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Humphrey’s world: how the Samuel Smith beer baron built Britain’s strangest pub chain

1/24/2025 • 43 min

Since the 1970s, Humphrey Smith has acquired scores of pubs and historic properties around the UK. But time after time, he has left the buildings empty. Why has he allowed his empire to moulder? By Mark Blacklock. Read by Joe Layton. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod Play episode

From the archive: Inspired by nature: the thrilling new science that could…
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Inside the Vatican’s secret saint-making process
From the archive: ‘A deranged pyroscape’: how fires across the world have …
The inspiring scientists who saved the world’s first seed bank
The ‘mad egghead’ who built a mouse utopia
From the archive: Cold comfort: how cold water swimming cured my broken he…
Teeth as time capsules: Soviet secrets and my dentist grandmother
The brain collector: the scientist unravelling the mysteries of grey matter
From the archive: The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?
The rollercoaster king: the man behind the UK’s fastest thrill-ride
Best of 2024: ‘If there’s nowhere else to go, this is where they come’: ho…
Best of 2024: As a teenager, John was jailed for assaulting someone and st…
Best of 2024: ‘It comes for your very soul’: how Alzheimer’s undid my dazz…
Best of 2024: Nairobi to New York and back: the loneliness of the internat…
Revisited: Two poems, four years in detention: the Chinese dissident who s…
10 years of the long read: Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers (2024)
10 years of the long read: ‘All that we had is gone’: my lament for war-to…
A new nuclear arms race is beginning. It will be far more dangerous than t…
Revisited: Too much stuff: can we solve our addiction to consumerism?
The scandal of food waste – and how we can stop it
‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Pales…
10 years of the long read: Seven stowaways and a hijacked oil tanker: the …
A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair
‘You tried to tell yourself I wasn’t real’: what happens when people with …
10 years of the long read: The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s f…
The cement company that paid millions to Isis: was Lafarge complicit in cr…
Journalist or Russian spy? The strange case of Pablo González
10 years of the long read: The invisible city: how a homeless man built a …
Has poppymania gone too far?
Slash and burn: is private equity out of control?
10 years of the long read: Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly di…
Hidden traces of humanity: what AI images reveal about our world
The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US
10 years of the long read: Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping fo…
‘Places to heal, not to harm’: why brutal prison design kills off hope
The trial of Björn Höcke, the ‘real boss’ of Germany’s far right
10 years of the long read: How the sandwich consumed Britain (2017)
‘For me, there was no other choice’: inside the global illegal organ trade
How oligarchs took on the UK fraud squad – and won
10 years of the long read: Man v rat: could the long war soon be over? (20…
Morality and rules, and how to avoid drowning: what my daughters learned a…
The shapeshifter: who is the real Giorgia Meloni?
10 years of the long read: Farewell to America (2015)
The cocaine kingpin’s wildest legacy: what can be done with Pablo Escobar’…
‘Like a cheese grater raking across my nipple’: why I kept trying to breas…
10 years of the long read: Is this the end of Britishness? (2014)
Special Edition: 10 years of the Guardian Long Read
Strange and wondrous creatures: plankton and the origins of life on Earth

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