The long read: A decade ago, violent racists exploited a national crisis and entered mainstream politics in Greece. The party has since been caught up in the biggest trial of Nazis since Nuremberg,...

The long read: After the abolition of slavery, Britain paid millions in compensation – but every penny of it went to slave owners, and nothing to those they enslaved. We must stop overlooking the...

The long read: After 32 years of establishment lies, media smears, inquests, trials and retrials, the families of the Hillsborough dead have yet to see anyone held accountable

The long read: Caffeine makes us more energetic, efficient and faster. But we have become so dependent that we need it just to get to our baseline

The long read: After 32 years of establishment lies, media smears, inquests, trials and retrials, the families of the Hillsborough dead have yet to see anyone held accountable

The long read: The oh-so-Instagrammable food movement has been thoroughly debunked – but it shows no signs of going away. The real question is why we were so desperate to believe it

The long read: Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

The long read: After 10 years living in France, I returned to China to sign some papers and I was locked up. For the next two years, I was systematically dehumanised, humiliated and brainwashed

The long read: My life seemed to be getting busier, faster: I felt constantly short of time – so I stepped outside it for a day and a night and did nothing

The long read: Three decades ago, Olof Palme was assassinated on Stockholm’s busiest street. The killer has never been found. Could the discovery of new evidence finally close the case?

Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

The long read: After 12 years in the US, Gary Younge is preparing to depart – as the country’s racial frictions seem certain to spark another summer of conflict

The long read: In the dark imagination of English reactionaries, Britain is always a defeated nation – and the EU is the imaginary invader

The long read: How technology is making our minds redundant

The long read: Obama’s rise felt like a new chapter in American history. But the original sin of white supremacy was not so easily erased

The long read: Listening to the women who alleged abuse, and fighting to get their stories heard, helped change the treatment of victims by the media and the justice system

The Long Read: As my acting career developed, I was no longer cast as a radical Muslim – except at the airport

The long read: Travel bloggers have flocked to Pakistan in recent years – but have some of them become too close to the authorities?

The long read: So much is happening, both wonderful and terrible – and it matters how we tell it. We can’t erase the bad news, but to ignore the good is the route to indifference or despair

The long read: Times of upheaval are always times of radical change. Some believe the pandemic is a once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future. Others fear it may only...

The Long Read: Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

The long read: At the age of 20, Christopher Knight parked his car on a remote trail in Maine and walked away with only the most basic supplies. He had no plan. His chief motivation was to avoid...

The long read: We published 144 pieces in the long read this year – somewhere in the neighbourhood of 800,000 words, if you’re counting. These were our favourites ...

The Long Read: The Harvard historian Caroline Elkins stirred controversy with her work on the crushing of the Mau Mau uprising. But it laid the ground for a legal case that has transformed our view...

At the age of 96, the legendary editor Diana Athill writes, the idea of death has never been less alarming. The process of dying is another matter

The long read: It’s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain

The long read: The civilians of Sudan have been trying to throw off military rule for decades, but now find themselves caught in the middle of a deadly power struggle between former allies turned...

The Long Read: When a key figure in a powerful ‘ultra’ group killed himself in July, police suspected the mafia was using the ultras to get into the game

The long read: After police failed to solve his son’s murder, Francisco Holgado infiltrated the local criminal underworld in pursuit of those responsible. He became a national hero – but at what cost?

The long read: The European Union is disintegrating – but leaving is not the answer

The Long Read: Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

The long read: After decades of rightwing dominance, a transatlantic movement of leftwing economists is building a practical alternative to neoliberalism

The long read: She is venerated around the world. She has outlasted 12 US presidents. She stands for stability and order. But her kingdom is in turmoil, and her subjects are in denial that her reign...

The long read: The headlines have never been worse. But an increasingly influential group of thinkers insists that humankind has never had it so good – and only our pessimism is holding us back

The long read: The Communist Manifesto foresaw the predatory and polarised global capitalism of the 21st century. But Marx and Engels also showed us that we have the power to create a better world.

