On Hunting
"My life divides into three parts," philosopher-journalist Scruton says. "In the first I was wretched; in the second ill at ease; in the third hunting." He wasn't born to the hunt. His parents were industrial Midlanders, and his ardent Labourite father, despairing of his son's class loyalties when his scion was admitted to a grammar school with public school pretensions, was partly mollified only when Roger "skived off sports, . . . opt[ed] out of cadets, and was generally . . . unhappy and insolent." He discovered hunting accidentally, when out riding a generally docile horse owned by a colleague. A foxhunt passed by and, after standing a while mesmerized by it, the old steed took off to join it and proved to be "a 'front-runner,' a horse determined to be first in the herd." Scruton was hooked and has been hunting ever since for a complex of reasons he lays out, explains, and proselytizes in this thoroughly delightful essay that is not without its depths of patriotic feeling, interspecies fellowship, small-c conservative sentiment--and bone-wrenching unsaddlings.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved