Where We Are: The State of Britain Now

by Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton looks at where Britain has found itself, and ponders where it should go next.

Addressing one of the most politically turbulent periods in modern British history, philosopher Roger Scruton asks how, in these circumstances, we can come to define our identity, and what in the coming years will hold us together.

To what are our duties owed and why? How do we respond to the pull of globalization and mass migration, to the rise of Islam, and to the decline of Christian belief? Do we accept these as inevitable or do we resist them? If we resist them on what basis do we build?

This book sets out to answer these questions, and to understand the volatile moment in which we live. Roger Scruton slices characteristically through the fog of debate with this sensible and profound account of the collective British identity; essential reading for anyone interested in what it means to be British, what that might come to mean in future, and who wonders how we can define our place in a rapidly changing world.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, British Literature, Audiobook, Cultural

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2017

About the author

Sir Roger Scruton was a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics and politics. He was a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He taught in both England and America and was a Visiting Professor at Department of Philosophy and Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.

In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.

In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).

Reviews

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scruton, Roger. Where We Are: The State of Britain Now.

Brexit was more than a rejection of Eurocratic globalism. It was a coming home and a defense of home. Sir Roger Scruton’s goal is not some crude caricature of nationalism. Rather, he demonstrates the organic way in which the nation arises from the longing for home. As noted in the opening sentence, the book is a minor defense of Brexit and an elegant rebuke to a myopic globalism.

Scruton, as was common with all thinkers before the rise of fascism, actually undertakes to discuss what a nation is. A nation is allegiance to a homeland. That is a good definition, but it is still abstract. A nation arises when men live as neighbors with each other. Because of this proximity, territorial, even only at the local level, courts arise to adjudicate matters. That is a nation.

Missing from Scruton’s definition is any discussion of race. Scruton mentions racial and ethnic issues, to be sure, but they are not constitutive of nationhood. Home is. This allows Scruton to contrast home with other identities. The nation, despite its bad press in the 20th century, is superior to other pre-political identities, such as tribe and creed. Postmodern elites, of course, deny any of the above options, leaving us only with life dictated by international treaties.

When men live as neighbors, they need a structure to adjudicate. This is where law is attached to land. This is the nation.

Internationalism, Immigration, and Human Rights

Is globalism inevitable? Tony Blair said so, implying that you, a free patriot, are foolish to resist it. Scruton, however, made an interesting comparison with the industrial revolution. Assuming that something like the industrial revolution was inevitable, should society have sat back and let it run its course? In other words, given that it was inevitable, should politicians have allowed employers to force children to work 16 hour days? Why not? Progress is inevitable. Of course, that is absurd. Why then do we ignore the same thing with globalism? Maybe the rural village will disappear in a cloud of digits and files, but maybe we should find some way to channel these energies and preserve the bonds of society.

In a similar vein, Scruton’s comments on immigration might mislead some. When the European Union began, it did so to organize and streamline manufacturing and energy production between the various countries. Whether that was good or not, it did make some sense. That is no longer the case. Europe cannot compete with Asia in industrial potential. Europe, rather, should focus on the capital it does have: intellectual, technological, and legal.

Internationalism has also called into question the practicality of human rights. Human rights are real. They are real only because they are not international. Someone’s “right” means I have a duty to that person, and that duty is usually seen in day to day interactions. People do not have their freedom in the abstract. Rather, it is embodied “in the act of moving outwards in shared relations.” It receives a real and objective form in community–this or that community. In less technical language we can illustrate the problem this way: I believe that Tibetans have the right to x. It is not clear, though, what I can do about it. I have no–indeed, I cannot have–embodied social relations with them.

These embodied relations partly explain the Meltdown crisis. In chapters 1 and 2 of Das Kapital, Karl Marx complained that capital has an illusive character. Indeed, it disappears in a quasi-alchemical process through various exchanges. Since capital in Marx’s time was largely manufactured goods, his claim was pure nonsense. On the other hand, when applied to modern digital currency, there might be something to it. Scruton frames the problem thus: from where do the digits that determine our currency come? True, there is a man at a desk entering the numbers, but the digits themselves come from Nowhere. This is also where your Facebook friends reside.

