On Start the Week Lisa Jardine asks whether the writing of history has been dominated by conflict and difference. The Professor of History, David Cannadine argues against the predominant 'them and us' agenda, and for a common humanity. While the Balkan writer Aleksandar Hemon splits his life between Sarajevo and Chicago. Ed Vulliamy reported on the war in Bosnia and explores a journalist's role in historical events, and Margaret MacMillan discusses the teaching of history. Producer: Katy Hickman...
Mar 15, 2013•42 min
On Start the Week Jonathan Freedland talks to Ken Loach about post-war Britain, and the spirit of unity which aimed to create a vision of a fairer society. Thirty years on and this culture of cooperation descended into fist fights in the House of Commons, and James Graham's stage imagining of the 1974 hung parliament. David Boyle takes the story on to examine the demise of the middle classes, and Harriet Sergeant looks at Britain's underclass, and the reasons why it's growing. Producer: Katy Hic...
Mar 11, 2013•42 min
On Start the Week Anne McElvoy explores the state of feminism today. It's fifty years since Betty Friedan's landmark book, The Feminine Mystique, questioned the role of women in society. Anne McElvoy discusses that role today with the Living Dolls author, Natasha Walter, the proponent of erotic capital Catherine Hakim, the radical feminist Finn Mackay and the journalist and academic Shereen El Feki who has been looking at the changing sexual attitudes and behaviour in the Arab world. This progra...
Mar 04, 2013•42 min
On Start the Week Bridget Kendall discusses the role and future of the Commonwealth. As its Secretary-General at the turn of the century, Sir Don McKinnon reveals its inner workings. But the journalist Frances Harrison is critical of the organisation for failing to challenge human rights abuses. The MP Kwasi Kwarteng questions whether the Commonwealth can ever shed the baggage of Empire, and Sir Ronald Sanders asks if it can survive the rise of China. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Feb 25, 2013•42 min
On Start the Week Lisa Jardine discusses how complex maths has broken free of the laboratory and now influences every aspect of our lives. James Owen Weatherall applauds the take-over of the financial world by physicists, Marcus du Sautoy revels in the numbers and Kenneth Cukier explores how big data will change everything from disease control to bargain buys. But the cultural commentator Tiffany Jenkins sounds a note of caution about a world where everything is measurable. Producer: Katy Hickma...
Feb 11, 2013•42 min
Bridget Kendall discusses the roots and reach of Islamist terrorism from Afghanistan to Africa. The historian William Dalrymple looks back to Britain's First Afghan War where many Afghanis rose in answer to the call for jihad. Nadeem Aslam's latest novel ranges across the Afghan-Pakistan border where the past and the present are locked together. Dr Christina Hellmich explores what has happened to al-Qaeda since Osama bin Laden's death. And as David Cameron calls the response to Islamist terroris...
Feb 04, 2013•42 min
Start the Week Allan Little explores the legacy of George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language. Joan Bakewell, Tim Montgomerie, Chris Mullin and Phil Collins discuss Orwell's warning that evasive language, euphemism and insincerity dominate political writing, and assess the impact of today's political diaries, blogging and tweeting. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Jan 28, 2013•42 min
On Start the Week, Tom Sutcliffe talks to Howard Goodall about 40,000 years of music, from prehistoric instruments to modern-day pop, to chart a history of innovation and entertainment. The composer John Adams contrasts European and American traditions as he conducts two concerts at the LSO. The award-winning writer Stephen Poliakoff brings the true story of a black British jazz band in the 1930s to the small screen. And Barb Jungr's cd of cover versions harks back to a tradition of musical re-i...
Jan 21, 2013•42 min
On Start the Week Anne McElvoy talks to the environmental campaigner Tony Juniper about putting a price on nature, and reframing the importance of the natural world in terms of finance. But the writer William Fiennes believes it's the imagination and not discussion of dividends and capital that will inspire the next generation, and Ngaire Woods argues that governments and business should be run by goals and values, and not the balance sheet. The Tory MP, John Penrose, looks at whether we should ...
