News From SomewhereFor a number of years Roger Scruton has contributed a weekly article to the Financial Times on country matters. Always beautifully written, one of these pieces (Vegetables) won the 2002 prize from The Queen's English Society for the best piece of prose writing of the year. These are not sentimental bucolic rambles. Scruton's prose is devoid of sentimentality and soggy nostalgia. Whatever he writes about, he always writes with serious purpose. He speaks up for the country dweller who sees his or her world eroded by the wishy-washy liberal commands of Blairite dogooders who sit on their backsides in North West London pontificating about the needs of country people. Nature being red in tooth and claw is something that these people only know about from sitting in a classroom. Farming issues are equally important in this book. The devastations of the foot and mouth crisis showed graphically how great is the divide between town and country dwellers. And when the fate of people in the countryside is decided by bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg, their feeling of alienation is even greater. These are the causes that Professor Scruton espouses and he has become their most intelligent, articulate and clear-thinking advocate. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
acquired animals barn beneath birds boopoles Braydon building century chickens church claylands colours Cotswold Cotswold stone cottage Council countryside cows creatures culture dairy Dairy Crest dances death ditches dogs door earth economy England English eyes face farmer farmyard fields global grass gypsies H. J. Massingham habit hedge hedgerows Hence herd horses human hunter-gatherer hunting Iris pond John Major kind kitchen labour land landscape lanes live London look Lord Haskins Malmesbury milk Minety mobile home modern muntjac nature neighbours never pasture plastic plough ponies Rider Haggard river Avon road RSPCA rural Scruton settled sheep side Sidney silage silence slivovitz social soil Sophie stand stone Sunday Hill Farm supermarket survive Swindon symbol Tetbury things Tinker tion town tractor trees turn urban vegetables village Vince Wiltshire winter Wootton Bassett Worzel Gummidge young