The answer to all of this is a reinvigorating of “home.” Scruton writes with a poignant style. Indeed, we meet nostalgia in its original sense, a journey to home.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Scruton is always worth reading and I think this is one of his best. He introduces the term oikophobia for the anywheres of David Goodhart, and oikophilia, home to the somewheres, is derided by that group. I think both authors produce valid and interesting descriptions of the social divisions that led to the Brexit vote. He produces a philosophical validity to conservatism with a soft c. There were other features to the Brexit vote too, but probably for more of a minority. It was an intellectually perfectly respectable conclusion for those who did more research and put more thought into things, and the person here to read is Roger Bootle. And uncontrolled migration is not racism, but a very valid reason for concern when your wages and living conditions are squeezed and you fall into that section of the population for whom living costs matter. The person here is Paul Collier and I am now reading Refuge.

[Hon Jiun · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't normally read political books but this caught my eye on the shelf at Whitechapel Library, London. While there's a lot that Roger Scruton has written about in the book that I don't agree with, that doesn't take away the validity of some of his claims. Some of them are true in some aspects and it does take someone writing it down for me to be exposed to his and others ideas. It's a little hard to read, especially if the terms and themes mentioned are relatively unfamiliar to you. I think it's worth a read even if there's a bit of an oversimplification or an idealistic view of the role that a "home" plays in shaping an individual or a country.

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 1 out of 5]

There's a timeless quality to Scruton's work, by which I meant his arguments are tired and repetitive, and pretty much unchanged from his earlier works. A charitable reading of this state of affairs might suggest he's just building a coherent body of work, but a more truthful reading is that he just has no new ideas and shows no interest at all in engaging with the complexity of changes in the real world.

As a general rule, whenever he sticks to just theoretical philosophy, he's actually pretty good. As I'll try to point out below, his stance that Home is important really is underemphasized. Unfortunately he's also trying to defend a view of Britain as filled with people who have always been content with their own piece of land and customs, and this has little correspondence to anything true. He also tries to defend Brexit, while denouncing the EU and the Scottish movement for independence, and his arguments end up being incredibly schizophrenic.


I. Basic philosophical stance - The importance of Home

Here is his basic philosophical framework, which I think is valuable so I quote in detail:

The crucial thing is not that we can avail ourselves of some eternal community, with fixed borders, unalterable beliefs and a ring-fenced genetic inheritance. What is crucial is that, in the flow of human fortunes, there should be a place of belonging, which we can identify as our home, where the inhabitants can be relied upon, and which we are all committed to defending and improving for the common good.

This returns me again to David Goodhart’s distinction between the ‘somewheres’ and the ‘anywheres’. There are those for whom the attachment to a specific place and the form of life that grows there is definitive of their condition, and who wish at all costs to conserve that place as the home to which they belong. And there are those who are easily uprooted, can take their skills and their social networks effortlessly from place to place, and generally find the niche in which to settle.

Institutions and relations confer benefits on those whom they include, but not on the remainder. This innocent fact is rewritten by the oikophobic [home+fear/hate] imagination as a proof of ‘social exclusion’. The love that binds my family is inclusive. You, who are not a family member, are therefore excluded from it. Of course, exclusion is not the purpose, but merely the unintended by-product of a benefit that exists only if it is not conferred on everyone. But that is not how oikophobes see the world. For the exclusion that is the by-product of a privilege can be made to look like its primary purpose, part of a strategy of domination whereby old hierarchies sustain themselves, exploiting and trampling upon those whom they deprive.

That's it, that's all the serious arguments in the book. Apart from this, there's a lot of mythologizing about Britain and its history and about the horrors of the Islamists.

