What does Vladimir Putin owe Stalin? In this week’s audio long read, the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore reflects on the parallels between the two Russian leaders, from their formative years to their ultimate reckoning in the history books. 

Putin keeps half of Stalin’s library in his office, annotated by the former dictator, and has embraced the Soviet cult of ruling through fear and control. By invading Ukraine, he has made a colossal gamble on securing his own legacy.

Written by Simon Sebag Montefiore and read by Adrian Bradley.

Read the text version here. It was first published on the New Statesman website on 9 March 2022, and in the magazine on 11 March 2022.

Podcast listeners can subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special offer. Just visit newstatesman.com/podcastoffer.

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Stretched to breaking point by the pandemic, health services around the world are in crisis – with staff exhausted and demoralised, many of them quitting as a result. England alone is at least 6,000 GPs short of the government’s stated 2024 target – a recruitment pledge of the last election which it has already abandoned.

The New Statesman’s medical editor, Phil Whitaker, a practising doctor, reflects on the ordinary pressures he and his colleagues face – in this case, through the gradually unfolding story of one family’s complex needs. Is a young girl’s abdominal pain appendicitis or a reaction to stress at home? Are her mother’s heart palpitations a sign of everyday strain or an underlying cardiovascular problem? Whitaker argues that knowing his patients well can be life-saving – but that many family GPs like him fear their days are numbered.

In this moving insider’s account of life in the consulting room, Whitaker makes the case for continuity of care and a patient-centred, less transactional kind of medicine.

Written by Phil Whitaker and read by Chris Stone.

Read the text version here. It was first published on the New Statesman website on 8 December 2021, and in the magazine on 10 December 2021.

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On 7 June 2020, the statue of the former slave trader Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol during a Black Lives Matter protest – an act that, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minnesota, US, reverberated around the country. Eighteen months later, Tom Lamont spent a month at the trial of the four protesters charged with its fall. As he writes, the UK government and others “viewed the toppling as guerrilla work, not just illegal but selfish and dangerous”. Others saw it as an overdue correction to a historical wrong. 

In this definitive inside account, Lamont explores the human drama of a landmark trial, and the knotty questions the case raised about racism, justice, protest and history. 

Written by Tom Lamont and read by Chris Stone.

Read the text version here. It was first published on the New Statesman website on 2 April 2022, and in the magazine on 8 April 2022.

To receive all our long reads, subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special podcast offer. Just visit www.newstatesman.com/podcastoffer.

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On the eve of the 2022 French presidential election, the New Statesman’s writer-at-large Jeremy Cliffe caught a train from Courseulles-sur-Mer on the north coast of France to Marseille on the Mediterranean. Stopping in Caen, Paris and Vierzon along the way, he heard how contemporary France is reshaping itself in the long shadow of Charles de Gaulle – and against the backdrop of Europe’s biggest war since 1945. What does the future hold for the Fifth Republic?

Written by Jeremy Cliffe and read by Adrian Bradley.

Read the text version here. It was first published on the New Statesman website on 12 March 2022, and in the magazine on 18 March 2022.

To receive all our long reads, subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special podcast offer. Just visit www.newstatesman.com/podcastoffer.

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When the Taliban took control of Kabul in August 2021, the Koofi family were among 8,000 Afghans airlifted to safety in the UK, as part of the government’s Operation Warm Welcome. The New Statesman’s Sophie McBain met them in a hotel in the north of England soon afterwards, where they were waiting to be resettled. As the months passed, she followed their new life, as well as that of the hotel staff and its other residents: an uncertain limbo of bureaucracy and confinement. 

Written and read by Sophie McBain. 

Read the text version here. It was published on the New Statesman website and in the magazine on 10 December 2021.

To receive all our long reads, subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special podcast offer. Just visit www.newstatesman.com/podcastoffer.

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The anti-ageing industry is bankrolled by some of the wealthiest people on Earth, including Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel. Are the scientists it employs close to a cure? And if they are, who wants to live forever anyway? Jenny Kleeman meets the entrepreneurs who say that a 120th birthday is within reach, and critics who argue that life extension is the pinnacle of elite narcissism.

Written by Jenny Kleeman and read by Emma Haslett.

Read the text version here. It was first published on the New Statesman website on 13 October 2021, and in the magazine on 15 October 2021.

To receive all our long reads, subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special podcast offer. Just visit www.newstatesman.com/podcastoffer.

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For 50 years, the “mean old daddy” immortalised in one of Mitchell’s best-loved songs was an enigma. For the first time, he tells his side of the story to the New Statesman’s lead interviewer, Kate Mossman. Kate and Cary Raditz met in Paris in late 2021 to talk about a love affair that began on the island of Crete in the spring of 1970, continued in California and England, and which became a part of Mitchell’s iconic album, Blue.

Written and read by Kate Mossman.

Read the text version here. It was first published on the New Statesman website on 17 December 2021, and in the magazine on 7 January 2022.

To receive all our long reads, subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special podcast offer. Just visit www.newstatesman.com/podcastoffer.

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Audio Long Reads is a new podcast from the New Statesman, showcasing the best of our reported features and essays, read aloud. Ease into the weekend with stories and analysis from our authors – including Kate Mossman, Jeremy Cliffe and Sophie McBain – published every Saturday morning. 

Just search for Audio Long Reads from the New Statesman wherever you get your podcasts.

For all our long reads, subscribe to the New Statesman for just £1 a week for 12 weeks using our special podcast offer. Just visit www.newstatesman.com/podcastoffer.

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