Britain | Roger Scruton

Why right-wing Europeans are flocking to an English thinker

The mystery of three grand Budapest cafés

Scruton, a cafe in Budapest named after the English philosopher Roger Scruton.
Image: Alamy
|Budapest

CUSTOMERS AT THE Scruton café in Budapest don’t turn up just for its chicken and buttered cauliflower. They come for the peculiar contents on show: a writing table, a blue-and-white china tea set and a collection of vinyl records (classical) all shipped from England. Odd goods are also on sale: 4,900 forints (about £11) buys a t-shirt emblazoned with “Conservatism is more an instinct than an idea”. A plaster bust of a tousle-haired, middle-aged man costs twice that. The figure depicted was a political thinker, Roger Scruton.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Scruton on the Danube”

From the July 8th 2023 edition

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