Andrew Marr talks to John Gray about our delusional quest for immortality, from Victorian séances to embalming Lenin's corpse to uploading our minds in cyberspace. Equally ambitious has been the quest to create the ultimate living, thinking robot, and the anthropologist Kathleen Richardson assesses how far machines could take over the earth. The science fiction writer Paul McAuley imagines a utopian world in the hostile environs of Jupiter and Saturn, based on a system of favours and patronage. ...
Jan 24, 2011•42 min
Start the Week focuses on justice, fairness and ethical dilemmas this week. The leading Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm tells Andrew Marr that the inequalities inherent in capitalism has made people question its supremacy, and he argues that Marx remains as relevant today as in the last century. While the American academic Michael Sandel looks at the philosophy that underpins notions of justice, and unpicks the sometimes contradictory nature of morality. In her new play, Tiger Country, Nina Rai...
Jan 17, 2011•42 min
In the first Start the Week of the New Year Andrew Marr asks what has gone wrong in the West. The economist Dambisa Moyo charts 50 years of economic folly and argues that only radical changes in policy will stem permanent decline, while Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor, exposes the myths surrounding economic thinking. The journalist Stephen Kinzer calls on the US and UK to ditch its present allies in the Middle East - Saudi Arabia and Israel - and look to Iran and Turkey for support. And Labou...
Jan 10, 2011•42 min
Andrew Marr celebrates 40 years of Start the Week. When Richard Baker first presented the show in 1970 it was a lively and often chaotic, mix of chat and celebrity knitted together by a weekly theme. Cookery demonstrations, and dancing with Wayne Sleep, rubbed shoulders with Roald Dahl and Sophia Loren discussing what frightens them, and Idi Amin playing the accordion. It was Melvyn Bragg who reinvented the programme 18 years later to make it a forum for ideas. He challenged his guests to explai...
Dec 27, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the sculptor Anthony Caro about the development of modern British sculpture. Caro once worked out of a small garage at home, creating his growing metal structures, and it's the artist's studio that interests the art critic, Michael Peppiatt. He's attempting to capture the unique atmosphere of the tiny ramshackle studio behind Montparnasse where Alberto Giacometti lived and worked for nearly 40 years. For the last decade Sir Mark Jones has worked out of one of the grandest bu...
Dec 20, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the conductor Semyon Bychkov about Tannhauser, Wagner's tortured artist, out of place in conventional society. While the scientist Mark Miodownik takes a measure of the world, and asks 'Does size matter?' in this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. Author Susan Hill ponders kindness, grief and miracles and the television screenwriter Tony Jordan forsakes EastEnders to take on 'the greatest story ever told', the Nativity. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Dec 13, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the choreographer Matthew Bourne about his vision for Cinderella, while the dance critic, Jennifer Homans sounds the death knell for ballet in her history of the art form. David Aaronovitch also asks whether Freud has had his heyday, in his examination of the continuing significance of the father of psycho-analysis, while the psychotherapist, Jane Haynes, celebrates the enduring appeal and relevance of Proust. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Dec 06, 2010•41 min
Andrew Marr travels back to Egypt in the 1950s to a time of religious pluralism and openness with the writer Tarek Osman. As Egypt votes in parliamentary elections, Tarek, asks what has happened in the intervening years. Francis Spufford imagines a very different world with his account of the Soviet Union under Kruschchev, and what could have happened if the dream of plenty had come true. Turkey's best-selling female novelist, Elif Shafak, argues against the constraints of identity politics and ...
Nov 29, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr takes a satirical look at the world in Start the Week. The satirist PJ O'Rourke makes a plea to the American public, Not To Vote, in his latest angry critique of liberal politics, while the writer and comedian Armando Iannucci explores the latest chapter in the life of his Machiavellian spin doctor, Malcolm Tucker. Mikhail Bulgakov's absurdist tale of how a stray mongrel becomes human is brought to the stage by Simon McBurney. And the classicist Mary Beard delves beneath the volcanic...