Weirdly, he's credited as common-sensical and even-handed (the description of this book claims he "slices characteristically through the fog of debate with this sensible and profound account"). I think that's because there are moments in the book where he seems like he's making concessions to the other side. But these are infrequent, and tend to be quickly forgotten as the next polemical section begins. He never tried to grapple with the tension of seeming inconsistenties, that might with struggle lead to deeper insight. For example at one point he talks about his own inability to settle down initially, and says:

Anywhere people need roots as much as somewhere people; the difference is that they need to discover those roots for themselves...The discovery of roots, when it occurs, lends strength as much to our neighbours as to ourselves. For it leads to the principal benefit that a mobile person brings to a place of settlement, which is gratitude for having found it.

This could have been a great place to concede that the division he made between the normal somewheres and the radical "oikophobic" anywheres is more complex, that the left simply wants a place that is actually home to different people, but he just immediately goes back to attacking a strawman where the left is viciously attacking everything the common people hold dear, and for no apparent reason.


II. Deeply misleading reading of British history

A lot of the small c-conservatism is genuinely interesting, although it was unclear to me why the vast majority of it was considered particularly European or British. Admittedly some features did stick out, like the British's tendency to take the piss out of its leaders in a way that's unusual, and the British fascination and obsession with gardening as a national rural pastime.

But these modest benefits are overwhelmed by Scruton's massive rewritting of British history into a charming pastoral narrative of spontaneous living arrangements and common law rulings coming into being through discussion between rational, respectful individuals. This includes doozies about how Henry the VIII wasn't just looking for a way to divorce without Rome's approval, he was in fact "translating into a doctrine of law...territorial law [of the 'English Nation' that] treats individuals as bearers of rights and duties". Sure, that's not a contrived explanation at all.

But the worst aspect of the book though is its deep dishonesty about evidence. While he admits that he supports a positive narrative about Britain's past, this apparently include outright fabrication and erasure. So he repeatedly says stuff like:

And they should study our art and literature, which is an art and literature not of war but of peace, an invocation of home and the routines of home, of everydayness and enduring settlement. Its quarrels are domestic quarrels, its protests are pleas for neighbours, its goal is homecoming and contentment with the place that is ours

...The same vision of the responsible individual has inspired European art and literature since the Renaissance

...The British idea of government has been founded on the conception that authority flows upwards, from the citizen, through the courts, to Parliament and the offices of the state, and not downwards from the sovereign to the citizen. Hence British people have the unshakeable belief that anyone who, in the hierarchy of decision-making, has power over others, is also accountable to those others for the way that power is exercised. Accountability is the constraint within which all legitimate government occurs. From medieval times it has been possible to call on the courts to judge that some power conferred on an office-holder has been used ultra vires, beyond legal authority, and in that way to annul its effect.

...It is surely plausible to suggest that the two commandments and the Lord’s Prayer form the moral, spiritual and emotional foundation of the thing that comes naturally to Europeans, namely recognition of the Other as other than you. We are commanded to love our enemy, to pursue forgiveness and to accept the rule of secular powers. Those precepts lead of their own accord to equality before the law, to religious toleration and to popular sovereignty. But they also embody a distinctive vision of human beings, as free and accountable individuals, answerable for their faults, but duty-bound to respect the freedom and otherness of their neighbours. They form the precious core of our social capital, and it would be a tragic day for Europe should that capital be squandered or repressed by the regulative machine that has been set up to invest it.

All very charming, and might have even been convincing, if not for the slightly inconvenient fact of colonialism. Why would a country that was really "content with its place" have an empire where the sun never set? If a country really cared about accountability as a fundamental value "from medieval times", why would it treat literally everyone else in such shabby ways? This isn't a criticism about the morality of colonialism (although that's important too), it's that his narrative makes colonialism entirely unintelligible, making it deeply implausible as any kind of truthful account.

To be fair, he does mention colonialism a couple of times. One time to praise the British education system over others, asking "which European nations, unhampered by the code of the gentleman, have shown us the way to successful empire-building, and retreated with credit from their colonies?". There's also a bizarre example of supposed accountability regarding the perpetrator of an actual massacre during the colonial Raj:

The readiness to account for our faults can be observed even in the worst of the imperial atrocities. Following the massacre at Amritsar in April 1919, a commission was established under Lord Hunter that was unanimous in condemning the action, as a result of which the House of Commons forced Colonel Dyer, the officer responsible, to retire – not a devastating punishment, certainly, but a punishment nevertheless, and one that accompanied a report that radically condemned the attitude and role of the British Army in India. The recent case of Marine Alexander Blackman, who shot and killed an injured Taliban fighter in the stressful circumstances of battle, is equally significant. Blackman was tried for murder and found guilty. Subsequently, as the result of a campaign by his wife, the verdict was reduced to manslaughter. Ask yourself whether such a trial would be even conceivable conducted by the Taliban (or by any similar entity fighting now) and you will know the extent to which justice and accountability have been impressed on our national character.

