Roger scruton

What does it mean to be a conservative? Last night, The Spectator brought together Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton to discuss that question. Here is the full transcript of their conversation: Douglas Murray: Some months ago, The Spectator said to me that they would like me to do an event and who would I like to do it with. And I said I’m very used to doing events with my enemies and spend rather too much time with them and would like to spend the evening with a friend. And they said: anyone in particular? And I said first choice, Roger Scruton. And a lot of things have happened since

James Brokenshire has been keeping a low profile since the controversial sacking of Roger Scruton three weeks ago. But now the Housing Secretary has finally been taken to task for his handling of the row. Brokenshire sacked Scruton from his unpaid government role within hours of the publication of an interview in which Scruton was accused of making a ‘series of outrageous remarks’. As Douglas Murray details in this week’s magazine, the truth about what Scruton said was rather different. On LBC, Brokenshire was asked by Iain Dale whether he regretted sacking Scruton: ‘It is just that regret I have. I have a huge amount of respect and acknowledgement for

Roger Scruton has appeared on the Today programme to discuss the interview that got him fired. Here is the full transcript and recording of his conversation with Justin Webb: RS: I don’t think I spoke intemperately. I speak as I speak and I discuss things as they are presented to me, according to my vision of them. But you know obviously the way in which it was presented in the New Statesman was such as to cause some kind of scandal. JW: At one stage, George Eaton, well he tweeted these words that he ascribed to you, ‘each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and

Sometimes a scandal is not just a scandal, but a biopsy of a society. So it is with the assault on Sir Roger Scruton, who in recent weeks has been smeared in the media, fired by the government and had his life’s work assailed. Scruton is the latest, though far from the first victim of the modern outrage mob. It is now four years since the Nobel prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt was fired by University College London (among other institutions who were lucky to have him). That happened after one member of the audience at a conference in Korea tweeted something he had said about working with women and professed

I travel back from London with the St Matthew Passion filling my head, after the moving performance from the Elysian Singers and Royal Orchestral Society under Sam Laughton at St James’s Piccadilly. Why does that last chord send shivers down the spine? The dark instrumentation, the sense that it is not an ending but a beginning, that this shadow-filled saraband will repeat itself for ever? Or is it just the story — surely one of the greatest narratives in all literature, in which nothing is redundant and yet everything is said? I arrive home with the chord still in my head, C minor with a B natural thrust like a

In American law there is a concept called ‘the fruit of the poison tree’ which means that if the source of some alleged evidence is rotten, or has been wrongfully obtained, then everything coming from it is also recognised as tainted. After this past week I would suggest a similar concept enters the lexicon in British journalism. Perhaps we might call it ‘the fruit of the Eaton mess’. I refer of course to the ‘interview’ with Sir Roger Scruton that George Eaton – deputy editor of the New Statesman – published last week. The interview led not only to Scruton’s firing from an unpaid government-appointed position, but to a set

I recently gave an interview to the New Statesman, on the assumption that, as the magazine’s former wine critic I would be treated with respect, and that the journalist, George Eaton, was sincere in wanting to talk to me about my intellectual life. Not for the first time I am forced to acknowledge what a mistake it is to address young leftists as though they were responsible human beings. Here is my brief response to an unscrupulous collection of out of context remarks, some of them merely words designed to accuse me of thought-crimes, and to persuade the government that I am not fit to be chairman of the commission

Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument,’ wrote Sir Roger Scruton. ‘Your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience.’ Unfortunately, that experience is due to intensify for the 74-year-old conservative philosopher. Last weekend, the government announced it had set up a commission to try and make new housing developments ‘beautiful’ and appointed Sir Roger as its chair. It’s one of the few sensible things the present government has done; so, of course, it’s caused a scandal. Within minutes of Sir

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