Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life

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,...