In this recorded panel tribute, the speaker (identified as Speaker A) reflects on the life and legacy of the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, focusing on his personal resilience during the culture‑war attacks of his final year, his deep ties to Italy, and the ways those experiences shaped his conservatism. The talk recounts Scruton’s 1960s visits to Rome to stay with his friend Bernard and Bernard’s wife Maria Teresa, highlighting the warmth of Italian family life and its contrast with British society. Anecdotes from Scruton’s diaries describe leisurely days in Trastevere, family outings, and his love of opera sparked by Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Italian performances. The speaker notes Scruton’s coping mechanism of channeling criticism into creative work—writing books, essays, and even music. The tribute also enumerates the honors Scruton received, from awards presented by Václav Havel, Viktor Orbán, and Lech Kaczyński to a knighthood by the British Crown, and a cherished Italian Massai Prize for wine writing, symbolized by a barrel of Amarone. Throughout, the speaker emphasizes the importance of friendship, especially Bernard’s support after Scruton’s birthday, and the role of cultural immersion in his intellectual development.
Chapters
Morning, Sarah. Thank you for inviting me. It's lovely to be here and be at an event organized by the European Conservative magazine that Ian and Georgia wrote for, and I've enjoyed reading over the years. Thank you so much for having a panel that would that allows us to have a conversation remembering Roger, but perhaps also learning one or two more new things about him along the way. And as Francesco spoke in the last panel about the, the culture war Roger found himself deeply involved in just maybe a year before he died with the attack from the New Statesman. I suppose I could just sort of say how really difficult that was, how incredibly wounding it was. And for anybody in the public eye who is having to fight these culture wars, I realize that this really is a sort of life and death moment for your careers. And it takes an incredible toll on people personally who are involved in this. Well, Bernard will remember the time because he actually came over to London shortly afterwards for Roger's birthday, and it seemed to me particularly important that his best friend who lives here in Rome should come over And be able to offer the friendship that you really need at those times. And also, what else? I could just say something about how Roger survived those sort of things, and it was— his solution was just to work harder. He would just go into his office and start another book. So he would start writing about something he loved, something to do with culture, maybe something to do with music, and— or even write music. And his way of surviving those attacks was just to become creative and be very determined to keep going using his own energy and his own resources, which no one can take away. Anyway, as we're here in Italy, I was thinking I would maybe say a few things about why— about Roger's connections with Italy and maybe how they have influenced his— him becoming a conservative. He traveled to Italy first back in the 1960s, I believe, to visit Bernard and his wife, and his future wife, Mara Teresa, who is here this evening at the conference. And Roger had left home before he went up to Cambridge University, and so he didn't really have a family life at the time. And I think that the opportunity to come to Italy and and to be and see the growing family life of Bernard and Maria Theresa, and to be received warmly by Maria Theresa's family and her brothers, must have been wonderful for him, and must have taught him the sort of natural affections that are so obvious here in Italy, but are so difficult in British society. Often, and I think that was probably something that he would have been— he would have enjoyed and he would have taken into the things he held dear and later his own family life. We were very lucky to visit as a family over the years, come stay with Bernard and Maria Teresa and enjoy Italian culture and life. We were very lucky, Bernard and Mary Theresa, we'd lived near the Appian Way, and there was surely no better place to impress upon our children the history of art and history of civilization than here in Rome. Roger very much enjoyed bringing the family here, and I found a diary entry in which he spoke about it. He said, we spent 2 sweet days in Rome staying in the flat belonging to Cecilia, Bernard and Mary Therese's daughter, in Trastevere. Showing my loved treasures to the Spratts— that's our children— having dinner in the garden at Via Marmenia, and receiving from Mary Teresa's delighted hand an old notebook of mine full of drafts for the unpublished first novel. I want to talk to you. Yes, also one visit— Roger wrote a lot about music, and in his autobiography Gentle Regrets, he says that his love of opera started with The Marriage of Figaro and some wonderful Italian opera that he enjoyed so much. And one visit we made was to the Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona, where he gave a fantastic lecture on Beethoven's 9th Symphony. And then after that, there was a wonderful open-air performance in the town square in Cortona. And so Roger was much loved and much appreciated in his own lifetime, which I'm so pleased about. And he received many awards. He received an award from President Václav Havel back in the late 1990s. He went on to receive awards from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Prime Minister Lech Kaczyński And he was in England knighted by the crown, by actually by the then Prince of Wales, now King. But one of his favorite awards was here in Italy, where he was given an award for his writing on wine, and he received the Massai Prize as the best wine writer and the reward came in the form of a barrel of Amarone, which we still enjoy drinking at Christmas to this day. Thank you.
