In the first of five essay's responding to the BBC's TV series Civilisations, Sir Roger Scruton explores the notion that music might be a civilising force. Listen to full podcast HERE

Victorian capitalists belonged to the same town as those who worked for them. They could not escape the demands of the neighbourhood.

After two decades in which it was assumed that the argument was over, capitalism has resurged at the top of the political agenda. Is it the key to prosperity or the solvent of communities? Is it the source of inequalities or the cure for them, the path to stability or the sure way to a crisis? And is there, given what we know of the old ‘socialist economies’, a real alternative?

The Brexit crisis has thrown up a new division in politics – May will need a philosophy to succeed

The Brexit negotiations have made the national interest into the central topic of politics. At a time of narcissism and attention-seeking such as the world has never known, a brief spell of objective debate has been granted. And the public have been gripped by it. There are those foreigners trying to swindle us again! And there are those nationalist Brits trying to swindle the foreigners! Whatever else will emerge from the debates, one thing is certain. We will have learnt that the deep questions of politics, the questions on which all else depends, are not about the future, but about the past. They concern our national inheritance, the hopes and attachments that unite us and the place of our country in the world.
Great personalities, conflicts and decisions are suddenly foregrounded: Charlemagne, Charles the Fifth, the Glorious Revolution, the Congress of Vienna, the Peace of Versailles, Runnymede – all get a look in. The tension between common law and civilian jurisdictions, the distinction between a customs union and a free-trade agreement, the powers of the European Court of Justice and its distinction from the Court of Human Rights – one way or another critical fragments of the political and intellectual heritage of Europe are paraded before the public eye. Our elected representatives are forced to argue as though the national interest rather than some ideological agenda is the matter in hand, and this means taking history seriously, to arrive at a viable definition of who we are.

Those of us who read for a living read a lot, and we rarely come across a work that is, simply stated, dazzling and delightful. Even rarer is one dazzling, delightful, deep and wise, but Roger Scruton’s Conservatism, is just such a book. Here, in an astonishingly short compass (less than one hundred and fifty pages of text), is a comprehensive history of western conservative thought, from the beginnings in Aristotle and Aquinas, through the French and Industrial Revolutions, right up to the present, and conservative thought not just in America and Britain, but in Continental Europe as well. The book is part of Profile Books’s series “Ideas in Profile,” subtitled “Small Introductions to Big Topics,” an apt rubric for what we have here.

From his position as the dean of English conservatism, Roger Scruton explains the ideas, habits, and traditions that made the West a civilization not only of immense learning and wealth, but also one of love and mercy. A philosopher, musician, environmentalist, novelist, aesthete, and former literary smuggler in Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia, Scruton’s depth of learning enables him to speak with unique authority on how the West’s achievements opened it to democracy, the rule of law, and profound loyalty to the nation-state. It is this last topic, the nation-state, that has attracted Scruton’s attention in recent years precisely because of its precarious standing on the world stage. Scruton’s defense of the nation-state engages its many critics on their own ground. To their insistence that the nation-state is the wellspring of insularity and rapacious nationalism, Scruton underscores that the nation-state is the pivotal seat of tolerance, prosperity, and democratic accountability.

Suppose you woke up one day to discover that you were headline news. A leading newspaper has spread across its front page a story that you were seen entering a notorious brothel in London in company with a gang of criminals.

There is no evidence that you have committed a crime, and the only ground for the story is that it has been relayed to the press by a police officer, appointed to investigate the gang in whose company you were allegedly seen.

This police officer, you suspect, has a grudge against you: maybe he doesn’t like your politics; maybe he is jealous of the attention you have received as a recently elected city councillor.

Whatever the cause of the matter, your life has been irreversibly damaged. There is no criminal charge, no chance to defend yourself and nothing to refute save malicious gossip.

Now running for a second year, the Scrutopia summer school offers a ten-day immersion experience in the philosophy and outlook of Sir Roger Scruton, the British writer and philosopher who has inspired many searching people to believe in Western civilisation and its legacy. Sir Roger will lead the course of study, which will take place in and around his house near historic Malmesbury in the Cotswolds, from 26th August to 3rd September 2018. Residents would be housed in the Royal Agricultural University in nearby Cirencester, a charming Victorian Gothic college that provides comfortable accommodation and excellent food. Daily classes and discussions on the life of the mind will be interspersed with visits to nearby historical sites, including Oxford and Bath, which will provide an experience of the historical depth of this unique part of England.

