In September of 1985, Roger Scruton wrote a column for The Times entitled “The Lesson of Lebanon.” I had many reasons for republishing it in Against the Tide: The Best of Roger Scruton’s Columns, Commentaries and Criticism (Bloomsbury, 2022), not least of which was that it was a virtuoso display of Scruton’s ability to treat any subject with deep insight and powerful prose. At the time, Scruton was troubled by the undue influence of the late Robert Fisk on Western opinion regarding the Middle East. Fisk—with whom I would have my own televised battles over the Iraq war—was described by Scruton as “the doyen of Middle Eastern correspondents,” and it was primarily to correct the latter’s ideologically skewed picture of the region that Scruton wrote his fine column.
In opposition to Fisk’s pro-Syrian stance, Scruton’s aim was simply to show that the Christians of Lebanon
brought to government a respect for law and a spirit of willing negotiation. This spirit was shared by the Sunni Muslims, and it was from the bargain struck between these two communities that the constitution emerged, guaranteeing the rights of Christians and ensuring to them a decisive influence in government. The constitution was in some ways inequitable. But it was a constitution, and it permitted that most precious of political achievements and one absent from much of the region: a rule of law.
Despite the fact that Syria had imposed its tyrannical will on the Lebanese community, “the Christians have endeavoured to sustain the legal order of Lebanon”—and this in the face of two implacable enemies: “the Syrian state and Western journalists, who have acted in character as the fifth column of dictatorial power.” Scruton would not refer to Fisk by name until 1987, when he published his book-length study of the country, A Land Held Hostage: Lebanon and the West. However, most readers knew exactly to whom he was referring when he remarked:
It is a truth obvious to all but the journalist that his ability to report on a country’s troubles is a proof of its civic virtue. A real tyranny excludes the journalist from its territory, or else permits him to enter only on terms that are dictated by itself. It is precisely such tyrannies that, acting by proxy in the free states where the journalist wanders, attract his attention by a trial of blood and lay the blame for the deaths which he discovers at the door of the only power that he may safely criticise.
Scruton concluded his magnificent appraisal with haunting eloquence: “Let us hope that those in the West who call themselves Christians will remember in their prayers a people who have kept alive, at such cost to themselves, the memory of Christ in lands that we should still call holy, had holiness retained its meaning for us.”
One person for whom those words had particular resonance was a remarkable man who would become a wonderful friend to both Roger and me. John Bellingham was born in 1929. His father, Colonel Arthur Stuart Bellingham, was a member of the Royal Artillery, and his ancestor, by the same name, was hanged in 1812 for having shot dead the then British prime minister Spencer Perceval. John’s nephew, Lord Henry Bellingham, is a former conservative MP and keen foxhunter. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, John divided his time between Paris and two historic homes in Ireland. He was exquisitely cultured and humorous—a captivating raconteur and a man of letters who rarely read books in his own language. He was also a farmer and horse breeder, one who cared passionately about the land and its time-honoured customs. He was a quintessential conservative whose aristocratic and elegant bearing was totally at variance with the modern world. And yet, he was totally at home in that world.
I remember, for example, inviting him to meet with Roger and me at Maynooth University in Ireland. We had spent the previous evening eating oysters at his local restaurant in Howth, a beautiful fishing village outside Dublin. At Maynooth, however, he immersed himself in conversation with clerics, academics, and, most especially, the students. Despite his otherworldly countenance, he was curious and interested in all types of people. Indeed, I recall him actively engaging with a swarm of students that surrounded Roger as though this were his natural milieu, which, in many ways, it was.
Back in 1985, Johnny, as we called him, was an active member of the Sovereign Order of Malta. Indeed, from 1997-2000, he served as the Order of Malta’s Ambassador to Egypt—a position that gave him access to the leading politicians of the region, including the late President Hosni Mubarak. In this capacity, one of his principal interests was the plight of Lebanese Christians, and he often dedicated his time to taking interested parties to the region on guided tours. Hence, when he read Scruton’s article on this subject in The Times, he wrote to Roger inviting him to travel to Lebanon under the auspices of the Order of Malta. Roger had been to Lebanon in his late teens, which, back then, he described as “an island of freedom among iron dictatorships.” But now, as he returned with Johnny in 1987, it was to a very different place, one menaced by the dark shadow of Syria and tormented by Islamic and Christian terror gangs. As Johnny knew the country intimately, he introduced Roger to all the main players, the result of which was, perhaps, his most underrated book: A Land Held Hostage.
