Conversations with Roger Scruton

A candid and personal insight into the life and work of the philosopher and writer Roger Scruton, by his intellectual biographer Mark Dooley. This book reveals what life was like for Roger Scruton growing up in High Wycombe, how he survived Cambridge and how he came to hold his conservative outlook. It tells of Scruton’s rise to prominence while writing for The Times and sheds light on his campaign on behalf of underground dissidents in Eastern Europe. Ranging across topics as diverse as the current state of British philosophy, music, religion, and illuminating what lay behind Scruton’s abandonment of academia for his new life on a Wiltshire farm, Conversations with Roger Scruton is an intimate portrait of a writer who has felt philosophy as a vocation and whose defence of unfashionable causes has brought him a wide readership in Britain and around the world.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1 Childhood and Cambridge 2 Becoming a Philosopher 3 Becoming a Conservative at Birkbeck 4 Some Thoughts on British Philosophy 5 Eastern Europe 6 Why Architecture? 7 Why Sex? 8 Leaving Birkbeck for Boston 9 Farming and Family 10 Sinful Pleasures 11 Rediscovering Religion 12 Living as a Writer 13 Making Music 14 Acceptance Afterword Notes Index

About the Author :
Professor Roger Scruton is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge. He has been Professor of Aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London, and University Professor at Boston University. He is currently Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington DC. He has published a large number of books, including some works of fiction, and has written and composed two operas. He writes regularly for The Times, The Telegraph, The Spectator and was for many years wine critic of The New Statesman. Mark Dooley has held lectureships at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and at University College Dublin where he was John Henry Newman Scholar of Theology. From 2003-2006, he wrote a controversial column on foreign affairs for the Sunday Independent. Since 2006, he has written for the Irish Daily Mail. Dooley is also a regular broadcaster on Irish radio and television, and has served as a political speech writer. He is author of The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility (2001), The Philosophy of Derrida (2007), and Roger Scruton: The Philosopher on Dover Beach (2009). He is editor of Questioning Ethics (1999), Questioning God (2001), A Passion for the Impossible (2003), and The Roger Scruton Reader (2009).