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.

Roger Scruton's How to be a Conservative presents the case for modern conservatism not in the terms of an elegy but rather as a practical example of how to live as a conservative despite the pressures to live otherwise. As he writes, the book 'is not about what we have lost, but about what we have retained, and how to hold on to it'.

In this witty and frank account, Scruton draws on his years of experience as a counter-cultural presence in public life. He examines the truths in Nationalism, Socialism, Capitalism, Liberalism, Multiculturalism, Environmentalism, Internationalism and finally Conservatism. The book concludes on a personal note, with 'a valediction forbidding mourning but admitting loss'.

Reviews

“Roger Scruton is that rarest of things: a first-rate philosopher who actually has a philosophy … one of the few intellectually authoritative voices in modern British conservatism” –  Jesse Norman, Spectator

“Roger Scruton is one of our great men of speculation” –  David Willetts, Standpoint

“A persuasive and poignant little book” –  Ferdinand Mount, The Oldie

“Elegantly written and thought-provoking ... I loved this book, especially the way it seems to be aimed as much at the heart as the mind. On both it has a cleansing effect, the equivalent of eating a tart lemon sorbet” –  Country Life