On Start the Week Andrew Marr goes in search of ancient landscapes with the writer Robert Macfarlane. With a mix of geology, cartography and natural history, Macfarlane journeys on foot to explore ideas of pilgrimage, trespass and ancient pathways. Jonathan Meades is equally preoccupied with a sense of place, but turns his attention to its architecture and the futility of landmark buildings. Anna Minton argues against the increasing privatisation of public space. And size is no matter to the des...
May 28, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the relationship between markets and morals with the political philosopher Michael Sandel. In his latest book, What Money Can't Buy, Sandel questions the dominance of the financial markets in our daily lives, in which everything has a price. But the economist Diane Coyle stands up for her much maligned profession, and points to the many benefits of a market economy. The Russian economist Grigory Yavlinksy argues against viewing the world of money as separa...
May 21, 2012•41 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses Spain's economic crisis, and the legacy of Franco. In the last decade Spain has begun to unearth some of the mass graves of the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed in the 1930s by both sides in the civil war. Paul Preston discusses what he calls the Spanish Holocaust and its impact on Spain today. Maria Delgado argues that the significance of Franco's reign transcends politics, and can be felt strongly in Spain's cultural landscape. The MEP Dan...
May 11, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks into the digital future. Nick Harkaway dismisses fears of a digital dystopia in which distracted people, caught between the real world and the screen world, are under constant surveillance. He believes we need to engage with the computers we have created, and shape our own destiny. Simon Ings is the editor of a new digital magazine, Arc, which uses science fiction to explore and explain what the future might hold for society. While Anab Jain's design company u...
May 07, 2012•41 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses creativity with the writer Jonah Lehrer. In his latest book, Imagine, Lehrer unpicks the creative process in both science and art, to ask where inventiveness and imagination spring from, and how they can be harnessed. Experimental sound artist, Scanner, talks about creating unique musical compositions and his latest collaboration with the Heritage Orchestra at the Brighton Festival; and the novelist Joanna Kavenna considers the importance of nourishing cre...
Apr 30, 2012•42 min
On St George's Day Andrew Marr discusses national identity and belonging. The playwright David Hare has written a companion piece to a Terrence Rattigan play, set in an English public school. George Benjamin is celebrated as one of England's leading composers, but how far is his work shaped by the French musical tradition? The Scottish writer Iain Banks discusses his novel, Stonemouth, set in a town north of Aberdeen and vividly evoking a sense of place and identity. And Rachel Seiffert examines...
Apr 20, 2012•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses the state of China with the authors Jonathan Fenby and Martin Jacques. Fenby attempts to draw together the whole of the China story to explore its global significance, but also its inner complexity and complexes. Martin Jacques has updated his bestseller, When China Rules the World, to argue that the country's impact will be as much political and cultural, as economic. But while China's finances make all the headlines, what of its literature? Ou Ning edits China's version o...
Apr 16, 2012•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the prize-winning novelist, Peter Carey about his latest work, The Chemistry of Tears. At its heart is a small clockwork puzzle and Carey muses on how the industrial revolution has changed what it means to be human. The science writer Philip Ball goes back another century to the world of Galileo and Newton, to study the changes in thinking and knowledge embodied by the scientifically curious. And the historian Rebecca Stott rediscovers the first evolutionists, and the collec...
Apr 09, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back at the political and cultural landscape of the last 20 years with the author Alwyn Turner. In 1992 Margaret Thatcher proclaimed 'the death of socialism' after the Conservative election victory, and Turner argues this moment led to a generation turning away from politics, putting their energy into culture. But Janet Daley believes that it wasn't John Major's victory but the fall of communism that demoralised and destabilised the left, and the lessons of 19...
Apr 02, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Anne McElvoy talks to the filmmaker Werner Herzog about his latest documentary which gazes "into the abyss of the human soul", in its exploration of death row. Liz Mermin delves into the world of particle physics for her latest film venture, spending a year at CERN. While work there continues to try and understand the fundamental laws of nature, Mermin attempts to understand the people behind the experiments. The writer Geoff Dyer obsesses about Tarkovsky's film, Stalker, as a ...
