EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.

And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle. 

We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.

Invite for dinner

Jim Haynes was a Swinging Sixties icon who used to invite thousands of people to his house for dinner. 

(BBC, approx 10 mins reading time)

There would be a buzz in the air, as people of various nationalities – locals, immigrants, travellers – milled around the small, open-plan space. A pot of hearty food bubbled on the hob and servings would be dished out on to a trestle table, so you could help yourself and continue to mingle. It was for good reason that Jim was nicknamed the “godfather of social networking”. He led the way in connecting strangers, long before we outsourced it all to Silicon Valley.

Read all the Evening Longreads here>