WHY DO WE STILL READ ROGER Scruton? For many of his friends and followers, we read Scruton in order to meet him again. It is impossible to read his work without hearing his voice. It is a profoundly comforting one. It is gentle and humane, objective but compassionate — a very English voice. Hearing him speak, or encountering his words, feels like being ushered into the library of a country house with a fire roaring in the grate.
Sir Roger was a fitting intellectual icon for a nation that is not naturally attracted to public intellectuals. He wore his learning lightly, expressing his ideas plainly but elegantly. With his adventures in Eastern Europe, there was just a touch of Richard Hannay about him. Many of his young fans will have first encountered him on YouTube, in videos where he expressed the common sense of previous generations on questions like nationality and sexuality.
The atmosphere
