Roger Scruton 
Celebrity fun vs scared joy
Easter is the season of rebirth and renewal. It is hard to renew ourselves, not because we are weak and tempted only, but because our pleasure-seeking culture pours scorn on… Read more
Prayers in stone
No institution is more vividly expressive of the English genius for creative muddle than the Anglican Church. A Protestant church whose liturgy declares it to be Catholic; a national church… Read more
Brain drain
Neuroscience wants to be the answer to everything. It isn’t There are many reasons for believing the brain is the seat of consciousness. Damage to the brain disrupts our mental… Read more
The green and the blue
For as long as I can remember, the word ‘conservative’ has been used in intellectual circles as a term of abuse, while to call someone ‘right-wing’ has been the next… Read more
We need the English music that the Arts Council hates
Roger Scruton hails the glorious achievements of the English composers, and their role in idealising the gentleness of the English arcadia — so loathed by our liberal elite The English… Read more
An unhappy birthday to Sigmund the Fraud
Roger Scruton says that the century and a half since Freud’s birth has been marred by his imagined diseases of the mind Freud was born 150 years ago, on 6… Read more
Hail Quinlan Terry
Since the early 20th century, Western society has been in the grip of a culture of repudiation — rejecting one by one the institutions, offices, traditions and achievements of the… Read more
Dawkins is wrong about God
Faced with the spectacle of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of faith, Voltaire famously cried ‘Ecrasez l’infâme!’ Scores of enlightened thinkers have followed him, declaring organised religion to be… Read more
Your countryside needs you
Roger Scruton says that it’s time for rural residents to protect the land they love by clubbing together and buying it If you look at an electoral map of England,… Read more
The sound of silence
The musical profession has never recognised borders. Composers, performers and ensembles have moved from city to city and country to country, learning and teaching, experimenting with local styles, adding to… Read more
The power of negative thinking
Roger Scruton says that France has never recovered from Jean-Paul Sartre’s horror of the bourgeoisie and his repudiation of both Christianity and the idea of France Jean-Paul Sartre, born 100… Read more
INVESTIGATION: Shameless and loveless
Sexual intercourse began, according to Philip Larkin’s famous poem, in 1963. Four decades have elapsed since then, and these decades have seen a growing recognition that sexual liberation is not… Read more
Know your place
There can be no true society — and no social mobility — without hierarchy, says Roger Scruton The recent memo purloined from Prince Charles made the accurate observation that ‘child-centred’… Read more
The state can’t set you free
The Human Rights Act has seemed to many to be an innocent adaptation of principles already contained within our common law, and indeed affirmed by statute once before, in the… Read more
The truth about meaning
There is a certain tradition in American philosophy that combines logical rigour and systematic thinking in a style so concise and self-contained as to offer little or no purchase to… Read more
Latest blogs
- Sir David Nicholson to go: but will it change the culture at the top of the NHS? Isabel Hardman
- Scottish independence: it’s still (almost) all about oil. Alex Massie
- The Tory grassroots were feeling neglected long before ‘swivel-eyed loons’ claims Isabel Hardman
- Swivel-eyed loons are a feature of British democracy Rod Liddle
- Jeremy Hunt attacks Labour for A&E crisis Isabel Hardman
- Inflation falls: but will voters notice? Isabel Hardman
- Writers in a state of fear Nick Cohen