Mar 26, 2012•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to the Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer. In her latest book she explores the tensions at the heart of a nation struggling to define itself post-apartheid, through the lives of an interracial couple in suburban South Africa. The past and present also collide in the poet Jack Mapanje's attempt to understand why he was arrested by the Malawian secret police, and imprisoned without charge. Richard Dowden looks to the future of Africa to ask whether Chinese investment, an ...
Mar 19, 2012•42 min
Andrew Marr talks to Colm Toibin about the ways writers write about families, and also the impact of their own often dysfunctional relationships - from Thomas Mann and WB Yeats, to the nightmares of John Cheever's journals. In her novel, The Children's Book, AS Byatt explored how far a writing mother can harm her children, and yet she argues that she'd prefer to know nothing about a writer's private life. The novelist Will Eaves mined his own family background for his latest book, but insists it...
Mar 12, 2012•41 min
Andrew Marr celebrates middle age with the scientist David Bainbridge, who dismisses any suggestion of mid-life crisis, to argue that there's much more to middle age than just a period between youth and being old. The poet Simon Armitage asks in 'Knowing what we Know Now', whether we'd choose to live our life backwards once we got to the mid point, but the writer Deborah Moggach suggests there's a gender divide to reaching 50. And the psychologist Claudia Hammond discusses perceptions of time, a...
Mar 05, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses faith and doubt. Richard Holloway started training for the priesthood from the age of 14, but as the former Bishop looks back on his life he reveals a restless spirit, always questioning his beliefs. Karen Armstrong has had similar crises of faith, and asks in a forthcoming talk, 'What is Religion?' For the 17th century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, faith was wrapped up in her love of writing and poetry - her life is brought to the stage by the p...
Feb 27, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks at how science has shaped our civilisation. Mark Miodownik explores how the discovery of new materials has transformed the way we live, from the Stone Age to the Silicon Age. While the mathematician Ian Stewart argues that calculations made centuries ago have led to untold innovations, and that mathematical equations really have changed our world. The natural world is the starting point for the sculptor, Peter Randall-Page and his abstract geometric form car...
Feb 20, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr considers the 'great man' view of history, and how far an age can be represented by its leaders and innovators. Mary Beard looks back to ancient times when history and biography were considered two distinct genres. While John Guy returns to the reign of Elizabeth I, Max Hastings and Lola Young give an overview of the modern Elizabethan age. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Feb 13, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at the state of conservatism. Thomas Frank chronicles the rebirth of right-wing populism in the United States, with the resurgent Tea Party. It's a movement driven by ideology with a vision of utopian capitalism. At home right-wing commentators bemoan the lack of ideology at the heart of the government. Peter Hitchens argues for a political philosophy that stresses a sense of place and history, and decries the Tory Party's shift to the 'centre ground'. The neo...
Feb 06, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks revolution. Wael Ghonim explains how social networks played a vital role in the Arab Spring. His Facebook page,'We Are All Khaled Said', which featured the death of a young Egyptian, inspired a new generation to fight oppression. Mary King, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies looks back to earlier struggles in eastern Europe, and the journalist Paul Mason explores how far the worldwide economic crisis and growing inequality lie behind the new revolutions. ...
Jan 30, 2012•42 min
Andrew Marr explores the idea of Justice on Start the Week. In a satire on the International Criminal Tribunal, the playwright Simon Stephens, asks how far such a court can deal with perpetrators of terrible crimes, when the accused neither recognises its authority, or shares its morality. Closer to home John Podmore looks back at 25 years as a prison governor and inspector, in a damning indictment on Britain's prison service. The criminologist Mike Hough asks why people obey the law, and questi...
Jan 23, 2012•42 min
Andrew Marr looks for solutions to the current global crisis. Detlev Schlichter dismisses the practice of printing more money in times of recession, arguing that in the next decade our reliance on paper money will collapse, and he proposes a return to hard commodities, like gold. The historian Philip Coggan pits creditors against debtors, tax payers against public sector workers, and believes it's time for a new monetary system to emerge. The Labour peer, Lord Glasman thinks we need to change th...
