I got a lot from this book. I especially liked the chapter on why Roger Scruton became a conservative, and also the chapter about music. We're talking about "serious" music here - you know, actual music (I add that I also like the chapter on music in The Closing Of The American Mind by Allan Bloom, which says something about my musical tastes--but nothing, note, about Roger Scruton's). In the chapter on music, RS makes the observation that there is a current school amongst opera directors to do

I got a lot from this book. I especially liked the chapter on why Roger Scruton became a conservative, and also the chapter about music. We're talking about "serious" music here - you know, actual music (I add that I also like the chapter on music in The Closing Of The American Mind by Allan Bloom, which says something about my musical tastes--but nothing, note, about Roger Scruton's). In the chapter on music, RS makes the observation that there is a current school amongst opera directors to do things like set The Magic Flute in a modern brothel (He may not have used this exact example, but you get the picture). This is because, he says, (and I agree with him), we are uncomfortable with the idea of the sacred in this post-modern world in which all that is holy is profaned. This deep point is enlarged upon without bitterness. A glowing description of Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande inspired me to do more "hard core listening" to operas, which, if I am honest, do generally make me feel rather uncomfortable.

The idea of the sacred, and human attitudes towards the sacred, are amongst the main themes of the book. "Stealing from churches" was a new and fecund idea for me.

The chapter about his trip to Finland was very interesting--there is a certain "Scrutonian Finnishness" about New Zealand, I think.

