Prejudiced accounts<br />

Roger Scruton is a man who has found himself condemned for defending the right things in the wrong way. Love, home, happiness and justice are the overriding concerns of his work, but his arguments about how we can achieve them have been repeatedly damned as mad and dangerous by those kind enough to appoint themselves the moral policeman of public thought.

Mark Dooley, it is fair to say, is not one of those moral policeman. He is instead a Scrutonian acolyte whose aim in this book, The Philosopher on Dover Beach, is to outline and celebrate what he takes to be Scruton’s “philosophy of love”. Dooley does not try to hide his admiration for Scruton the man and Scruton the thinker. He believes that Roger Scruton’s writings form a coherent body with an overriding message which Western society is in desperate need of. This message is, in short, a lesson on how to live as human beings.