Mark Dooley - Conversations with Roger Scruton

Conversations with
Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton and Mark Dooley

These conversations took place over three days in March 2015. They were conducted at Sunday Hill Farm, Roger Scrutons home in Wiltshire. I wish to thank Roger, his wife Sophie and their children Sam and Lucy, for their wonderful hospitality during my visit. I am especially grateful to Roger for the time and commitment which he gave this project. I am also thankful to my editors at Bloomsbury, Robin Baird-Smith and Jamie Birkett, for their encouragement and patience.

What follows is a broad-ranging and fairly intimate portrait of Scrutons life and career, one that sheds some new light on both. While the form of the conversations is generally chronological, they often move from biography to ideas and back again. I hope that this will give the reader a greater understanding of Scrutons thought, but also of the unusual life that lies behind it. In the end, however, this book can be summed up by something Scruton said to me shortly after I arrived at Sunday Hill Farm: So, Mark, you have come to show the world that I am human! These conversations testify to the fact that Roger Scruton is indeed both human and humorous. And it is he, not me, who shows the world that this is so.

Dublin

November 2015

It was not a happy home

I had already published two books on Roger Scruton, dealing with his philosophy, conservatism and his many other interests. This time, however, I was in pursuit of the man behind the work. I wanted Scruton to tell the story of how he became the person that he is. And so I travelled from Dublin to Sunday Hill Farm in Wiltshire, where Roger has lived since 1993. This would not be my first visit to a place to which he has so often and movingly paid tribute in various writings. As you approach Sunday Hill, which sits on the outskirts of Malmesbury, you realize just how apt Scrutons descriptions of his beautiful settlement are. One, in particular, comes to mind each time I spot the farm on the horizon:

It was thus that I came to Sunday Hill Farm, bringing with me a library, three pianos and four horses. I was the first off-comer to attempt to settle among families that had farmed here for centuries Sunday Hill Farm is an old cottage of Cotswold stone, with a stone barn attached to one side of it. My first act on moving in was to replace the metal-framed windows and to cover the grim concrete extension with a veneer of rendering. So far as I could see nobody in the valley had ever before carried out building work for aesthetic reasons. It

Today, Sunday Hill Farm is very much woven into the fabric of the Wiltshire farmlands. Scrutons attempt to make it look right was in keeping with his conviction, best summed up by Oscar Wilde, that it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The old stone barn has been converted into a library, containing antique furniture and two pianos. It is in this room that Scruton writes, composes and ponders his sweet especial rural scene. His home which he shares with Sophie and their two children Sam and Lucy is testimony to Scrutons cultural values, his love of music, his concern for his surroundings and in particular his passion for horses.

People often ask me how I became interested in Roger Scruton. How was it that an Irishman should come to share the vision of the quintessential English conservative? One of the reasons, apart from our shared philosophical outlook, is that my family has long been associated with the horse. My great-grandfather ran a successful stable yard, and it was from there that my grandmother emerged as a horsewoman of some skill. Indeed, she would go on to compete at the highest levels of Irish show jumping. My parents met through show jumping and continue to compete. I, too, competed for many years before taking up a position as commentator on the national show jumping circuit.

When I first encountered Scruton, I was struck by the fact that his life, like mine, had been touched by horses. As he wrote in On Hunting:

My life divides into three parts. In the first I was wretched; in the second ill at ease; in the third hunting. Most hunting people are

Unlike Scruton, I was one of those who had been shaped by hunting and show jumping. I was someone who had absorbed from birth the equestrian vernacular of my ancestors. Yet, for all his anxiety, Scruton is certainly no spectator. He is very much at home in the world of horses and has, in turn, given many of them a good home. The home into which I wandered to conduct our conversations is not so much one of books and ideas, although they dominate as much as anything else. It is, if anything, a world where the horse is at home. And, that being the case, so was I.

All aspects of Scrutons thinking are embodied in his homestead and lifestyle. This is a world of farmers and philosophers, of Wagner and wine, of animals and Aristotle. Shortly after I arrive, we are joined by Paddy the dog. Paddy is a black Labrador with big soulful eyes. This is the first time he has been to his new home, and yet it is as though he has been here all his life. Such is the rhythm of life on this farm that those who visit feel as though they have always been part of the routine. As such, Paddy and I settle in seamlessly.

Roger Scruton did not start life this way. His was not a world of horses, scholarship and culture. I had a very ordinary childhood, he exclaims as we sit in his converted barn. We already know from his previous autobiographical statements that Roger Scrutons childhood was, indeed, relatively ordinary. Born to Jack and Beryl on 27 February 1944, he was raised with his two sisters in the town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. As he wrote in Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life:

My mother was born and bred in the genteel suburbs of London, cherishing an ideal of gentlemanly conduct and social distinction that

Those deeds would, in time, reward Roger with great fame as a philosopher, writer, journalist and intellectual dissident. As a child, however, he did not have those rapturous, Proustian moments in which the whole of ones forthcoming life is condensed. That was, he believes, because he came from a home where there was obviously trouble between my father and my mother of some kind, that we never really fully understood. There was great tension in the household, and the children constantly crept around this tension, afraid of tripping the switch. The source of that tension was his father, whom Roger describes as a ball of electricity that sat silent in the middle of the room.

Beryl, on the other hand, was the mildest and sweetest of people, who would never respond with anger to the anger that she received. The sad truth was that although the Scruton children loved her dearly, we had each grown a carapace against this love, knowing how much it would expose us to his anger.me were not straightforwardly those of a father to a son: there was rivalry and frustration at his own life which continued to accumulate. As a result, I could not say that I had a happy childhood.

Jack Scruton was the most important influence on the young Roger. He was a strong demonic character with a touch of his old Manchester working-class grit. He had very strong beliefs of a socialist, egalitarian kind. These went with a burden of resentment towards the upper classes, something which made him very much of his time. My father was, therefore, the fount of all the ideas and emotions that perambulated in our household. Conversely, Scrutons mother was a gentle, introspective person who was very unconfident in herself. Unlike Jack, not very much came out of her. She was, however, very intelligent and understood what was going on, although she did not want to put herself forward in order to express what she knew. Was she a source of consolation in the midst of all this anger? She was and she wasnt, simply because she was so frightened by it that she couldnt stand up to the real attacks. Such consolation as the Scruton children had, we had in each other. My eldest sister and I were very close and still are. We recognized that we had to shelter each other from the prevailing winds.