Chine McDonald reflects on the life and legacy of Broadcaster and Journalist, Edward Stourton. 21/07/2026

It was rare for broadcaster Edward Stourton’s name to appear without being prefaced by the word ‘veteran’. His style steady, his voice instantly recognisable, Stourton represented the best of British broadcasting and, in particular for us, a British broadcasting that took religion seriously. This week, he died at the age of 68, and tributes have been pouring in.

Born in Nigeria in 1957, Stourton was educated at Ampleforth College before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read English Literature. His career started as a trainee at ITN and then a founder member of the Channel 4 News team before becoming a stalwart of the BBC, where he spent most of his career, presenting Radio 4’s Today programme for a decade until 2008, as well as The World at One and The World This Weekend. Current Today editor Rebecca Keating said she and her colleagues described Stourton as the “Rolls Royce of broadcasting”.

That someone of Stourton’s journalistic stature devoted so much of his career to religious affairs, most notably as a long–time presenter of Radio 4’s Sunday, was significant. When religion can so often be treated as either irrelevant or a culture–war battleground, he approached faith with the seriousness it deserved. He neither sensationalised nor trivialised it; he simply believed it was important enough to understand well.

It was on Sunday that several of the Theos team regularly encountered Stourton. To be interviewed by him was both terrifying (he was the Edward Stourton, after all), but also strangely reassuring. This was a man who knew his stuff when it came to religion. You knew he would have done the reading, that he understood the theological nuances, and that he was more interested in getting to the truth of a matter rather than point–scoring or hearing the sound of his own voice.

He was particularly knowledgeable about the Catholic faith, which played a significant part in his personal life. In a Christmas edition of BBC One’s Mastermind, chaired by his Today co–presenter John Humphrys, his chosen subject was Pope John Paul II. He later wrote a biography of the former pope – John Paul II: Man of History – one of several he wrote about the Christian faith, which also included In the Footsteps of St Paul.

It was his 2023 book Sunday: A History of Religious Affairs through 50 Years of Conversations & Controversies for which Theos hosted a book launch, in partnership with Sandford St Martin Trust and the book’s publishers SPCK. There, I had the honour of interviewing Stourton and his co–author and long–time Sunday producer Amanda Hancox, about the biggest religious affairs news stories over the past five decades.

It was after Stourton disclosed in his memoir Confessions: Life Re–examined that he was living with incurable prostate cancer that we invited him to write the foreword to our report Ashes to Ashes: Beliefs, Trends and Practices in Dying, Death and the Afterlife.It explored how Britain is rethinking death, dying and the afterlife in an increasingly secular age, and how the role of faith communities within the death process is changing, too.

Stourton wrote in the foreword: “Religion – and I am sure this applies just as fully to the United Kingdom’s minority faiths as it does to Christianity – still seems to be a source of strength we turn to when confronted with the enormous enigma of death…“As someone with a slow–moving but incurable cancer, I welcome the greater openness about death this report identifies. It is certainly true, as the report finds, that many people are turning to new and more secular ways of celebrating the memory of those they loved, but most religious traditions can call on the experience of centuries of responding to the reality of death, and they have much to offer in a debate of the kind Ashes to Ashes seeks to encourage.”

Reading these words now is both poignant and insightful into who Stourton was. He wasn’t someone interested in easy answers or saccharine optimism. Rather, he understood that religious traditions carry a depth of wisdom which remains relevant, even (or especially) in a society that often imagines it has moved beyond them.

Edward Stourton was a friend of Theos, once describing it as “an inspired idea” that filled “a big gap in our culture”. But for us, his greatest legacy was in showing that journalism about religion can be both rigorous and generous; that broadcasters can combine scepticism with respect; and that faith, when treated with intellectual curiosity and seriousness, belongs not at the margins of public life but at its heart, offering answers to some of the biggest challenges our society faces today. 

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