Six great reads: a Saudi weapons scandal, five weeks with David Lammy and the expert who became the patient

1. Very British bribery: the whistleblower who exposed the UK’s dodgy arms deals with Saudi Arabia

Ian Foxley at home in Yorkshire. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

“What neither man knew was that the scheme they had stumbled upon had been overseen and authorised for decades, in Britain and Saudi Arabia, by the highest levels of government. It would be 14 years, three criminal prosecutions and two jury trials before the full truth would emerge.”

Ian Foxley had just started a job at a British company in Riyadh when he began to notice payments that didn’t add up. The company culture also struck him as a odd: when he joined, he was warned against talking to an accountant named Michael Paterson, deemed a “madman”. But, when Foxley’s attempts to report irregularities within the company went nowhere, he contacted Paterson. This fascinating longread by David Pegg follows what happened next when the two met, and the major secrets that would be uncovered.

_{Read more}

2. ‘The world is on edge’: five tumultuous weeks with David Lammy, foreign secretary at a time of crisis

David Lammy gets a grilling. Photograph: Harry Borden/The Guardian

David Lammy’s first year at the Foreign Office has been hit by a string of high-stakes conflicts, from the unfolding horror in Gaza to regime change in Syria and Trump’s humiliation of Zelenskyy. In this interview, journalist Charlotte Edwardes shadows the foreign secretary for five weeks. She had originally planned to meet him in Washington DC, but his trip was cancelled after Israel bombed Iran. Instead, she tails him as he meets the French foreign secretary at London’s British Library, greets constituents in Tottenham, and is met by a crowd of protesters in Peterborough, chanting about genocide and children orphaned – all the while grilling Lammy about Trump, Putin, the Labour party, and why “Gaza is the wound that will not heal”.

_{Read more}

3. ‘A yorkshire pudding like a dishcloth’: how did British pub food get so grim?

Chicken dinner, anyone? Photograph: clubfoto/Getty Images/iStockphoto

“We like to think the bad old days of British cuisine, the days when it was a national embarrassment, are far behind us, that the 1990s and 2000s ushered in a wave of quality gastropubs and that the shires are bursting with talented chefs cooking local produce from scratch. In some cases, that is true, but more broadly – in my view, at least – pub food in the UK is on the decline.”

Steve Rose is tired of eating £30 pub meals that taste like reheated leftovers. He has spoken to food writers, pub owners and caterers about the reasons behind the decline of Britain’s pub grub – and receives useful tips on how to avoid future disappointment.

_{Read more}

4. The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir

Raynor Winn with her husband, Moth. Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

When Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path was published in 2018, the memoir about the author’s transformative long-distance walk along the UK’s South West Coast Path became an instant hit. It sold more than 2m copies, led to more bestselling books by the author, and resulted in a film adaptation starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. Then, last month, the Observer reported major inconsistencies in Winn’s story.

“The Salt Path Affair”, as Alex Clark calls it here, taps into a broader question about what we want from the nature memoir. Tales like The Salt Path follow a well-worn narrative in which a struggling individual eventually finds healing and redemption in the great outdoors. What does the popularity of such stories, the piece asks, reveal about our relationship to the natural world – and will the fallout from the The Salt Path Affair damage the future of these books?

_{Read more}

5. He worked with artificial limbs for decades. Then a lorry ripped off his right arm. What happened when the expert became the patient?

‘An over-qualified guinea pig’ … Jim Ashworth-Beaumont. Photograph: Sophia Spring/The Guardian

Jim Ashworth-Beaumont was a prosthetics and orthotics specialist at London’s Royal National Orthopaedic hospital when, in 2020, a lorry driver failed to spot him on his bike at a turning. The ensuing collision split open his torso and liver, and tore off his right arm. The expert now became the patient.

In this insightful article about today’s cutting-edge prosthetics, Simon Usborne meets Ashworth-Beaumont, who calls himself an “overqualified guinea pig”, and learns about the latest scientific developments – and soaring prices – in the field.

_{Read more}

6. ‘Everybody’s starved of affection’: Past Lives director Celine Song on the brutal dating scene and her realistic new romcom

Sex in the city … Celine Song. Photograph: Juan Naharro Giménez/Getty Images

Her debut film, the Oscar-nominated and critically acclaimed Past Lives, was a wistful and sweet story about loves lost. Now Celine Song is back with a much more hard-nosed romcom starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans as rampant realists navigating dating, social class and money in Manhattan. In this interview, Song talks about her experience as a New York matchmaker, the brutal modern dating scene and why, despite our rising cynicism, we will always crave love stories.

_{Read more}