In this week’s Spectator USA Life ‘n’ Arts podcast, I’m casting the pod with Sir Roger Scruton, the knight of the living philosophers. Of course, Scruton is more than a philosopher. He has written widely and well on subjects as various as wine and Wagner, fox-hunting and free trade, and he has three new books out this month. The philosopher has Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition. The musician — there are two pianos at hand in Scruton’s study — has an essay collection, Music as an Art. And the fiction writer has his second collection of short stories, Souls in the Twilight.
One of the pleasures of talking with Scruton is his intellectual seamlessness, the natural and illuminating way in which he moves from one field of enquiry to another. His voice on the page has the same quality; no mean achievement in any kind of writer, let alone among philosophers, where complexity often leads to obscurity and opacity.
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