Scruton

I am currently reading Roger Scruton's conservative Manifesto and lamentation England: An Elegy.

It's an odd book. I enjoy working through Scruton's descriptions. He longs, it seems, for an England that was. Then again, I don't necessarily know what his England looked like in the first place. His longings seem to be forever caught up with the presence of place. For he states on pages 39 & 40 of the book that, "Even when the word 'Britain' appeared in the title--and this was rarely--the text and the illustrations made it clear that is was England which was at stake, England being, first and foremost, the countryside." This claim strikes me as peculiar inasmuch as I don't know how 'countryside' can be the primary source of an ethos (or geist for my Germanophone readers).

Don't misunderstand me, however. The English countryside is enchanting. Nevertheless, I would not go as far as to state that it is the source of the English disposition.

Scruton is a dyed in the wool Romantic Nationalist. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. A certain amount of nationalist pride goes with place and people--it is part and parcel of one's very "being-there." But I fear that Scruton conflates nationalist pride with a certain prescriptivist agenda. This sort of technique is somewhat sly yet clearly a lost cause. The UK has seen massive change in the past 2000 years. And I fear that Scruton's analysis is lacking a certain plasticity necessary in sociological diagnosis. Scruton is just a bit too Xenophobic for his own good. And the England he longs for is of an era quite distant from modern Britain.

On a somewhat lighter note, check out the Manchester Art Gallery Website and scroll through some of the on-line facsimile's of Pre-Raphaelite artwork. We visited the gallery late last week and strolled through its collection. I was quite impressed.

JS