The aim is to assemble a group of around 20 committed people, with a shared interest in culture and in all that is involved in passing it on. Each day will begin with a talk from Sir Roger followed by a discussion. Reading and discussion in the afternoon will lead to a formal presentation, either by Sir Roger or a visiting speaker, and the evenings will involve concerts, readings, or further discussion over wine. Aspiring writers, composers and artists will be invited to submit samples of their work for criticism, and discussions will be organised around a curriculum of readings chosen to illustrate some of the major intellectual issues of our day.
Provisional topics include the nature of philosophy, why beauty matters, the art of writing, figurative painting, the Western inheritance, the meaning of conservatism, musical order, real environmentalism, understanding wine and the life of friendship. We will aim also to provide a piano trio for an evening of Schubert and Brahms.
Opportunities to walk, ride and ponder in the beautiful local countryside will be many, and events will take place at the Scruton residence as well as at Cirencester.

The fee for the course will be £2,500 to cover board and lodging and all other costs, apart from travel to and from the event, which will be the responsibility of each participant. We will close the list of participants when we have twenty firm commitments, who have paid the deposit of £200 necessary to secure a place on the course. 

To register your interest please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Populists recruit their following by direct appeal, are largely indifferent to their opponents, and have no intention, if elected, of allowing a voice to those who did not vote for them. If “populism” threatens the political stability of democracies, it is because it is part of a wider failure to appreciate the virtue
and the necessity of representation.

Read the full article online. 

Brexit will give us back the countryside, as well as our country
Escaping the Common Agricultural Policy will preserve rural landscapes and lifestyles

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy was designed to support the small farmer, and it is fair to say it has failed to achieve that purpose. Because subsidies have been calculated by acreage, they both push up the price of land and benefit those who own the largest chunks of it — which means absentee agribusinesses. The CAP is indeed one major cause in the decline of the real rural economy — the economy of the small farmers who live and work in the fields. Leaving the EU is our opportunity to devise a new system of subsidies, one that will achieve what the public really wants from farming, which is not only food, but the two precious attributes that large-scale agribusiness threatens: beauty and bio-diversity.

In the 200 years since the Romantic movement, the British people have identified the landscape as an icon of their inheritance. Urban residents feel this as strongly as countryside dwellers. We believe that the landscape is ours, regardless of where we reside or how we earn our livelihood. Proposals to build on the green belt, to drive motorways through unspoiled valleys or high-speed trains across precious corners of our country are greeted, rightly, with the most vigorous of protests.

This shared sense of ownership has affected the way the countryside looks. Our landscape is criss-crossed by footpaths, green lanes and bridleways; copses crown the hills and hedgerows divide the fields; wherever you wander you will find a passage through, with gates, stiles and hunt jumps opening each boundary to the legitimate visitor. The natural edges and corners of small-scale residential farming are also precious habitats, helping native fauna to survive despite increasing pressure from the human population. In short, compared with continental agribusiness, our traditional ways of farming have been an aesthetic and environmental success.

And that is the real reason why those ways of farming should be subsidised. Our small farmers are sitting on a highly valuable asset; their land. It may also be their only capital. But we do not allow them to realise the market value of that land. They cannot build on it; they cannot turn it into leisure centres or caravan parks. They are condemned by our environmental and planning laws to maintain its traditional appearance, even when it is no longer profit-able to farm it. This is the rationale for farm subsidies: to compensate farmers for the losses that taxpayers impose on them. Subsidies should help farmers to maintain what we love in our countryside, not add to the profits of those absentees who have done so much to destroy it.

We should begin from an inventory of the things that we love: beauty, bio-diversity, boundaries and habitats; wildflowers, birds and river life; footpaths, bridleways and the hospitality offered to those who ramble and ride; local food and the markets that deal in it. And we should then assign points to farmers according to the contribution made by their land to the greater cause, which is not the land but the landscape —the land conceived as a national, rather than an individual, asset. Subsidies should not be automatic, but weighted to compensate those who earn the least from farming, provided that their farming conforms to the standards set out in the inventory.

Perhaps the most important item in this inventory is the local food economy. Farmers whose produce is sold in a local market create a benefit that cannot be measured in pecuniary terms. They are maintaining a national food economy that is maximally resilient in the face of global changes and external threats; they are producing food that does not travel hundreds of miles to its destination; they are helping to loosen the grip of the supermarkets on our food economy and so protecting our town centres from decay at the hands of the predators perched on their perimeter; and they are amplifying the experience of neighbourhood, which is a vital part of what we cherish in the day-to-day rhythms of the countryside.

As by-products of all this, they are enhancing the beauty and bio-diversity of a countryside which, despite all our post-war upheavals, has retained its immovable place in the hearts of the British people. Whatever you think about Brexit, it is surely right to be pleased that at last we can devise a system of farm subsidies that gives us the countryside we want, with the support of those who live and work in it.

Published in Spectator Life. 

Religions offer membership. They fill the void in the human heart with the mystical presence of the group, and if they do not provide this benefit they will wither and die, like the religions of the ancient world during the Hellenistic period. It is therefore in the nature of a religion to protect itself from rival groups and the heresies that promote them.