The Audio Long Read

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From the archive: The death of the department store

7/9/2025 • 33 min

We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: the closure of John Lewis’s store in Sheffield after almost 60 years was a bitter blow. As debate rages over what to do with the huge empty site, the city is becoming a test case for where Britain’s urban… Play episode

‘Do you have a family?’: midlife with no kids, ageing parents – and no cri…
Why does Switzerland have more nuclear bunkers than any other country?
From the archive: ‘You can’t be the player’s friend’: inside the secret wo…
My husband and son suffered strokes, 30 years apart. Shockingly little had…
‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest …
From the archive: ‘A nursery of the Commons’: how the Oxford Union created…
‘Outdated and unjust’: can we reform global capitalism?
Extremely loud and incredibly scouse: how Jamie Carragher conquered footba…
From the archive: Burying Leni Riefenstahl: one woman’s lifelong crusade a…
‘You can let go now’: inside the hospital where staff treat fear of death …
An English gentleman, a crooked lawyer: the secrets of Stephen David Jones
From the archive: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: three days with a giant of African li…
Death, divorce and the magic of kitchen objects: how to find hope in loss
Missing in the Amazon: the disappearance – episode 1
A deadly mission: how Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira tried to warn the wor…
From the archive: Alan Yentob: the last impresario
‘We know what is happening, we cannot walk away’: how the Guardian bore wi…
The ancient psychedelics myth: ‘People tell tourists the stories they thin…
From the archive: The lost Jews of Nigeria
‘We thought we could change the world’: how an idealistic fight against mi…
‘All other avenues have been exhausted’: Is legal action the only way to s…
From the archive: Super-prime mover: Britain’s most successful estate agent
A year of hate: what I learned when I went undercover with the far right
‘I am not who you think I am’: how a deep-cover KGB spy recruited his own …
From the archive: What lies beneath: the truth about France’s top serial k…
‘Why would he take such a risk?’ How a famous Chinese author befriended hi…
The mystery of the nameless girl found dead in a Spanish border town
From the archive: Food fraud and counterfeit cotton: the detectives untang…
From acid house to ancient rites: Jeremy Deller’s enormous, collaborative,…
What happens when the US declares war on your parents? The Black Panther C…
From the archive: The last phone boxes: broken glass, cider cans and – ama…
Many life-saving drugs fail for lack of funding. But there’s a solution: d…
In search of the South Pacific fugitive who crowned himself king
From the archive: ‘I pleaded for help. No one wrote back’: the pain of wat…
The real Scandi noir: how a filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denma…
Kahane’s ghost: how a long-dead extremist rabbi continues to haunt Israel’…
From the archive: The great betrayal: how the Hillsborough families were f…
My mother, the racist
The reluctant collaborator: surviving Syria’s brutal civil war – and its a…
From the archive: Votes for children! Why we should lower the voting age t…
The Rainham volcano: a waste dump is constantly on fire in east London. Wh…
It came from outer space: the meteorite that landed in a Cotswolds cul-de-…
From the archive: ‘The treeline is out of control’: how the climate crisis…
Holidays in hell: summer camp with Russia’s forgotten children
The savage suburbia of Helen Garner: ‘I wanted to dong Martin Amis with a …
From the archive: Is society coming apart?
The Coventry experiment: why were Indian women in Britain given radioactiv…
My life as a prison officer: ‘It wasn’t just the smell that hit you. It wa…
From the archive: The revolt against liberalism: what’s driving Poland and…

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