The Audio Long Read

From the archives: in 2014, documents alleging a conspiracy to Islamise Birmingham schools were leaked to the media, sparking a national scandal. The papers were debunked – but the story remains as divisive as ever. What really happened?

What makes an elite sports star suddenly unable to do the very thing they have been practising for years? And is there anything they can do about it?

When a Chinese billionaire bought one of Britain’s most prestigious golf clubs in 2015, dentists and estate agents were confronted with the unsentimental force of globalised capital

From the audio long read archives: The Trident debate is not simply about submarines and missiles. It touches almost every anxiety about the identity of the United Kingdom

Swathes of England’s landscape were shaped by the immense block of chalk that has lain beneath it for 100 million years. For a long time, even geologists paid it little heed – but now its secrets and symbolism are being revealed

When I damaged my vocal cords, I was forced to change the way I spoke – and discovered how much our voices reveal who we are

We are raiding the Audio Long Reads archives and bringing you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2017: Months before she was due to give birth, disaster struck for Katherine Heiny. Doctors ordered her to lie on her side in bed and not move – and gave her a 1% chance of carrying her baby to term

Early in Trump’s presidency, emboldened neo-Nazi and fascist groups came out into the open but were met with widespread revulsion. So the tactics of the far right changed, becoming more insidious – and much more successful

Much progress has been made in attitudes towards sexual equality and gender identity – but in many places a dramatic backlash by conservative forces has followed

Since 1958, a small department of Germany’s government has sought to bring members of the Third Reich to trial. A handful of prosecutors are still tracking down Nazis, but the world’s biggest cold-case investigation will soon be shut down

For almost a year our small clinic has been struggling with the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic. So being able to give our staff and most vulnerable patients their first doses of the vaccine has been a real turning point