Guardian longreads spotlight on power and resilience

A look at five Guardian longreads that tackle power, crisis and resilience across politics, travel and personal journeys.

Guardian longreads map power crisis and renewal

Five Guardian longreads this week cover a wide range of topics. A whistleblower exposes a decades-long arms deal involving the UK and Saudi Arabia, highlighting how power and money travel between government and business. A journalist shadows Foreign Secretary David Lammy over five weeks, offering a front-row view of diplomacy, protests, and political pressure in a time of crisis. A critical look at British pub food questions how high prices and shifting tastes have affected local meals. The Salt Path memoir comes under scrutiny with questions about factual accuracy, inviting readers to rethink what makes a nature memoir resonant. And a prosthetics expert who became the patient describes the latest advances and rising costs in modern care.

Taken together, the pieces show journalism moving toward longer, character-driven storytelling that still centers accountability. They probe the gap between policy rhetoric and everyday consequences, and they remind readers that expertise and ethics are tested in real life as much as in courtrooms or clinics.

Longform journalism is being used to hold power to account by opening doors that the newsroom alone cannot. These pieces mix investigative detail with intimate scenes to reveal how decisions on arms, diplomacy, and health affect real people.

By examining truth in memoirs and the cost of care, they signal a shift toward stories that demand public reflection about trust, memory, and the social contract. The result is journalism that feels less like a sprint and more like a sustained conversation with readers.

Highlights

New voices surface and old myths are tested.