This was acutely brought home to me when, in 2014, Roger and I had the honour of listening to a wonderful paper delivered on that work by a young academic in Montreal. By that time, I had experienced my own life-threatening brush with radical Islam and had been directly pitted against Fisk at several high-profile events. Thanks to my security and Islamic sources, I was by then able to confirm many of Roger’s suspicions regarding Western journalists—and Fisk in particular—in both his Times article and A Land Held Hostage, whose opening pages contained the following searing observation:
Suppose Robert Fisk had written the truth about the Islamic militancy which is now at work in Lebanon: would he have been able to reside comfortably in the Iranian capital? Suppose he had, over the years, written the truth about the Syrian occupation: would he have been able to claim that special expertise which attaches—he hastens to inform us—to those who can travel freely “North of Baalbek” (i.e. into the zone occupied for the past ten years by Syria)? Or suppose he had written the truth about the Palestinians, whose lawless cohorts roamed the countryside of Lebanon, tormenting Shiite and Christian alike, and driving thousands from their homes, long before the Israeli invasion: would he have been able to enjoy the comfort, along with so many other Western correspondents, of a West Beirut hotel owned by the Palestinians?”
When, after that talk in Montreal, I publicly documented the evidence that vindicated Roger’s suspicions, he brought the house down by sardonically remarking: “A lot of good it did me!”
However, the greatest legacy of Roger’s interest in Lebanon was undoubtedly his friendship with Johnny. Indeed, so close did they become that, when he married Sophie in 1996, Roger and his new bride went to hunt at Johnny’s magnificent home, Glencara House, in County Westmeath. In 2016, when Roger and I ran the Edmund Burke International Summer School in Westmeath, Johnny regaled us over dinner at Glencara with endless stories of his time as the Order’s Ambassador to Egypt, his visits to Lebanon, and his remarkable life in France, England, and Ireland. Roger sat spellbound listening to a man whose life formed a rich tapestry of the most extraordinary anecdotes drawn from the social, cultural, religious, and political circles in which Johnny not only mixed but also helped to shape.
The last time we met was when we travelled from Ireland to Roger’s funeral in January of 2020. Johnny was by then 90 years of age and was walking with the aid of two sticks. As he slowly made his way up the nave of Malmesbury Abbey, I saw before me a man who epitomised conservative virtue at its finest. He was noble, charitable, funny, and yet everything he did was rooted in his deep Catholic faith. Roger, I came to realise, valued him as much more than a friend. For him, Johnny was what all conservatives should aspire to become—someone whose great learning and profound spiritual formation led him to preserve rather than destroy custom, tradition, and convention.
Throughout the COVID years, he would regularly ring to inquire about Sophie, Roger’s literary estate, and to have a general discussion about religion or culture. He cared deeply about Roger’s legacy and was overjoyed when Sophie visited him last year. Then, just before Christmas, I rang his mobile phone to arrange a meeting. He didn’t answer but his number showed up a few minutes later. When I answered, it was his beloved wife Fiona, who informed me that dear Johnny, at 94, had died two days prior. Without any fuss, he had, as she put it, “just drifted off.”
As I write, I have before me a letter from Roger dated the 7th of November, 2013. It concludes: “I will try to get over to Ireland before too long. Am anxious to see Johnny, who is obviously becoming frail. Will let you know as soon as plans firm up.” Little did any of us know then what time had in store. Either way, the intervening years have now robbed the conservative world of two of its greatest sons.
In the Preface to A Land Held Hostage, Scruton wrote: “I owe a particular debt of gratitude to John Bellingham, without whose kindness, encouragement and erudition I could not have undertaken this work.” Were he here today, Roger might well have written the very same thing—except this time he would have meant the “work” of his lifetime.
