Book: News From Somewhere: On Settling
By Roger Scruton, Continuum; 177 pages

Economist.com: "Roger Scruton is a conservative, but not the true-blue kind: he's too green for that. His turquoise Toryism, keen on rural traditions and against money-grubbing modernity, chimes with many people's love for the countryside as a source of cultural, aesthetic and spiritual solace. This book tells the story of how a town-bred academic philosopher settles in rural Wiltshire, a county some 80 miles (130 kilometres) to the west of London, where he dabbles in farming while he learns to understand the society in which he has planted himself.

It is a lovely read. Mr Scruton is an accomplished stylist and his vignettes of rural life are sparklingly written, affectionate without being cloying. He starts with the history of the land, shaped by centuries of cultivation; then he describes the people, with their quirks, talents, feuds and (sometimes) failings." more