If someone actually thinks this is a good example for Scruton's case about accountability, or that this comparison with the Taliban somehow demonstrates the virtue of the British, God bless.

And when he does finally criticize imperialism, it's because of its eventual effects on the colonizer's land, not the colonized:

Imperialism was a further step, enabling industries to outsource many of their inputs, and to market their goods to distant strangers. The modern multinational company, such as Benetton, which outsources everything and owns nothing save a brand, is simply the latest move in the same direction – towards an economy in which everything exchanges in response to demand, and where locality and attachment are discounted.

You can't make this shit up.


III. Naive political ramblings

But even if we decide to be ultra sympathetic and assume Scruton is engaged not in a historic project but one of myth-making, his analysis and recommendations on current issues are naive at best. To take an example of his favorite punching bag, the Muslims:

The Islamic conception of sexual difference leads, in certain Muslim communities, to the adoption of the full-face veil in public. It is again part of our legacy of freedom that we permit this, as the French do not. But we should recognize how deeply this practice offends against our settled customs. Ours is a face-to-face society, in which people declare openly who they are and address each other as equals. The systematic privatization of women, the attempt to conceal them as secrets, is in part responsible for the failure of certain Muslim communities to integrate. The children of such communities are presented with an absolute existential divide, between the secret place where women are and where children are nurtured, and the illuminated arena of temptations in the world outside. This can only exacerbate their identity crisis, and fuel their desire to join the dark against the light, the secret home against the open society of strangers, the Islamic ummah against the secular state.

It starts off not unreasonably, but increasingly loses coherence and connection. How does the veil's prevention of face-to-face communication suddenly morph into "The systematic privatization of women"? And if there really is an existential divide, why would forcing Muslim women to choose between their customs and public access help the situation? This isn't even masquerading as an argument.

And there's of course the game of intellectual twister he's playing with the notion of autonomy. For him, "The toxic mixture of romanticism and resentment brewed by Nicola Sturgeon and distributed free of charge to the people has pushed the Scots to the brink of separation", but Brexit is just about freedom and the ability to live with those who consider a certain state of affairs home. We should "recognize that the Scottish National Party does not represent all Scots, that the romantic illusions in its leader’s head would never survive the social and economic reality of independence", but Brexit will obviously happen without a hitch. The closeness of England and Scotland means they should recognize they are "mutually dependent neighbours, who face the world together and whose destinies are ultimately one", but the closeness of Europe has no consequences. His love for his country is oikophilia, but the remainers love for the EU is oikophobia indoctrinated in universities. These are totally not ad hoc positions he's pulled out of thin air.

And there's also shockingly no engagement with any economics at all, just some dismissive remarks. He dismisses Marx constantly for apparently wrongly comprehending how things work (eg: "the old Marxist caricature of capitalism as a form of hierarchical control, rather than what it really is, namely the by-product of private property and risk-taking in the marketplace."), but his replacement theories he mentions seem ridiculous in an age such as ours when inequality is skyrocketing and government-supported monopolies are rampant (as even serious libertarians agree). And theoretically, when he says "Marx saw capital as possessing a magical, almost spiritual fluidity", he's ignoring the work of people like G. A. Cohen who interpret Marx's account functionally, giving it precision and substance. At this point we just need to concede that Scruton's become an intellectual charlatan who has no interest in any way of thinking about the world except through his own narrow, false, and deeply inadequate lens. No one who's not pig-headedly in agreement with Scruton's positions beforehand can find any of this book even remotely plausible.


