Roger Scruton was born on 27 February 1944, and was raised in Marlow and High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire with his two sisters. He was educated at Royal Grammar School High Wycombe, from which he was expelled shortly after winning a scholarship to Cambridge. He studied moral sciences at Jesus College from 1962, receiving a BA in 1965, incepted as MA in 1967. He was awarded a PhD in 1972 for a thesis on aesthetics, also from Cambridge.
After graduating, Scruton spent two years abroad before pursuing an academic career in philosophy, first in Cambridge and then in London. In 1990, he took a year's leave of absence to work for an educational charity in Czechoslovakia.
He then taught part-time at Boston University Massachusetts until the end of 1994, while building up a public affairs consultancy in Eastern Europe. He currently holds three positions: visiting professor at Oxford University; visiting professor in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC.