New book! "Whatever Happened to Tradition: History, Belonging and the Future of the West" - out October 14 in the UK.
Out later this year, my new book is now available for pre-order!
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. In this wide-ranging book, we see how tradition can be both beautiful and useful, from the deserts of Australia to the court of nineteenth-century Japan. Some of the concepts defended here are highly controversial in the modern West: authority, nostalgia, rejection of self and the hunt for spiritual transcendence. We'll even meet a tribe who dress up their dead relatives and invite them to tea. I try to illustrate how apparently eccentric yet universal principles can nurture the individual from birth to death, plugging them into the wider community, and creating a bond between generations. I also demonstrate that tradition, far from being pretentious or rigid, survives through clever adaptation, that it can be surprisingly egalitarian. The good news is that it can also be rebuilt. It's been done before. The process is fraught with danger, but the ultimate prize of rediscovering tradition is self-knowledge and freedom. Whatever Happened to Tradition? is published by Bloomsbury, and you can find the official page here. About me
I am a historian, journalist and broadcaster, in no particular order. I write a weekly column for the Daily Telegraph, which you can read by clicking on this link, and I'm also one of the leader writers (the editorial "voice of the newspaper"). I'm a regular panellist on Radio 4's Moral Maze, present Thought for the Day and have been spotted on BBC Question Time. Credits also include Newsnight, The Atlantic, Dissent, CNN, Sky and Any Questions. In 2012, I made a well-received documentary for BBC2 about sitcoms and politics called Family Guys (I wish the BBC would repeat it - it was great).
I got my PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge, specialising in US history, and have held fellowships at Sussex and Royal Holloway. I've published several books on America - including joint-editing and individual essays - usually with a focus on politics in the 1970s. If you want to know anything about Jimmy Carter, I'm your man. I've reported live from Donald Trump's election victory, Buckingham Palace and Iraq. I converted to Catholicism at the age of 23. Most people would call me a conservative, but I prefer "traditionalist". The Amish seem to know what they're doing. I live in Kent with my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Bertie. |