10 years of the long read: a selection of great stories

This year the Guardian Long Read celebrated its 10th anniversary. Since we launched in 2014, we’ve run more than 1,200 pieces, on everything from Luxembourg’s efforts to privatise outer space to the story of the man who sleeps in Hitler’s bed.

Below is a selection of 100 pieces from the past decade, handily organised into 10 lists, so you can find the right piece to dig into, no matter what you’re looking for. Happy reading!

THE 10 MOST READ PIECES

1. ‘London Bridge is down’: the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death - Sam Knight

2. Three abandoned children, two missing parents and a 40-year mystery - Giles Tremlett

3. Out of thin air: the mystery of the man who fell from the sky - Sirin Kale

4. The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’ - Alex Blasdel

5. Into the woods: how one man survived alone in the wilderness for 27 years - Michael Finkel

6. Why we fell for clean eating - Bee Wilson

7. ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: India’s Covid catastrophe - Arundhati Roy

8. The man in the iron lung - Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

9. ‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team - Michael Lewis

10. The rich vs the very, very rich: the Wentworth golf club rebellion - Samanth Subramanian

10 PROFILES

1. Burying Leni Riefenstahl: one woman’s lifelong crusade against Hitler’s favourite film-maker - Kate Connolly

2. The fortune teller of Kabul - May Jeong

3. How Robyn transformed pop - Laura Snapes

4. Three days with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o - Carey Baraka

5. The rise and fall of Alan Yentob - Sam Knight

6. The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis - Yohann Koshy

7. ‘I know where the bodies are buried’: Betsy Stanko’s mission to change how the police investigate rape - Melissa Denes

8. The impossible dream of Yakov Smirnoff - Avi Steinberg

9. The tragedy of Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh - Nesrine Malik

10. How Andrew Wylie turned serious literature into big business - Alex Blasdel

10 FOOD AND DRINK STORIES

1. Yes, bacon really is killing us - Bee Wilson

2. How Nespresso’s coffee revolution got ground down - Ed Cumming

3. The Aldi effect - Xan Rice

4. A funeral for fish and chips – Tom Lamont

5. Magic out of mould: inside the world’s wildest restaurant – Jordan Kisner

6. The sugar conspiracy - Ian Leslie

7. Homaro Cantu, the genius chef who wanted to change to change the world - Kieran Morris

8. The rise and fall of French cuisine - Wendell Steavenson

9. Why do people hate vegans? - George Reynolds

10. White gold: the unstoppable rise of alternative milks - Oliver Franklin-Wallis

10 CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES

1. How many murders can a police informer get away with? - Ian Cobain

2. The cartel, the journalist and the gangland killings that rocked the Netherlands - Jessica Loudis

3. The mystery of the Gatwick drone - Samira Shackle

4. Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed an island - Matthew Bremner

5. One drug dealer, two corrupt cops and a risky FBI sting - Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

6. Who killed the 20th century’s greatest spy? - Simon Parkin

7. The true story of the fake US embassy in Ghana - Yepoka Yeebo

8. The murder that has obsessed Italy - Tobias Jones

9. How the ‘rugby rape trial’ divided Ireland - Susan McKay

10. The batman of obscenity – Edward Docx

10 STORIES ABOUT BRITAIN

1. What it’s really like to be a refugee in Britain – Zarlasht Halaimzai

2. The invention of Essex - Tim Burrows

3. The Houses of Parliament are falling down - Charlotte Higgins

4. ‘Who remembers proper binmen?’ The nostalgia memes that help explain Britain today - Dan Hancox

5. ‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: how Britain’s libraries provide much more than books - Aida Edemariam

6. Cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the Home Office - Daniel Trilling

7. The bells v the boutique hotel: the battle to save Britain’s oldest factory - Hettie O’Brien

8. PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain - Andy Beckett

9. The gangsters on our doorstep - Felicity Lawrence

10. How Boots went rogue – Aditya Chakrabortty

10 PERSONAL STORIES

1. The last of the Zoroastrians – Shaun Walker

2. Farewell to America - Gary Younge

3. My four miscarriages: why is losing a pregnancy so shrouded in mystery? – Jennie Agg

4. How I let alcohol take over my life – William Leith

5. Foreign mothers, foreign tongues - Dina Nayeri

6. ‘Is this what the west is really like?’ How it felt to leave China for Britain – Xiaolu Guo

7. ‘Iran was our Hogwarts’: my childhood between Tehran and Essex - Arianne Shahvisi

8. My life under armed guard - Roberto Saviano

9. ‘For five years we dreaded every meal’: my infant son’s struggle with food - Tahmima Anam

10. ‘Colonialism had never really ended’: my life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes - Simukai Chigudu

10 STORIES ABOUT IDEAS

1. Therapy wars: the revenge of Freud - Oliver Burkeman

2. The foul reign of the biological clock - Moira Weigel

3. Do we need a new theory of evolution? Stephen Buranyi

4. ‘We, the people’: the battle to define populism - Peter C Baker

5. The anthropocene epoch: have we entered a new phase of planetary history? - Nicola Davison

6. Justice for Neanderthals! What the debate about our long-dead cousins reveals about us - Nikhil Krishnan

7. Busting the myth that depression doesn’t affect people in poor countries - Tina Rosenberg

8. Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world - Stephen Metcalf

9. The end of Atlanticism - Madeleine Schwartz

10. The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea - Robert P Baird

10 SPORT STORIES

1. The prison where murderers play for Manchester United - David Goldblatt

2. Field of dreams: heartbreak and heroics at the World Ploughing Championships - Sophie Elmhirst

3. How south London became a talent factory for Black British footballers – Aniefiok Ekpoudom

4. No coach, no agent, no ego: the incredible story of the ‘Lionel Messi of cliff diving’ - Xan Rice

5. How rhythmic gymnastics took over my childhood - Rebecca Liu

6. ‘Singing and dancing to their deaths’: football’s forgotten tragedy - John Hodgman

7. The loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player - Conor Niland

8. ‘The Silicon Valley of turf’: how the UK’s pursuit of the perfect pitch changed football - William Ralston

9. The brutal world of sheep fighting: the illegal sport beloved by Algeria’s ‘lost generation’ – Hannah Rae Armstrong

10. Phil Taylor: can the greatest darts player step away from the game that made him? - Ed Caesar

10 ENVIRONMENT STORIES

1. The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear? - Tess McClure

2. The sound of icebergs melting: my journey into the Antarctic – Jonathan Watts

3. One Swedish zoo, seven escaped chimpanzees – Imogen West-Knights

4. Sewage sleuths: the men who revealed the slow, dirty death of Welsh and English rivers - Oliver Bullough

5. How to move a country: Fiji’s radical plan to escape rising sea levels – Kate Lyons

6. Rock of ages: how chalk made England – Helen Gordon

7. Can humans ever understand how animals think? - Adam Kirsch

8. The maverick rewilders trying to turn back the tide of extinction - Patrick Barkham

9. ‘A deranged pyroscape’: how fires across the world have grown weirder - Daniel Immerwahr

10. Ten ways to confront the climate crisis without losing hope – Rebecca Solnit

10 YEARS OF THE AUDIO LONG READ, INTRODUCED BY THE AUTHORS

2014: Is this the end of Britishness? - Ian Jack

2015: Farewell to America - Gary Younge

2016: Man v rat - Jordan Kisner

2017: How the sandwich consumed Britain - Sam Knight

2018: Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand - Mark O’Connell

2019: Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands – Samanth Subramanian

2020: The invisible city: how a homeless man built a life underground – Tom Lamont

2021: The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise ship – Sophie Elmhirst

2022: Seven stowaways and a hijacked oil tanker: the strange case of the Nave Andromeda – Samira Shackle

2023: ’All that we had is gone’: my lament for war-torn Khartoum – Nesrine Malik

2024: Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers – Charlotte Higgins

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