Against the Tide, by Roger Scruton, ed Mark Dooley

‘Eye of newt’s fine but might I suggest introducing a hint of coriander, a little oregano, a mere soupçon of marjoram and a generous splash of Châteauneuf-du-Pape?’

agonisingly long courtship) to Maria Bicknell was another stroke of luck. Maria, intelligent and empathetic, put up with his selfishness because she too was dedicated to his painting and to him. They lived in a cottage in Hampstead from which they could see the shining lights of the city below: ‘a view unsurpassed’, thought Constable, ‘from Westminster Abbey to Gravesend’.

It wasn’t until 1829 when in his fifties that he was made a member of the Royal Academy. By then, Maria had been dead for a year. This recognition by the Establishment was important to Constable, yet he never compromised his own vision – that ‘attentiveness to nature’ for the kind of picturesque artifice then fashionable in landscape.

He was barely 60 when he died, suddenly, at home in Hampstead. It was 1837. The Victorian age had begun and Constable had become, as Hamilton felicitously puts it, ‘a legend in his own landscape’.

On a coach to Dedham, shortly before he died, he exclaimed on the beauty of the countryside to a fellow passenger who informed him, ‘This is Constable’s country.’

And so it has been ever since.

Roger the forager

HAMISH ROBINSON Against the Tide By Roger Scruton Edited by Mark Dooley Bloomsbury £20

When does a philosopher cease to be philosophical?

The conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote a guide to Derby form. Here surely was a man who had laid

‘Citizen James (Sid James)’ by Ruskin Spear, 1962. From Humankind: Ruskin Spear: Class, culture and art in 20th-century Britain by Tanya Harrod (Thames & Hudson, £35)

down his philosophy. Indeed. But that was partly Oakeshott’s point. As a conservative philosopher, he believed that such activities had their own rationale and dignity and that picking a winner was just as important and more fun than doing philosophy.

Against the Tide, a brilliantly stimulating selection of the journalism by the late Sir Roger Scruton edited by his literary executor Mark Dooley, presents a case in point. Many of the lesser, autobiographical pieces – such as diary columns for the Spectator – are exercises in what might be called ‘little platoonery’, after Burke’s famous phrase for wholesome forms of civil association.

Sir Roger is encountered en famille attending a school play, a point-to-point or a rodeo – all of which have their interest and charm and breathe confidence in a way of life. Little essays on wine-drinking and hunting are in similar vein. There are also less genial accounts of his peremptory dismissal from his government-appointed position as chair of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission in 2019. That was following the revelation of supposedly ‘Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments’ in an interview given to the New Statesman, comments that turned out to be the cut-and-pasted fabrications of an over-eager young journalist. But even this scandal is turned to the good: there are opportunities for reconciliation and forgiveness.

Reaping an extraordinary late harvest of loyalty and support from friends all over the world – not least in the former Eastern Bloc countries where he had given sustaining underground seminars – the philosopher counts his blessings. Even a course of chemotherapy in