Jan 14, 2013•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr begins the new year talking about lies and secrets, and the increasing blurring of public and private. Deborah Cohen charts family secrets and shame from the Victorian times to the present day, while Sarah Dunant and TV producer Alex Graham discuss how confession became entertainment, and the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz listens to the hidden feelings of his patients. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Jan 09, 2013•42 min
In a special recording of Start the Week, Andrew Marr explores the power of the human voice. From the emotional intensity of the tenor Rolando Villazón, singing Rodolfo in La Boheme, to the art of writing for the voice with the composer Mark-Anthony Turnage. Mary King trains the voice, and the neuro-psychiatrist Michael Trimble examines our reactions to it.
Dec 24, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Peter Wothers about modern day alchemy, as we enter a new era of chemistry. In the past some scientists dismissed the vast majority of the human genome as 'junk DNA', Ewan Birney argues for renaming it 'enigmatic DNA'. And curiosity gets the better of Sanjeev Gupta as he explores the terrain on Mars. But science doesn't have all the answers as Helen Bynum charts the history of tuberculosis, from the medieval period to the present day, and looks at how this ...
Dec 17, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores what it means to be Scottish. The streets and history of Edinburgh come alive in Ian Rankin's crime novels, while the Glaswegian writer and artist Alasdair Gray marries elements of realism, fantasy and science fiction in his work. With a long history of Scottish emigration, T M Devine looks at the impact on the nation left behind. And the theatre critic of The Scotsman, Joyce McMillan, believes that despite the coming Referendum on Independence, it's the ar...
Dec 10, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the prospect of an Iran with nuclear weapons. David Patrikarakos points to the failure to understand how far Iran's nuclear strategy is linked to its recent history and sense of identity. Geoffrey Robertson QC argues that the production of atomic bombs should be made an international crime against humanity, whereas Baroness Shirley Williams believes that politics still has a role to play in disarmament around the world. But Douglas Murray dismisses the ide...
Dec 03, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at Germany's role in Europe. Katinka Barysch argues that despite the crisis, support for EU integration still dominates, and that unlike Britain, the ability to compromise is seen as a skill, not a weakness. Two British MPs, from left and right, Gisela Stuart and Douglas Carswell, remain sceptical about the EU, but German-born Stuart understands her birth country's emotional connection to it. Carswell argues that the digital revolution calls for smaller, not l...
Nov 26, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week, Andrew Marr explores how Britain trains the artists and designers of the future. Christopher Frayling and Sarah Teasley celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Royal College of Art, the world's oldest art and design school. But one of its former teachers, the industrial designer Ron Arad argues for a broader arts education which doesn't split sculpture from painting, architecture from design. And the artist Antony Gormley redefines the limits of sculpture and building. Producer...
Nov 19, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the award-winning director Kevin Macdonald whose films often focus on real events or people, from Touching the Void, to Marley. The filmmaker Roger Graef discusses the ethical issues in documenting real life. And the Indian writer Aman Sethi explores the margins of society with his study of the world of itinerant labourers in a Delhi market. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Nov 12, 2012•42 min
Start the Week is at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in Gateshead to debate whether the world is becoming a more divided place. Andrew Marr discusses the state of politics with the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson and the writer-turned-politician Michael Ignatieff, while the Israeli author Amos Oz asks whether entrenched ideas have increasingly polarised debate. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Nov 05, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week the journalist Ian Cobain reveals how torture has been systematically used by the British from WWII to the War on Terror, via Kenya and Northern Ireland. David Anderson QC reviews the risks posed by terrorism in the UK. Extraordinary rendition and the language of concealment form the heart of Clare Bayley's new play, and there are more secrets uncovered by the criminal barrister-turned-crime writer, MR Hall. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Oct 29, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at the legacy of modernism. Kevin Jackson returns to 1922, the year he argues changed the literary world with publications of Joyce's Ulysses and TS Eliot's The Waste Land. And Ali Smith reveals how her writing today melds different forms to explore style, love, death and the art of writing. But Will Gompertz and the composer Julian Anderson argue that art and music respectively embraced modernism earlier and more profoundly than the world of literature. Produ...
