1. ‘Men in their 60s used Polaroids from the 1970s as their profile pictures’

“It’s a very barren landscape for me,” says Pauline Tomlin, 61. “A lot of men my age are not great at keeping themselves fit and healthy. I don’t know what happens – they seem to be all right in their 40s and 50s, and then they get to their 60s and you’re like: what the hell?”

Donna Ferguson spoke to single women in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s who opened up about dating in later life, sharing stories about the perils of online dating and what it’s like starting new relationships after your partner dies.

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2. Is this the world’s most eye-popping restaurant? The architectural marvel in a Leipzig industrial estate

Oscar Niemeyer changed the face of modern architecture – but who knew his final design was a diner in a space-age bubble on an industrial estate in Leipzig? Marion Lougheed visited the last wonder of the great Brazilian architect, who dreamt it up at the age of 103. And it’s a fine place for a sunset kombucha and gin.

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3. Abandon shipment: how an Amazon van got marooned on the UK’s ‘most dangerous path’

In the darkness of Valentine’s Day, a delivery driver was led by his GPS to the Essex mudflats at the mouth of the Thames estuary, where it meets the North Sea. Tim Burrows took up the tale of how the photo of the van became something of a sensation: “People thought they were looking at an AI image … ”

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4. ‘Like an electrical gong bath!’ The Sheffield supermarket going viral for the symphonic sound of its freezers

In Sheffield, Alim Kheraj investigated the mystery of three freezers at a supermarket that have had fans of ambient music revelling in their unique hum, describing it as “like an electrical gong bath”. 

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5. ‘I felt betrayed, naked’: did a prize-winning novelist steal a woman’s life story?

For the Long Read, Madeleine Schwartz told the astonishing story of the award-winning novelist being sued by the woman who claims he stole her story to write about the atrocities of the Algerian civil war.

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6. ‘She dared to be difficult’: How Toni Morrison shaped the way we think

“There are many ways to be difficult in this world. You can be demanding, inconvenient, stubborn, complicated, troublesome, baffling, illegible. Black womanhood is one place where all these forms of difficulty overlap. I feel like I have always known this; I have been called difficult more times in my life than I can count. But I only began to understand – to discover the meanings and uses of – my own difficulty because of Toni Morrison.”

Namwali Serpell wrote about how Toni Morrison has shaped the way we think about everything from literature to politics, criticism to ethics.

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1. What technology takes from us – and how to take it back

Decisions outsourced, chatbots for friends, the natural world an afterthought: Silicon Valley is giving us life void of connection. There is a way out, wrote Rebecca Solnit in this beautiful long read, but it’s going to take collective effort.

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2. The rise of Fafo parenting: is this the end of gentle child rearing?

A backlash against gentle parenting had been brewing for some time and some mothers on social media are advocating a tough, no-nonsense approach to parenting. Does this teach children important lessons – or just make them feel isolated and ashamed? Emine Saner on the rise of “Fafo” parenting.

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3. How we draw the age of Trump and turmoil: two cartoonists go head-to-head

A special piece on Guardian cartoonists Ella Baron and Martin Rowson saw the pair face off, each producing very different cartoons in response to a prompt about Trump. We showed readers how two different generations of cartoonists operate: one in pixels, one in paint.

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4. ‘To say I was the favourite would imply I was liked’: Mark Haddon on a loveless childhood

5. ‘Watching The Office recently, my heart just sank’ – Mackenzie Crook on comedy, cruelty and being TV royalty

After a very hard landing into fame in the 00s, he decided to take a softer approach – and hit on a winning formula for classic comedy with Detectorists. The actor spoke to Zoe Williams about his obsession with middle-age and the “PTSD” on rewatching his breakout role in The Office.

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6. From incel culture to the White House: American Psycho’s dark hold on modern masculinity

“In recent years Patrick Bateman – specifically Christian Bale’s movie persona – has become a kind of aspirational figure for the very same men he was designed to mock …”

As the stage adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s notorious and misunderstood bestseller returns to the London stage, Tim Jonze explored how its tale of 80s yuppie nihilism feels more relevant than ever in the era of Andrew Tate, Trump and tech bros.

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1. How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory

“One day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. ‘Trump called me down to the Oval Office,’ John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. ‘He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland …’”

The US president’s friend Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, is now making deals in the island. Guardian investigations correspondent Tom Burgis explored the reasons behind Trump and Lauder’s fixation with Greenland.

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2. Death on the inside: as a prison officer, I saw how the system perpetuates violence

“There are hotspots for violence in prison. The exercise yard, the showers. There are peak times, too. Mealtimes and association periods are particularly volatile. But first thing in the morning is not when you expect to hear an alarm bell.”

In this gripping Long Read, Alex South examined how a rise of murders in prisons in England and Wales is traumatising inmates and staff, and making life harder for staff. But, he wrote, even in prison, violence isn’t inevitable.

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3. ‘Her time has come’: did Piet Mondrian owe his success to a cross-dressing lesbian artist who lived in a Cornish cove?

