Hall in Scruton, Yorkshire, and whether that was where her child had been conceived. However, Margaret Lowe had decided, for reasons unknown, to raise her son as Matthew Scruton instead. Jack's father's birth certificate showed him as Matthew Lowe, after Matthew's mother, Margaret Lowe (Scruton's great grandmother) the document made no mention of a father. The Scruton surname had been acquired relatively recently. Roger Scruton was born in Buslingthorpe, Lincolnshire, to John "Jack" Scruton, a teacher from Manchester, and his wife, Beryl Claris Scruton (née Haynes), and was raised with his two sisters in High Wycombe and Marlow. Scruton was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for "services to philosophy, teaching and public education". In the 1980s he helped to establish underground academic networks in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, for which he was awarded the Czech Republic's Medal of Merit (First Class) by President Václav Havel in 1998. From 1971 to 1992 he was a lecturer and the Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, after which he held several part-time academic positions, including in the United States. Scruton explained that he embraced conservatism after witnessing the May 1968 student protests in France. He was a regular contributor to the popular media, including The Times, The Spectator, and the New Statesman. His most notable publications include The Meaning of Conservatism (1980), Sexual Desire (1986), The Aesthetics of Music (1997), and How to Be a Conservative (2014). Įditor from 1982 to 2001 of The Salisbury Review, a conservative political journal, Scruton wrote over 50 books on philosophy, art, music, politics, literature, culture, sexuality, and religion he also wrote novels and two operas. In his introduction, the bestselling author and commentator Douglas Murray writes of what it cost Scruton to express views considered unpalatable, and of the importance of these ideas after Scruton’s death.Sir Roger Vernon Scruton FBA FRSL ( / ˈ s k r uː t ən/ 27 February 1944 – 12 January 2020) was an English philosopher, writer, and social critic who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views. In this selection, covering subjects from art and architecture to politics and nature conservation, Scruton challenges popular opinion on key aspects of our culture: What can we do to protect Western values against Islamist extremism? How can we nurture real friendship through social media? Why is the nation-state worth preserving? How should we achieve a timely death against the advances of modern medicine? This provocative collection seeks to answer the most pressing problems of our age. Each “confession” reveals aspects of the author’s thinking that his critics would probably have advised him to keep to himself. Synopsis: A revised edition of the Notting Hill Editions essay collection by the late Sir Roger Scruton with a new introduction by Douglas Murray.Ĭonfessions of a Heretic is a collection of provocative essays by the influential social commentator and polemicist Roger Scruton.
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