Conclusion: There's a thin and interesting philosophical base you can glean if you squint in the right places, but this is such an embarrassing tract of propaganda overall that you should just spare yourself the trouble of slogging through it.

[Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moderate and typically measured Scruton post-Brexit piece. It would prove one of his later political works before his death. He spells out the myriad of ways subservience to an EU superstate might not play to British instincts, which are more suited to the idea of the nation.

Britain is deserving of particular guilt compared to where exactly he asks? Every group conquered and made conquest according to their abilities and circumstances. Where else is now more liberal, welcoming, open, self effacing and apologetic?

On the contrary, these traits are fine to hold among like minded folk but likely to make you a vulnerable target once you find yourself living among hostile cultures with different values and oikophobes. Oikophobe being a phrase he coined to reflect the self-hating voices who choose every side but their own. The adolescent’s repudiation of home.

He soon suffered the indignity of cancel culture as The New Statesman’s deputy editor cherry picked interview quotes and posted a crowing tweet, champagne in hand, boasting of getting him sacked from an architectural aesthetics board. He was reappointed following exposure of the activist’s hit job.

David Goodhart’s thorough work The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics is cited often and rightly so as its idea of Nowheres and Somewheres are of key import to any ingenuous Brexit analysis.

[Sem · Rating 2 out of 5]

It started out well enough but degenerated towards the end into a rambling after dinner monologue over port and cigars.

[Andrew Roycroft · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have benefited enormously from Roger Scruton’s other books, particularly his work on aesthetics. This slim volume is a social political treatise on where Britain finds itself post-Brexit. While it is refreshing to read a thoroughgoing conservative take on this issue (contra much that the media portrays) and while there is a lot of common sense here, I found this to be a disappointing book. Scruton at times shows an excessive generosity to Britain’s colonial past, and there is a certain naïveté in his assessment of how unifiable the present day nation is. His treatment of Christianity as a kind of precious placeholder within the culture does little for the idea of public morality or the place of faith in modern discourse. All in all a deflating book which could have been so much more helpful.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book of the month: December 2017

This is the latest offering from Roger Scruton, and there is much to commend here. Scruton is a traditional “small c” conservative, and the main theme of the book is how our manner of life needs to be attached to locality, love of place and neighbourliness. In the post Brexit discussion Scruton wants to call both right and left to align behind a new future, laying aside factionalism and resentment.

The chapters deal with nationalism, the love of country, the roots of freedom in Britain and globalisation, with the final chapter which proposes some directions for us to pursue.

The one great weakness is that Scruton, in this reviewer’s opinion, does not adequately appreciate or take into account the deep spiritual roots of culture, and the hope of Christianity in Great Britain, although he obviously recognises the place of church and faith in creating the things that he wants to preserve and protect for the future.

Scruton has a very practical local-centric approach to environmental issues is refreshing, which he has explained at length in “The Green Philosophy“. Likewise his thoughts on globalisation provide useful insights for further thought and reflection on this complex issue.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in 2016 51.89% to 48.11%, much of the West's media condemned the leavers as hopelessly misguided and backward. However, there ARE compelling reasons for the UK to leave the EU and one of the most prominent voices in favour of Brexit was Roger Scruton.

I was hoping for more of a focus on Brexit but if you've read enough Scruton this won't be entirely new or fresh. The late philosopher DOES provide readers with a defence of Brexit but they are nestled in larger arguments over localism, nationalism, and the folly of globalization. As much as I respect and admire Scruton, as an evangelical I do find his pitting of country against religion unsatisfying; typically, his religious foil is Muslims who demand sharia law and who refuse to adapt to secular Western law but what happens when Western secular law rejects the predecessor Christian heritage and condemns orthodox opposition to liberalized sexuality?

As I read this book, I reflected on how Scruton is in a way the successor to G.K. Chesterton in his warm patriotism for England and a contemporary to Wendell Berry in his deep reverence for the local environment and neighbourhood.

