I was sorry to read of the death of philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, aged 75.
Unusually Twitter was quite a nice place to be yesterday as friends, acquaintances and admirers paid homage to one of the nicest people you could wish to meet.
I’ve written about Scruton several times, including this post in April 2019 that followed an outrageous attempt by the New Statesman to sully his reputation by making him appear racist and anti-semitic.
Thanks to author and political commentator Douglas Murray (see The Scruton tapes: an anatomy of a modern hit job) those wrongs were righted, but without Murray’s efforts Scruton’s life could have ended in ignominy which would have been a personal tragedy.
Having met him on a couple of occasions - the first time in the Eighties when I was invited to his house for tea, the second time at a conference in 2012 - I can vouch for his charm and quiet charisma.
I must be honest, though. I’ve never read a single one of his books, unlike my son. He was always trying to find some long out of print volume and four years ago he interviewed Scruton for an article that was published here.
As it happens Scruton was once a paid consultant to Japan Tobacco which in 2002 got him into a different kind of bother:
Clive Bates, director of the ASH anti-smoking campaign, said last night: "Scruton likes to pass himself off as the leading intellectual of the right, but it seems he's just a grimy hack for the tobacco industry."
You’re wrong, Clive. (And that was the cheapest of cheap shots, btw.)
Far from being a ‘grimy hack for the tobacco industry’, Scruton was a man of enormous principle, a giant in comparison to many of the pygmies in politics and public health.
As Toby Young notes in the Mail today:
He wrote more than 50 books on a vast range of subjects and was knighted in 2016 for ‘services to philosophy, teaching and public education’.
Despite that he was ‘vilified by the liberal establishment for daring to challenge the fashionable nostrums of our age’.
Thankfully Scruton’s achievements will long outlive his critics and others who sought to eviscerate his reputation.
And for that we can be truly grateful.