The long read: When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul – and began to realise that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does

The long read: For a century, the East India Company conquered, subjugated and plundered vast tracts of south Asia. The lessons of its brutal reign have never been more relevant

The long read: Hong Kong used to be seen as cautious, pragmatic and materialistic. But in the past year, an increasingly bold protest movement has transformed the city. Now, as Beijing tightens its...

The long read: Caffeine makes us more energetic, efficient and faster. But we have become so dependent that we need it just to get to our baseline

The long read: Nothing is produced at Sellafield anymore. But making safe what is left behind is an almost unimaginably expensive and complex task that requires us to think not on a human timescale,...

The long read: The Communist Manifesto foresaw the predatory and polarised global capitalism of the 21st century. But Marx and Engels also showed us that we have the power to create a better world.

A shared history of 300 years could soon be washed away. What was the complex identity the union created, asks Ian Jack, and should we mourn its loss?

The Long Read: How a jailed former banker and a lone British journalist broke a story that shook the world

Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

The long read: If they don’t secure the correct status, EU nationals living in the UK post-Brexit will be classified as illegal immigrants. And after the Windrush scandal, we know what that looks like

The long read: Times of upheaval are always times of radical change. Some believe the pandemic is a once-in-a-generation chance to remake society and build a better future. Others fear it may only...

The long read: Our year of remembrance has exaggerated the tragic futility of the first world war and preserved the dangerous idea that the second was noble and heroic

The Long Read: An extremely rare condition may transform our understanding of memory

The long read: It’s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain

The long read: As one of Britain’s most influential scholars, Gilroy has spent a lifetime trying to convince people to take race and racism seriously. Is Britain finally ready to listen?

Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

The long read: With gyms and studios worldwide off limits, online exercise classes are booming – and one Texan teacher has become the ‘patron saint of quarantine’

The long read: New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought

The long read: It’s cheap, attractive and convenient, and we eat it every day – it’s difficult not to. But is ultra-processed food making us ill and driving the global obesity crisis?

The long read: The United States likes to think of itself as a republic, but it holds territories all over the world – the map you always see doesn’t tell the whole story

The long read: The new international crime organisations have made Marbella their centre of operations. And as violence rises, the police lag far behind

Our 20 favourite pieces of the year

The long read: Elvira and her brothers, Ricard and Ramón, were left at a train station in Barcelona aged two, four and five. As an adult, when Elvira decided to look for her parents, she discovered a...

The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google – and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell

The long read: It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism

After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine – as well as...

The long read: In the dark imagination of English reactionaries, Britain is always a defeated nation – and the EU is the imaginary invader

The long read: Their hero is Jordan Belfort, their social media feeds display super-rich lifestyles. But what are these self-styled traders really selling? By Symeon Brown

The long read: The crisis has brought the economy to a near halt, and left millions of people out of work. But thanks to intervention on an unprecedented scale, a full-scale meltdown has been averted...

The long read: The oh-so-Instagrammable food movement has been thoroughly debunked – but it shows no signs of going away. The real question is why we were so desperate to believe it

The long read: If you’re worrying about the amount of protein in your diet, then you’re almost certainly eating more than enough

The long read: Football has already been transformed by big money – but the businessmen behind Man City are trying to build a global corporation that will change the game for ever

The long read: The oh-so-Instagrammable food movement has been thoroughly debunked – but it shows no signs of going away. The real question is why we were so desperate to believe it

The long read: It’s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain

The long read: There is a notion that the Great War was a shocking rupture in civilisation that tore a peaceful world apart. But for millions who had long been living under imperialist rule, terror...

The long read: It’s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain

The long read: There is a notion that the Great War was a shocking rupture in civilisation that tore a peaceful world apart. But for millions who had long been living under imperialist rule, terror...

The long read: For seven decades, India has been held together by its constitution, which promises equality to all. But Narendra Modi’s BJP is remaking the nation into one where some people count as...

The long read: The creation of the modern, interconnected world is generally credited to European pioneers. But Africa was the wellspring for almost everything they achieved – and African lives were...

The long read: Philosophers and scientists have been at war for decades over the question of what makes human beings more than complex robots