Concept

The Times

Overview

The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper, The Sunday Times (founded in 1821), are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times were founded independently and have had common ownership since 1966. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.

The Times was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world. In countries where these other titles are popular, it has been referred to as The London Times or The Times of London, although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution.

The Times had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, The Sunday Times had an average weekly circulation of 647,622. They also have 640,000 digital-only paid subscribers as of June 2025, with the number rising to 740,000 when including physical circulation paid subscribers. In the year June 2024 to June 2025, Times Media, the parent company of The Times and Sunday Times newspapers saw pre-tax profits rise +13% to £69.2 million ($92.7 million), operating profits of £73.3 million ($102.2 million) and revenues rising +2% to £390.7 million ($523.5 million). An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006 with it mainly being circulated in the New York City and Washington, D.C. metro areas. A complete historical file of the digitised paper, up to 2019, is available online from Gale Cengage Learning. The Times and The Sunday Times launched their own radio station, Times Radio, in 2020; its shows cover news and politics, both nationally and internationally, and had an average weekly reach of 604,000 listeners at the end of 2024.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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In the present state of the greater part of the civilized monarchies of Europe, the rent of all the lands in the country, managed as they probably would be, if they all belonged to one proprietor, would scarce, perhaps, amount to the ordinary revenue which they levy upon the people even in peaceable times. The ordinary revenue of Great Britain, for example, including not only what is necessary for defraying the…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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For the times are really strange; of a complexity intricate with all the new width of the ever-widening world; times here of half-frantic velocity of impetus, there of the deadest-looking stillness and paralysis; times definable as showing two qualities, Dilettantism and Mammonism;--most intricate obstructed times! Nay, if there were not a Heaven's radiance of Justice, prophetic, clearly of Heaven, discernible…
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.
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The bank of England, either by voluntarily discounting those bills at their current value, or by agreeing with government for certain considerations to circulate exchequer bills, that is, to receive them at par, paying the interest which happens to be due upon them, keeps up their value, and facilitates their circulation, and thereby frequently enables government to contract a very large debt of this kind. In…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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Philosophers who discussed The Times

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

American and British English spelling differences

Place in the tradition

Part of Bertrand Russell.

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