'Extracts'
(
Third Way)
'...Roger Scruton so distinctive a figure on the British intellectual landscape...extraordinary range of his interests and sympathies - aesthetics, architecture, farming, hunting, literature, music, philosophy and, above all, religion...very fine book, brimming with humanity and intelligence, and beautifully produced by one of Britain's most interesting publishers...amiable and thoughtful...succinct...remarkable representative of English high culture...elegant book' (Michael Burleigh
Literary Review)
'..beguilling memoirs'
(Jonathan Rée
Independent, The)
'In this vivid confessional, Scruton incarnates ideas throughout in autobiographical events... by completely integrating the ideas into the personal narrative, the author creates a new and vital form which is beyond both scholarly dissertation and personal memoir... read this book and be eoncuraged... an excitement and a joy from cover to cover.' New Criticism
'A splendid book, often moving, often funny, disconcertingly humble but also full of passionate indignation and satire... fascinating.' Tablet
a very fine book, brimming with humanity and intelligence
(Michael Burleigh
Literary Review)
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 New Yorker
'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] book of unforgettable reflections on childhood, schooling, music, opera, religion and love...[a] highly personal series of wistful reflections.'
Times Literary Supplement, A. N. Wilson, 18/08/2006
(A. N. Wilson
Times Literary Supplement)
Title mention in article by Roger Scruton on Chomsky.
Wall Street Journal [Europe], 29/09/2006
(
The Wall Street Journal)
'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
Mentioned in review in Catholic Insight (June 2007)
(Ian Hunter)
"...a penetrating self-examination that is oftenremorseless and poignant, while presenting what may be the finest contemporaryexample of one man's resistance to 'personal and social disorders of this age."- Philosophy Now'..beguilling memoirs'
(,
Independent, The)
a very fine book, brimming with humanity and intelligence
(,
Literary Review)
'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.'
(,)
"…Gentle Regrets, Scruton’s wistful, magnanimous, and ineluctably intelligent memoir."- National Review, March 27, 2006
(,)
'[A] book of unforgettable reflections on childhood, schooling, music, opera, religion and love...[a] highly personal series of wistful reflections.'
Times Literary Supplement, A. N. Wilson, 18/08/2006
(,
Times Literary Supplement)
Mentioned in review in Catholic Insight (June 2007)
(,)
“…a penetrating self-examination that is oftenremorseless and poignant, while presenting what may be the finest contemporaryexample of one man’s resistance to 'personal and social disorders of this age.”- Philosophy Now
