The Guardian Long Read #5
210 x 272 mm, 100 pages
London, UK
First published in 2023
Triannual
Editors: David Wolf & Clare Longrigg
Art directors: Chris Clarke & Sara Ramsbottom
Cover illustrations: Kento Iida
The Guardian Long Read compiles some of the newspaper’s finest long-form journalism. In an age of shrinking attention spans and AI, this magazine offers 100 pages and 55,000 words of thoroughly reported writing. Its ten carefully selected articles are the kind of work that can’t be reduced to bite-sized snippets; they demand to be read in full. The texts also give the design team a chance to adapt the daily newspaper’s design language to a new format, and commission new illustration to accompany the stories.
This issue for Winter 2026 features an appropriately curious cover illustration by Kento Iida, setting the scene for the theme of this edition—‘The Crime Issue’. In his editorial, Long Read director David Wolf praises crime writing that piques readers interest in stories that can feel distant, and ruminates on its capricious nature as either the best or the worst—only the best for this edition!
Inside: Duncan Campbell demystifies the legend of ‘mediocre’ East End gangsters the Kray Twins, Giles Tremlett delves into the decision of Maixabel Lasa to meet with her late husband’s ETA assassin Luis Carrasco, Samira Shackle shares the plight of seven Nigerian stowaways discovered on an oil tanker off the coast of the Isle of Wight, Matthew Bremner investigates the fallout of hundreds of kilos of cocaine lost at sea and beached on an island in the Azores, and Poppy Sebag-Montefiore profiles the BBC journalists who risked their jobs to break the truth about Jimmy Savile.
On the Journal
Watch a video of magCulture Meets The Guardian Long Read, featuring David Wolf, Clare Longrigg and Chris Clarke, recorded at the shop on 26 November 2025.
watch here