Selected Articles

This story, published by the Guardian Long Read on 1 June 2023, was commissioned as part of the Guardian’s Cotton Capital project, which examines how slavery changed Britain and the world. My piece delves into a controversy at a Cambridge college. Over the last few years, an increasing number of institutions have been commissioning investigations […]

This feature, which appeared in the Guardian’s Saturday Magazine on 14 January 2023, tells the story of a horrific crime and its aftermath. Zara Aleena was a bright young law graduate who was brutally murdered by a stranger as she walked home from her local pub in Ilford, on the outskirts of London. It prompted […]

Before Just Stop Oil was Insulate Britain – the campaigners who shut down English motorways for weeks in late 2021 to demand better insulation. For this feature, which appeared in the Guardian Saturday Magazine on 17 December 2022, I spoke to the activists involved about their decision to sit down on Britain’s busiest thoroughfares to […]

In October 2020 an emergency call was received from a ship in British waters. After a full-scale commando raid, seven Nigerians were taken off in handcuffs – but no one was ever charged. In this investigation, which was published by the Guardian Long Read on 9 June 2022, I explored what really happened on board. […]

A drone sighting caused Gatwick airport to close for two full days in 2018, but despite a lengthy – and expensive – police investigation, no culprit was ever found. In this story, published by the Guardian Long Read on 1 December 2020, I spoke to the drone enthusiasts and amateur sleuths who are tirelessly investigating […]

Western travel bloggers have flocked to Pakistan in recent years – but have some of them become too close to the authorities? In this story, published by the Guardian Long Read on 12 November 2020, I looked into the strange case of Cynthia D. Ritchie, an American woman who found fame in Pakistan for promoting […]

In this feature, published by Prospect on 16 October 2018, I profiled Manzoor Pashteen, the 23-year-old founder of a peaceful protest movement in Pakistan called the PTM, which was breaking boundaries by challenging the authority of the military establishment. Hailing from Pakistan’s marginalised northern districts, these activists came of age post-9/11 and have never known […]

I worked on this investigation, published by Guardian Long Read on 7 June 2018, for almost a year. The Iraq Historic Allegations Team was set up by the government to investigate a growing number of claims of the abuse of civilians by British soldiers. But it collapsed, with then-prime minister Theresa May lambasting “activist, leftwing […]

In 2014, documents alleging a conspiracy to Islamise Birmingham schools were leaked to the media, sparking a national scandal. The papers were quickly debunked – but the story remained divisive. In this story for Guardian Long Read, published on 1 September 2017, I tried to answer the question: what really happened? I spent 18 months […]