Nov 22, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the forensic psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead about the medicalisation of evil. While human nature in a different guise is explored through William Boyd's literary everyman, Logan Mounstuart, who moves from the page to tv screen in the adaptation of his novel, Any Human Heart. The poet Craig Raine compares the composition of a poem to the art of dress-making: "We are waiting till it feels exact,/ ruthless till we feel the fit." And the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist concludes ...
Nov 15, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the Swedish poet, Lars Gustafsson about whether writers have a responsibility to challenge the establishment. Gillian Tett, the award-winning Financial Times journalist, who predicted the financial crash, does her own challenging of the status quo. The writer Patrick Wilcken describes the great intellectual Claude Levi-Strauss, as 'the poet in the laboratory' in a new biography. And Ed Vulliamy reports, in almost anthropological detail, on the lives of those caught up in the...
Nov 08, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr looks at what the future holds for Ireland after the financial crisis, with the cultural commentator, Fintan O'Toole, who argues for wholesale reform of the political system. While the Conservative MP, Nick Boles puts forward his blueprint for a new Britain. The fate of Deborah Cadbury's family firm was sealed when it was bought out by an American company. But she looks back at a chocolate dynasty that mixed sweet success with bitter rivalry. And the cellist Steven Isserlis is on a m...
Nov 01, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the Scottish writer and artist, Alasdair Gray about his life through the story of his paintings. While the director Josie Rourke brings to life the tough reality of 1930s Glasgow, in her staging of the play, Men Should Weep. David Starkey explores the history of the monarchy, showing its resilience but also fragility, over the last two thousand years. And James Stirling is considered one of the greatest British architects - Alan Berman celebrates his radical buildings while ...
Oct 25, 2010•42 min
In a special programme, Start the Week discusses morality, religion and politics. The philosopher Mary Warnock, in her latest book, Dishonest To God, argues that religion has no place in politics, and that it's a mistake to believe that religion has a monopoly on morality. To debate these issues Andrew Marr is joined by Stanley Hauerwas, named 'America's Best Theologian' by Time magazine, the philosopher, humanist and former Professor of Geriatric Medicine Raymond Tallis, and the former Conserva...
Oct 18, 2010•42 min
In a special programme recorded at the Cheltenham Literature Festival Andrew Marr talks to Bernhard Schlink, author of 'The Reader', about his latest novel to be translated, which pits youthful idealism against the reality of terrorism. Margaret MacMillan explores the uses and abuses of history, while Peter Snow tries to unpick the man from the legend in his biography of Wellington. Sebastian Faulks explores the history of the novel, and discusses the challenges in both historical and contempora...
Oct 11, 2010•39 min
Andrew Marr talks to Jonathan Franzen, hailed as a 'Great American Novelist' for his latest book, Freedom. Amidst the backdrop of the war on terror, environmental disaster and class war, Franzen chronicles the lives, choices and compromises of one family. The playwright Shelagh Stephenson also explores family tensions in her new play, about what happens when a missing child returns home. Philosophy is under attack as advances in neuroscience question many of its assumptions, and yet Barry Smith ...
Oct 04, 2010•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the economist Will Hutton about the need to transform a country blighted by inequality and indebted to big finance. While Will Hutton argues for a fairer society, Lars Kroijer comes clean about the life and decisions of a hedge fund manager. Also arguing for greater fairness is Billy Ivory whose latest screenplay, Made In Dagenham, charts the walkout of the women workers at the Ford car plant who fought for equal pay in the 1960s. Women demonstrators form the backbone of Ron...
Sep 27, 2010•43 min
In the first programme of a new series of Start the Week the former MP Lord Hattersley charts the life and politics of David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister responsible for the creation of the welfare state, and a working class man who came to understand the pitfalls of a coalition government. Andrew Marr looks back to the 1980s with the writer Andy McSmith who argues this was the conflict decade, defined by strikes, war and riots. And the philosopher Mary Midgley also criticises the individual...
Sep 20, 2010•42 min
