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‘Move forward. Flap around a little!’ How learning to swim in my 50s set me free

My body and my confidence were failing me. I was told swimming would make me fit and strong-minded. But first I had to navigate the aggravation of the slow lane. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

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  From the archive: The rise and fall of French cuisine

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  ‘I remember the silence between the falling shells’: the terror of living …

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  A violent murder, a child on death row

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  From the archive: ‘We the people’: the battle to define populism

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  The Netanyahu doctrine: how Israel’s longest-serving leader reshaped the c…

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  Chainsaws, disguises and toxic tea: the battle for Sheffield’s trees

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  From the archive: How the murders of two elderly Jewish women shook France

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  ‘I stopped counting how many friends died’: life after the contaminated bl…

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  Inside the Taliban’s luxury hotel

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  Special Edition: Behind the scenes at the Long Read

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  The mass protest decade: why did the street movements of the 2010s fail?

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  ‘Incoherence and inconsistency’: the inside story of the Rwanda deportatio…

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  From the archive: The last of the Zoroastrians

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  The insider: how Michael Lewis got a backstage pass for the fall of Sam Ba…

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  ‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could chan…

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  From the archive: What I have learned from my suicidal patients