Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life

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Roger Scruton is Britain's best known intellectual dissident, who has defended English traditions and English identity against an official culture of denigration. Although his writings on philosophical aesthetics have shown him to be a leading authority in the field, his defence of political conservatism has marked him out in academic circles as public enemy number one. Whether it is Scruton's opinions that get up the nose of his critics, or the wit and erudition with which he expresses them, there is no doubt that their noses are vastly distended by his presence, and constantly on the verge of a collective sneeze. Contrary to orthodox opinion, however, Roger Scruton is a human being, and Gentle Regrets contains the proof of it - a quiet, witty but also serious and moving account of the ways in which life brought him to think what he thinks, and to be what he is. His moving vignettes of his childhood and later influences illuminate this book. Love him or hate him, he will engage you in an argument that is both intellectually stimulating and informed by humour.

Reviews

'Gentle Regrets, his memoir, is far more than a collection of fertile ideas: it's the colourful story of a learned man's life and the argued attempt to help other reclaim treasures of mind and soul that are being relegated to the discard bin....Scruton has produced a minor classic, a searching treatment of his own spirit in conflict with the spirit of age.' -- David Castronovo, Commonweal, September 2006
"...a penetrating self-examination that is often remorseless and poignant, while presenting what may be the finest contemporary example of one man's resistance to personal and social disorders of this age." - Philosophy Now
Scruton is an English philosopher best known for vigorously defending traditional culture in works like "England: An Elegy" and "The Meaning of Conservatism." His latest book assembles twelve "autobiographical excursions" into a composite account of his intellectual development. In addition to neatly expository essays ("How I Discovered Culture") and a sequence of poems entitled "Miss Hap," the collection includes a reminiscence of the "sleeping cities" of the Eastern bloc and an acute meditation on beauty and religious faith. The blunt wit for which Scruton is known is scarce here, but lyric suits him almost as well as polemic. Such passages as the evocation of a chapel filled with the "soft smell of stone that has grown old in shadow" vividly illuminate the moral import of aesthetic values.
"The record of an extraordinary life" "contains many memorable portraits of Scruton's friends, teachers, inspirations, antagonists "the central teaching of this wise and companionable book is that the acknowledgement of loss is not the end the prelude to the possession of joy" -- National Review
"...Gentle Regrets, Scruton's wistful, magnanimous, and ineluctably intelligent memoir."- National Review, March 27, 2006 -- National Review
'A practised and elegant writer' The Independent * Blurb from reviewer *
'The autobiographical musings of a conservative intellectual who refuses to wear his learning lightly.' The Sunday telegraph * Blurb from reviewer *
a very fine book, brimming with humanity and intelligence -- Michael Burleigh * Literary Review *
'[A] book of unforgettable reflections on childhood, schooling, music, opera, religion and love...[a] highly personal series of wistful reflections.' -- A. N. Wilson, Times Literary Supplement, 18/08/2006 * Times Literary Supplement *
Title mention in article by Roger Scruton on Chomsky. Wall Street Journal [Europe], 29/09/2006 * Wall Street Journal, The *

Author Bio

Sir Roger Scruton is widely seen as one of the greatest conservative thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and a polymath who wrote a wide array of fiction, non-fiction and reviews. He was the author of over fifty books. A graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, Scruton was Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London; University Professor at Boston University, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was one of the founders of the Salisbury Review, contributed regularly to The Spectator, The Times and the Daily Telegraph and was for many years wine critic for the New Statesman. Sir Roger Scruton died in January 2020.