This is The Guardian.

Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read.

Hi, I'm David Wolfe, the editor of the Guardian Longread. Today we're doing something a bit different to celebrate the publication of the new Longreed magazine, which you can order now from the guardian.com

slash longreed mag. The Guardian Longreed magazine is a collection of ten of our favourite stories

from recent years, bound together with beautiful new illustrations and art direction by Chris Clark

and Andrew Stocks. Today on the podcast, we're taking a behind-the-scenes look at the Long Read

with two of our regular writers whose pieces feature in the new magazine.

Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian's chief culture writer and author of a piece about what's

gone wrong at the British Museum.

Hello.

And Hetty O'Brien, assistant opinion editor and author of a story about a lawyer who posed us a gentleman and turned out to be anything but.

Hello.

Welcome to the podcast, guys.

Thank you. Very happy to be here.

Okay, so let's talk a bit about your pieces and pieces in general.

Both of you've been rating for the section for many years now. Charlotte, when was your

first one? 2016, 2015. I was one of the first. In fact, I was the harbinger of the long read.

Yeah. Oh, yes. You should, you should briefly tell that story. I was tapped on the shoulder to write

10 or 9, maybe it was oddly nine long articles about the BBC.

And that was one of the sort of forbearers of the long read.

So I was just finishing that project up when the long reed was launched.

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