[Holly Law · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ll start by admitting my low rating might be due to the deep ideological differences between myself and Roger Scruton, but not entirely. I read this book to be purposefully exposed to a right-wing writer (being a card carrying Labour member myself) and in a bid to understand how those outside of my echo chamber feel about Brexit, British identity, and about our contemporary socio-political environment. Scruton has given me insights which I will dwell upon further, and I thank him for that. I agree with him on many things, especially regarding food and the environment. However, there were several instances throughout the book where I literally frowned and paused as it felt like complete aspersions were being made, particularly about Muslims. This is troubling in itself, but in terms of a good argument made ‘reductionist’ flash across my mind more than once. These prejudices removed, I would recommend this book to others seeking to expand their horizons (/know their enemy). Scruton started to convince me that calls of racism and xenophobia toward Brexiters maybe were unfair and due to misunderstandings, but I’m afraid by the end I was left with a sour taste in my mouth.

[Glenn Armstrong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was definitely an enjoyable and thought provoking read that I felt offered some gems of analysis into some of the divides in British politics and some of the fundamentals of British culture. Didn’t agree with all of it but it’s value is incontrovertible and the left must understand the appeal of other ideologies and how their analysis differs. As a conservative philosophical text it also offers some interesting reinterpretations about the origins of the state and a functioning society.

[Matthew Humberstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good

[Sienna Rothery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read overall. These are Scruton’s thoughts on the future of a British national identity in the immediate aftermath of Brexit, where he argues that our new identity must be tied to a sense of land, place, and shared values which are visibly exercised on that land. It contains several lengthy Scrutonist tangents, a few of his (amusingly) bitchy swipes, and it certainly veers into the reactionary in parts; as ever, though, he is lucid, clear-eyed, and a genuine pleasure to read.

He begins with his strongest call to arms; his plea for a new patriotism, defending patriotism’s importance in Britain’s search for an identity, whilst drawing a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Scruton’s argument is that a national identity needs to be rooted in the idea place, of a shared home, with valuable, embedded, local networks, and that the repudiation of the home - a prime casualty of globalisation - is where we lose ourselves.

Globalisation is held responsible for commoditising our land, Scruton’s anchor for national identity, in a way that removes Britons from their values, and makes us forget who we are. He uses foreign oligarchs laundering their wealth through British property as an example, and decries modern architecture as representative of a messy globalist hodgepodge of ideas that distances the British from our aesthetic heritage, driving away a sense of national character and replacing it with an incoherent mess.

Amongst his most compelling claims in the book then, is that in a globalised world, where current and new generations are networked via social media, and lack a sense of, (or indeed a love for), the local and the national, then a sense of place that is genuinely aesthetic and innately British, becomes more vital in building a sense of belonging, a belonging that he sees as essential at preventing the young embracing any of the extremism at the ends of the political spectrum.

He stretches credibility during a few tangents in the book, (to me, his longstanding issues with multiculturalism are resolvable with the understanding that a coherent national identity, a duty to our society’s values, and a physical space with which to enact those values, must be the cornerstone of Britishness, but he seems to overlook this.) It has a few cranky moments for sure, albeit less than some of his later works. But overall the major points here are still salient and ever more relevant in 2024.

[Adam Carrington · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much has changed in the three years that have passed since Scruton wrote this book. In that time frame we've had yet another prime minister, yet greater political polarisation, blown through 4 or 5 Brexit deadlines, global coronavirus disaster. Scruton himself has been both hired and then fired by the government in an act of cowardice after a pitiful New Statesman hack, George Eaton, orchaestrated his cancelation... Whatever hope and understanding that is offered here has dated to be of little more than of historical interest. Where there is value, however, is in Scruton's analysis of the factors that have pushed Britain to such a crisis point. Most strikingly, in his prescription of the effects internet culture has altered, for many, our relationship to the state, our communities, and our culture.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite like Roger Scrotum. The last book I read of his was pretty good. This one's more challenging because it's less abstract and deals with how to remake Britain post-brexit. Since I am a staunch anti-brexiteer, this was always going to be a hard sell, but we're stuck with it, so might as well try and look for ways in which we might try and make the best of it.
He chooses to focus on the right things: self reliance, boosting skills and employment at home, fostering a sense of community. All well and good if you assume that the government is competent and has a coherent vision, but since the majority of the staunchest advocates of brexit were lazy, horny, posturing dilettantes who don't really care if the country suffers labour shortages, queues, empty shelves and power cuts, it's difficult to see how any of this is going to be realised.