Jan 16, 2012•41 min
On Start the Week, Andrew Marr begins the new year with a look at austerity. Anna Coote argues that it's time to embrace a new set of values that are not dependent on high rolling consumerism and, as unemployment rises, to share out the working hours more evenly. The great chronicler of Austerity Britain of the fifties, David Kynaston, explores whether there are any lessons to be learnt from earlier decades of thrift and dissent. The artist Antony Gormley discusses a new collaboration in which h...
Jan 09, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr visits the painter David Hockney to find out why he has swapped LA for East Yorkshire. Hockney takes him on a tour of the farm tracks and woods he has been painting near his home in Bridlington, and talks of his fascination at the changes of the season. In his vast studio hang pictures of increasing size and vibrant colour, many painted using his iPad. He might be in his seventies, but Hockney tells Andrew Marr that he's on a roll, busier than ever; excited by the n...
Dec 26, 2011•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses the idea of Christmas with Canon Giles Fraser who argues that the Christian Christmas was invented by the Emperor Constantine for political, not religious, reasons, 300 years after the birth of Christ. Canon Fraser will be discussing the idea that the legacy of Constantine's December feast distorts the message of Christ and casts a long shadow on modern believers. Clare Tomalin will be talking about Dickens and how the Victorian imagination shaped our understanding of what ...
Dec 19, 2011•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr asks if sport still embodies a notion of fair play and Corinthian spirit, or whether it has become mired in corruption, money and celebrity. Mihir Bose argues that sport is no longer just a game, but has become one of the most powerful political tools in the world. The social historian Janie Hampton looks back to a time when amateur wasn't a dirty word, while Brian Moore the 'pitbull' of the scrum, looks back at a disastrous year for the professionalism of English r...
Dec 12, 2011•41 min
Andrew Marr discusses the role of the public intellectual on Start the Week. The French philosopher, journalist and activist Bernard-Henri Levy flexes his muscles as he sets out his views on everything from literature to politics and fame, Baroness Mary Warnock looks at morality and what philosophers can add to the current debates about privacy, society and fairness, while Roger Scruton argues that his 'green philosophy' finds a natural home in right wing politics. Producer: Katy Hickman....
Dec 05, 2011•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the pursuit of power, and the art of leadership, from dictators to technocrats. The Ghanaian economist George Ayittey sets out the fight against tyranny in Africa and around the world, while Maha Azzam looks to see whether Egypt could learn any lessons from his assertion that many of today's despots were yesterday's freedom fighters. The columnist Simon Heffer discusses how the desire to protect or assert power has distorted the course of history, and the ...
Nov 28, 2011•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr asks how the arts tackle politics and current affairs. The performer Rory Bremner turns his comedic eye to opera, in an updated version of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. Originally written to satirise Napoleon III's Paris, Bremner draws present day parallels with a spin-filled, celebrity-obsessed world. For the last 30 years the film maker Peter Kosminsky has turned conflicts from Bosnia, to the Falklands, and Israel/ Palestine, as well as the story of New L...
Nov 21, 2011•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses the writing of history with Peter Englund, Norman Davies Alison Weir and Boris Johnson. Norman Davies turns to the vanished kingdoms of Europe to explore an alternative history of the continent and to reclaim the stories of the vanquished. While the Swedish historian Peter Englund puts the lives of ordinary people throughout Europe at the heart of his re-telling of the First World War, the London mayor Boris Johnson celebrates the vitality of the capital through the lives o...
Nov 14, 2011•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses Australia's cultural heritage with the prize-winning authors Thomas Keneally and Kate Grenville, and the opera singer and composer Deborah Cheetham. Keneally has embarked on a history of Australia through its people: from convicts and Aborigines, settlers and bushrangers, patriots and reformers, and he builds up a picture of the country's unique national character. For her latest trilogy Kate Grenville delves back into Australia's history and the first three generations of ...
Nov 10, 2011•42 min
Andrew Marr is in Perth in Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, to discuss mining, money and the monarchy. He talks to the Director of the Commonwealth Foundation, Danny Sriskandarajah, about the future of an organisation, headed by the Queen, that's been criticised for being impotent and irrelevant. Compared to many Commonwealth nations, Australia is going through an economic boom time. At its heart is the mineral-rich land of Western Australia, and ABC's morning show pre...
Oct 31, 2011•42 min
