Tim Stanley
Historian, journalist
Timothy Randolph Stanley (born 1 January 1982) is a British journalist and historian.
Quotes
edit2019–2021
edit- Do I feel responsibility as someone who made the case publicly for Brexit? Well, I'm a Catholic, so I always feel guilty. The older I get the more guilt I feel: I actually apologised to someone who trod on my foot the other day. Do I feel humiliation as a Briton? Never, never, never. I don't confuse my government with my country, and my country muddles on, as it always does, with a sublime indifference to what the rest of the world thinks. We don’t panic.
- "Brexit is a mess, but I have full confidence in the British spirit", Catholic Herald (28 March 2019)
- The West feels lost. Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus: we hurtle from one crisis to another, lacking definition, terrified that our best days are behind us. The central argument of this book is that we can only face the future with hope if we have a proper sense of tradition – political, social and religious. We ignore our past at our peril. The problem, I argue, is that the Western tradition is anti-tradition, that we have a habit of discarding old ways and old knowledge, leaving us uncertain how to act or, even, of who we really are.
- Whatever Happened to Tradition?: History, Belonging and the Future of the West (2021), Prologue
2024–present
edit- Once upon a time, the key unit in society was the family. Today it is the individual. The only principle we can agree matters is choice, though with the death of religion and philosophy, the range of choices that we can imagine has narrowed drastically, as culture and faith have been replaced by holiday photos and video games.
- "We are too stupid to see the Dark Ages are back", The Daily Telegraph, 18 February 2024
- Thank you, Matthew Parris! Since Esther Rantzen bravely went public with her stage four cancer, I've been invited onto several shows to put the case against assisted suicide – and, frankly, I've failed. The argument for relief from pain is so strong. The current proposal – that two doctors sign off a self-administered poison – is so limited that it seems hard to object.
But then Matthew endorses assisted dying with such enthusiasm, eloquence and boundless insanity that one's doubts are confirmed. Yes, he wrote in a weekend essay, this will be the thin end of the wedge – but good!- "An age that rejects God ends up killing its old", The Telegraph (31 March 2024)
- For the Matthew Parris column (which was in The Times), see "We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying", published on 29 March 2024.
- The Labour revolution knows no limits. Give it five years and this farm we were standing in could be collectivised, populated by strapping Soviet boys looking doe-eyed at tractors.
- "Journalist’s joke was filthiest thing on Keir Starmer's farm visit", The Telegraph (1 July 2024)
