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‘The ghosts are everywhere’: can the British Museum survive its omni-crisis?

3/17/2025 • 38 min

Beset by colonial controversy, difficult finances and the discovery of a thief on the inside, Britain’s No 1 museum is in deep trouble. Can it restore its reputation? By Charlotte Higgins. Read by Diveen Henry. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod Play episode

Turkey said it would become a ‘zero waste’ nation. Instead, it became a du…
From the archive: The end of Atlanticism: has Trump killed the ideology th…
Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand?
‘Here lives the monster’s brain’: the man who exposed Switzerland’s dirty …
From the archive: ‘In my 30 years as a GP, the profession has been horribl…
Massacre in the jungle: how an Indigenous man was made the public face of …
Israel and the delusions of Germany’s ‘memory culture’
From the archive: One drug dealer, two corrupt cops and a risky FBI sting
Innit innit boys and Super Eagles: how Nigerian Londoners found their iden…
The mysterious novelist who foresaw Putin’s Russia – and then came to symb…
From the archive: Was it inevitable? A short history of Russia’s war on Uk…
The loudest megaphone: how Trump mastered our new attention age
How a young Dutch woman’s life began when she was allowed to die
From the archive: The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming
‘Bring me my tariffs’: how Trump’s China plan was 40 years in the making
Tokyo drift: what happens when a city stops being the future?
From the archive: The false positives scandal: how thousands of innocent C…
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disap…
Endless work, little money, occasional UFOs: my father’s five decades driv…
From the archive: How one man spent 34 years in prison after setting fire …
The man making a business out of China’s burnout generation
Humphrey’s world: how the Samuel Smith beer baron built Britain’s stranges…
From the archive: Inspired by nature: the thrilling new science that could…
‘Look, they’re getting skin!’: are we right to strive to save the world’s …
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…

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