Roger Scruton

Lore & Background

Scruton inherited from his father a preference for local architecture and a dislike of change and modernism. He was born in Buslingthorpe, Lincolnshire, and raised in High Wycombe and Marlow. His father, a teacher and avowed socialist from a working-class Manchester background, banned Beatrix Potter books as bourgeois, while his mother cherished ideals of gentlemanly conduct. The family home was a pebbledashed semi-detached house in High Wycombe, a “religion-free zone” as his parents were humanists. Scruton’s relationship with his father was difficult, marked by fear of judgment, yet he absorbed his father’s appreciation for local building styles and the necessity of home. As a teenager, he was influenced by Oswald Spengler’s *The Decline of the West*, particularly its resistance to enlightenment and belief in cultural decline. He attended the Royal Grammar School High Wycombe, leaving with three A-levels in mathematics, physics, and chemistry, winning an open scholarship in natural sciences to Jesus College, Cambridge. He switched on the first day to moral sciences (philosophy), graduating with a double first. During a gap year he hitchhiked through Greece and Egypt to Lebanon, where he witnessed the Lebanese Civil War and learned Arabic.

Reader's Guide

Roger Scruton’s significance stems from his lifelong intellectual project of defending conservative thought across aesthetics, political philosophy, and cultural criticism. As the founding editor of *The Salisbury Review*, he shaped a platform for conservative ideas, and his more than fifty books addressed architecture, art, philosophy, politics, and religion. His views on classical architecture and beauty were promoted through his foundation, and his political stances remained influential. Scruton’s conservatism was shaped by his reaction to the May 1968 student protests in France, which he witnessed. His academic career included roles as lecturer, reader, and Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, from 1971 to 1992, followed by a professorship at Boston University until 1995. He later worked as a freelance writer and scholar, holding part-time academic positions. Notably, in the 1980s he helped establish underground academic networks in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, earning the Czech Republic’s Medal of Merit from President Václav Havel in 1998. He was knighted in 2016 for services to philosophy, teaching, and public education. His publications, including *The Meaning of Conservatism*, *Sexual Desire*, *The Aesthetics of Music*, and *How to Be a Conservative*, remain cited in debates on aesthetics, conservatism, and public policy. He also chaired the UK government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission from 2019 to 2020.

Did You Know?

• Scruton switched from Natural Sciences to Moral Sciences on his first day at Jesus College, Cambridge.