Piet Mondrian found fame, fortune and glory with his grid-like paintings lit with basic colours. But did the Dutch painter’s ideas come from the much-less heralded Marlow Moss? Joanna Moorhead celebrated an extraordinary British talent who died in obscurity.

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4. The friendship secret: why socialising could help you live longer

This fascinating interview by Emma Beddington with the neuroscientist Ben Rein, explaining how friendship and socialising, in what Rein has called “a post-interaction world”, can help you live longer.

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5. Women are feral for Heated Rivalry. What does that say about men?

The explosive popularity of the gay hockey TV drama reveals women’s desire for sex and romance without violence or hierarchy. Julia Carrie Wong asked what is it says about gender relations in 2026 that so many women are fantasising about gay smut.

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6. ‘​How do you really tell the truth about this moment?’: George Saunders on ghosts, mortality and Trump’s America

The Lincoln in the Bardo author is back with another metaphysical tale. He spoke to Sophie McBain about Buddhism, partisan politics and the terrifying flight that changed his life.

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1. Very British bribery: the whistleblower who exposed the UK’s dodgy arms deals with Saudi Arabia

“What neither man knew was that the scheme they had stumbled upon had been overseen and authorised for decades, in Britain and Saudi Arabia, by the highest levels of government. It would be 14 years, three criminal prosecutions and two jury trials before the full truth would emerge.”

Ian Foxley had just started a job at a British company in Riyadh when he began to notice payments that didn’t add up. The company culture also struck him as a odd: when he joined, he was warned against talking to an accountant named Michael Paterson, deemed a “madman”. But, when Foxley’s attempts to report irregularities within the company went nowhere, he contacted Paterson. This fascinating longread by David Pegg follows what happened next when the two met, and the major secrets that would be uncovered.

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2. ‘The world is on edge’: five tumultuous weeks with David Lammy, foreign secretary at a time of crisis

David Lammy’s first year at the Foreign Office has been hit by a string of high-stakes conflicts, from the unfolding horror in Gaza to regime change in Syria and Trump’s humiliation of Zelenskyy. In this interview, journalist Charlotte Edwardes shadows the foreign secretary for five weeks. She had originally planned to meet him in Washington DC, but his trip was cancelled after Israel bombed Iran. Instead, she tails him as he meets the French foreign secretary at London’s British Library, greets constituents in Tottenham, and is met by a crowd of protesters in Peterborough, chanting about genocide and children orphaned – all the while grilling Lammy about Trump, Putin, the Labour party, and why “Gaza is the wound that will not heal”.

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3. ‘A yorkshire pudding like a dishcloth’: how did British pub food get so grim?

“We like to think the bad old days of British cuisine, the days when it was a national embarrassment, are far behind us, that the 1990s and 2000s ushered in a wave of quality gastropubs and that the shires are bursting with talented chefs cooking local produce from scratch. In some cases, that is true, but more broadly – in my view, at least – pub food in the UK is on the decline.”

Steve Rose is tired of eating £30 pub meals that taste like reheated leftovers. He has spoken to food writers, pub owners and caterers about the reasons behind the decline of Britain’s pub grub – and receives useful tips on how to avoid future disappointment.

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4. The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir

When Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path was published in 2018, the memoir about the author’s transformative long-distance walk along the UK’s South West Coast Path became an instant hit. It sold more than 2m copies, led to more bestselling books by the author, and resulted in a film adaptation starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. Then, last month, the Observer reported major inconsistencies in Winn’s story.

“The Salt Path Affair”, as Alex Clark calls it here, taps into a broader question about what we want from the nature memoir. Tales like The Salt Path follow a well-worn narrative in which a struggling individual eventually finds healing and redemption in the great outdoors. What does the popularity of such stories, the piece asks, reveal about our relationship to the natural world – and will the fallout from the The Salt Path Affair damage the future of these books?

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5. He worked with artificial limbs for decades. Then a lorry ripped off his right arm. What happened when the expert became the patient?

Jim Ashworth-Beaumont was a prosthetics and orthotics specialist at London’s Royal National Orthopaedic hospital when, in 2020, a lorry driver failed to spot him on his bike at a turning. The ensuing collision split open his torso and liver, and tore off his right arm. The expert now became the patient.

In this insightful article about today’s cutting-edge prosthetics, Simon Usborne meets Ashworth-Beaumont, who calls himself an “overqualified guinea pig”, and learns about the latest scientific developments – and soaring prices – in the field.

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6. ‘Everybody’s starved of affection’: Past Lives director Celine Song on the brutal dating scene and her realistic new romcom

Her debut film, the Oscar-nominated and critically acclaimed Past Lives, was a wistful and sweet story about loves lost. Now Celine Song is back with a much more hard-nosed romcom starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans as rampant realists navigating dating, social class and money in Manhattan. In this interview, Song talks about her experience as a New York matchmaker, the brutal modern dating scene and why, despite our rising cynicism, we will always crave love stories.

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