Staff profile

I gained a BA in Politics and Philosophy at University College, Cardiff, and an MA and a PhD in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex. 

My research is focused on political ideas in Britain since 1850. I have a particular interest in political writers and thinkers who addressed a range of audiences, for example Ernest Barker, Gilbert Murray, Arthur Bryant and G. K. Chesterton. All these figures sought to inform and shape public opinion, not least through newspapers and periodicals aimed at general readers. These are rich resources for historians of political thought and I continue to make use of them.

Conceptions of English and British national identity and related ideals of patriotism feature prominently in my research. I am interested in how they have been articulated and contested, and the historical narratives that have underpinned them. I am also interested in Liberal and Conservative thought, particularly their points of convergence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I would welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students with interests in these and associated areas of political thought and intellectual history.

I am currently leading an AHRC-funded project that is bringing the journals of Herbert Hensley Henson (1863-1947) during the years 1900 to 1940 into digital publication in a scholarly edition. Henson was a leading churchman and public figure, and prolific writer during these four decades. He was also bishop of Durham, 1920-39. 

The Henson Journals – The journals of Hensley Henson, 1900-1939 (dur.ac.uk)

• Liberal and Conservative thought in Britain
• National identities in British political thought
• The writer and journalist as public moralist in Britain
• Christianity and politics in twentieth-century Britain

Authored book

• Stapleton, J. (2009). Christianity, Patriotism and Nationhood: The England of G.K. Chesterton. Lexington Books
• Stapleton, J. (2005). Sir Arthur Bryant and National History in Twentieth-Century Britain. Lexington Books
• Stapleton, J. (2001). Political Intellectuals and Public Identities in Britain since 1850. Manchester University Press
• Stapleton, J. (1994). Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker. Cambridge University Press

Chapter in book

• Stapleton, J. (2020). 'Ecclesiastical conservatism: Hensley Henson and Lord Hugh Cecil on Church, state and nation, c. 1900-40'. In T. Rodger, P. Williamson, & M. Grimley (Eds.), The Church of England in British Politics (80-101.). Boydell Press
• Stapleton, J. (2011). Faith, People, and Place: the English Union in the Writings of Arthur Mee and G.K. Chesterton. In A. Aughey, & C. Berberich (Eds.), These Englands: A Conversation on National Identity (217-235). Manchester University Press
• Stapleton, J. (2010). 'The Limits of Pro-Fascism and Anti-Fascism: G. K. Chesterton and Arthur Bryant'. In N. Copsey, & A. Olechnowicz (Eds.), Varieties of anti-fascism : Britain in the interwar period (224-244). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230282674_11
• Stapleton, J. (2009). England. In M. Flinders, A. Gamble, C. Hay, & M. Kenny (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of British Politics. Oxford University Press
• Stapleton, J. (2007). The classicist as liberal intellectual : Murray and Alfred Zimmern. In C. Stray (Ed.), Gilbert Murray reassessed : Hellenism, theatre and international politics (261-291). Oxford University Press

Edited book

• Stapleton, J. (Ed.). (2012). G.K. Chesterton at the Daily News: Literature, Liberalism and Revolution, 1901-1913. 8 Volumes, including editorial notes, General Introduction (Volume 1, pp. xv-xxxviii)and Cumulative Index (Volume 8). Pickering and Chatto

Journal Article

• Stapleton, J. (2022). Herbert Hensley Henson, J. N. Figgis and the Archbishops’ Committee on Church and State, 1913–1916: Two Competing Visions of the Church of England. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 73(4), 814-836. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022046921001470
• Stapleton, J. (2020). The New Liberal Vision of C. F. G. Masterman: Religion, Politics and Literature in Early Twentieth-Century Britain. Modern Intellectual History, 17(1), 85-115. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244317000531
• Stapleton, J. (2014). T.E. Utley and Renewal of Conservatism in Post-War Britain. Journal of Political Ideologies, 19(2), 207-226. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2014.909265
• Stapleton, J. (2013). Chesterton at the Daily News. Chesterton Review, 39(1/2), 49-62. https://doi.org/10.5840/chesterton2013391/210
• Stapleton, J. (2011). 'The De-Christianisation of England: Anglo-Catholic Perspectives in the Early Circle of G.K. Chesterton and in the Late Twentieth Century'. Chesterton Review, 37(1/2), 81-104. https://doi.org/10.5840/chesterton2011371/211
• Stapleton, J. (2011). The Historical Context of Chesterton's Interest in Alfred the Great. Chesterton Review, 37(3/4), 453-468. https://doi.org/10.5840/chesterton2011373/474
• Stapleton, J. (2009). The Voice of Chesterton in the Conversation of England. Chesterton Review, 35(3/4), 617-633. https://doi.org/10.5840/chesterton2009353/486
• Stapleton, J. (2006). 'Ernest Barker: Classics England-Britain and Europe 1906-1960'. Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 23(2), 203-221
• Stapleton, J. (2006). The England of G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton Review, 32(3/4), 339-356. https://doi.org/10.5840/chesterton2006323/413
• Stapleton, J. (2005). 'Citizenship versus Patriotism in Twentieth-Century England'. Historical Journal, 48(1), 151-178. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x0400425x

Scholarly Edition

• Stapleton, J. (2017). Selected Writings of James Fitzjames Stephen: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873, 2nd ed. 1874), by James Fitzjames Stephen. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780199212675.book.1