Most great men have a dip in their reputations after their deaths if they have been celebrated during their life. Although he was by no means celebrated throughout his life, Roger Scruton was, by the time of his death in January 2020, recognized around the world for his importance. He was honored in many countries, not least those in Eastern Europe in which he had operated the “Underground University” during the last years of international communism. His feeling of being a pariah in his own country was somewhat alleviated when he was knighted at Buckingham Palace in 2016. And around the world, as far from home as Brazil, he was widely viewed as the world’s most important conservative philosopher. After such an illustrious last few years, a lull of some kind might have been expected.

Thankfully no such posthumous plunge has occurred. The Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation is doing a sterling job in keeping his work alive and discussed. Last year the inaugural Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures took place in Oxford University’s Sheldonian Theatre, with hundreds of students queuing to hear a range of distinguished speakers including Niall Ferguson, Charles Moore, and Jonathan Sumption. And now Mark Dooley, Scruton’s literary executor, has come out with a new volume to help alleviate the ongoing hunger for the philosopher’s work.

It is not Dooley’s first book on Scruton. He has previously published a book-length analysis of Scruton’s thought (The Philosopher on Dover Beach, 2009), the excellent