[Michael G · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, and wonderfully short, book.

I love reading about what makes Britain different. Its attachment to land, to place, the creation of civil society and the common law, and the rootedness of a past to be pleased with, acting as a guard against a utopian future.

The book’s title is deliberate. ‘Where’ defines Britain: attachment to place, land and territory binds. I’ve done some reading on the Ottoman Empire recently. How different attachment to tribe or creed is, in comparison to the attachment of Britons to Britain.

Much of what makes Britain great is what made my home great too. South Australia has its own attachment to land, neighbourliness and ‘little platoons’, and a happy narrative about its origins.

Read this book!

[Felix Arris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having wanted to read Scruton since his obituary in The Spectator I gave this a go on the basis is was one of the shorter books on my to read list.

I’ve read books that make me feel like my identity is being teased out with each word but never quite like this. I disagree with many of the remarks made by Scruton but his ability to identify and describe the ties between communities I’ve lived in and between was extraordinary.

Would highly recommend for anyone interested in understanding or critiquing British identity as well as the national differences within the UK.

Very keen to read more.

[Michael Potts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly disappointed with this short Burkean text of large print on post-brexit Britain at £17. I don't feel like I came away from reading this with many new insights. Perhaps this book was aimed at people from the remain side of Britain's political dilemma.

[Diogenes the Dog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really insightful. The unfortunate bits about economic policy and international relations cost it a star, but still, worth a read, even as an American.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deep reflection on the major issues facing modern Britain written in Scruton's characteristicly meandering yet incisive style. A lot of the analysis appears superficial at first glance, but many of his claims rest on his substantial body of work from earlier in his career. At the heart of Scruton's reflection lies his conviction that attachment to a place, giving birth to a sense of home, is the most powerful instinct we can turn to in our attempts to solve the many thorny problems facing Britain.

[Maximillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where we are, how we got here and what we need to do in order to maintain a civil society. Scruton delves in to many topics such as religion, history, politics and beauty with references and guides to further reading. A man beyond measure, if only he ran the affairs of the country and not the charlatans we are plagued with (bankers as health secretaries) and other oikophobes. Though optimistic in tone, his late death makes one wonder if hope departed with him. The mantle he left is great and the challenges he highlights must be overcome if we are to have a future and a country at all.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting sentiments and themes explored in the book.

Let down by the shortness (220 pages, probably 100 of a normal sized book) and the lack of expansion, some things are claimed without much evidence.

Also feel that though the views expressed in terms of identity in regards to Brexit are pertinent, some of the tropes repeated are straight out of the vote leave campaign and aren't true (as is becoming clear).

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. Thoughtful. Profoundly insightful. "There we are, you see: we should, should we not, Mr D'arcy?"

[ei_tc Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Britain and England have been vital to the success of society and at large the, entire world. Here, Roger Scruton reminds us why.

[The American Conservative]

In 2002, nearly a half-million British citizens marched on Westminster to protest the Labour government’s decision to ban traditional forms of fox hunting. In his latest book, Where We Are, Roger Scruton cites this seemingly eccentric event as the first rumbling of discontent that would culminate in the UK’s June 2016 “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union. Perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek, Scruton says that this march was Britain’s “first nationwide uprising of country people against the urban elites since the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.” While rural areas of England and Wales certainly formed the backbone of the Brexit vote, there would have been no success had they not been joined by large numbers of working class and middle-class city-dwellers who shared a certain vision of Britain with their fellow citizens in the countryside.

For those of us who have followed Roger Scruton over the years as perhaps the most prominent conservative philosopher in the English-speaking world, his latest book is an eagerly awaited one. In it, he turns his immense learning and considerable powers of reflection to this matter of Brexit—perhaps the most consequential political change in the Anglo-American world since that community of nations came together to fight and win the Second World War.

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