Oct 22, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to two American authors, Richard Ford and Lionel Shriver about the state of the US. In the run-up to the Presidential elections, the journalist Edward Luce argues that the country's politics are broken, and America is facing the spectre of decline. But the chair of Republicans Abroad UK, Thomas Grant, disputes such a negative assessment. Producer - Katy Hickman.
Oct 15, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the dying art of handwriting with the novelist Philip Hensher. As the typewriter has taken over from the pen, so email is killing off letter-writing, and Diana Athill celebrates the art of correspondence. But the poet Wendy Cope, who has just left thousands of emails to the British Library, welcomes the advent of digital communication, and the philosopher Nigel Warburton tweets, blogs and podcasts. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Oct 08, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses Central Europe from the Soviet occupation to membership of the EU. Anne Applebaum looks back at what happened when the Iron Curtain came down after WWII. Victor Sebestyen and Helen Szamuely disagree over the benefits of European integration after 1989. And Mark Mazower explores the chequered history of international government, and the vision of harmony at the heart of the European project. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Oct 01, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr celebrates myth and fairy tales. With the coming 200th anniversary of the first edition of the Grimm Brothers' Tales, Philip Pullman presents new versions of his favourite stories, from the classic quests and romance to the lesser-known tales of villainous kings and wicked wives. Sara Maitland explores the idea that these fairy tales are intimately connected to forests. The theatre director, Tim Supple looks east to the tales of life and death in One Thousand and On...
Sep 20, 2012•42 min
In a special edition of Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Salman Rushdie. For a decade the writer was forced to live under police protection after being 'sentenced to death' by the Ayatollah Khomeini following the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. He talks about living in hiding, under an alias, Joseph Anton, and how he gradually secured his freedom. Rushdie argues that we are 'story-telling animals', but more than twenty years since his controversial book was banned around the wor...
Sep 17, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Maajid Nawaz about his journey from Islamist extremist to a champion of democracy. Growing up in Britain in the 1980s Nawaz found his sense of identity in political Islam. National identity and the state of the nation is at the heart of Robert Chesshyre's book in which he argues that the roots of many of today's problems, especially the increase in inequality, were planted under Margaret Thatcher's leadership. But one of the new intake of Conservative MPs, ...
Jul 02, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr goes in search of a better life. The psychoanalyst Adam Phillips praises the life unlived: the people we have failed to be, and explores how far frustration is interlinked with satisfaction. While the philosopher Julian Baggini argues that Aristotle has more to tell us about how to live than Freud. The writer Helen Dunmore slips between past and present, and in her latest collection of poems stories of loss intermingle with rediscovery. And the scientist Frances Ash...
Jun 25, 2012•41 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr asks how far scientific evidence can influence the political agenda. Professor David Nutt is a respected researcher working in the field of drugs, but is best known as the government advisor who was sacked by the Home Secretary for comparing the risks of horse-riding with taking ecstasy. He argues for a rational debate on drugs policy based on objective evidence. Mark Henderson despairs that this will never happen while only one of our 650 MPs is a scientist. But th...
Jun 18, 2012•42 min
On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses how World War II still grips the public imagination. No other period in history has presented greater dilemmas for both leaders and ordinary people, and in two sweeping accounts Max Hastings and Antony Beevor discuss the power politics at play, ideological hypocrisy, egomania, betrayal and self-sacrifice. Juliet Gardiner discusses how military history has been largely replaced by social history, as the lives of those who lived through war and its aftermath...
Jun 11, 2012•42 min
In a specially recorded edition of Start the Week Andrew Marr is at the Charleston Festival with Grayson Perry, Virginia Nicholson, Faramerz Dabhoiwala and Janice Galloway. As the home of Vanessa Bell, Virginia Nicholson's grandmother, Charleston was a by-word for sexual freedom and the Bohemian lifestyle. But Dabhoiwala insists that far from the 1920s being the time of real sexual revolution, that honour goes to the 18th century, the origin of our modern attitudes to sex. Janice Galloway brings...
Jun 04, 2012•42 min
