Best FT Weekend long reads of 2021

More from this Series

• Mohsin Hamid on Afghanistan — and the case against wars

  As the latest calamitous foreign intervention ends, the Lahore-based novelist warns against a pivot to a new conflict

  
• The most brilliant bookshops in the world

  FT writers nominate awe-inspiring places to get your literary fix, from Mumbai to Buenos Aires

  
• Bill Gates: My green manifesto

  The billionaire philanthropist offers four bold ideas to help business take on the climate crisis

  
• Loneliness and me

  Millions of us were living with this curse before the pandemic. How can we break it?

  
• Chasing the world’s top ultra-runners around Mont Blanc

  The 106-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc is the zenith of the mountain running season — and even spectating is an adventure

  
• We love animals — so why do we treat them so badly?

  Around the world, humans are busily destroying habitats and inflicting misery on other creatures. It’s time for this to change

  
• Amia Srinivasan: the politics of safety

  The leading philosopher on how from city streets to campuses, the search for safer spaces is a defining feature of our age

  
• How the race for renewable energy is reshaping global politics

  As the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy gathers speed, what does it mean for the balance of power?

  
• What I discovered on my quest to meet China’s most influential female chef

  Fuchsia Dunlop travelled to Shandong in search of an imperial cooking tradition and found a queen

  
• Kim Stanley Robinson: a climate plan for a world in flames

  Humanity stands on the brink of disaster. But with creative thinking and collective will, we may still have time to avert catastrophe

  
• How FC Barcelona blew a fortune — and got worse

  The inside story of why the world’s best and richest football club lost the battle for talent

  
• The vanishing billionaire: how Jack Ma fell foul of Xi Jinping

  Alibaba founder’s dramatic rise and fall illustrates China’s wary embrace of tycoons who power economic growth

  
• The ten trillion dollar man: how Larry Fink became king of Wall St

  He built BlackRock into the biggest money manager the planet has ever seen. But should one company wield so much power?

  
• How Britain’s private schools lost their grip on Oxbridge

  As state-school admissions rise at elite universities, some parents who shelled out for private education regret it

  
• What London’s falling population means for the housing market

  An estimated 700,000 foreign-born residents have left the city since the Covid-19 outbreak — how will this affect rental and sale prices?

  
• The billionaire boom: how the super-rich soaked up Covid cash

  Pandemic stimulus has made the world’s wealthiest wealthier. Ruchir Sharma charts the rise of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ billionaires around the world