This year is Beethoven's 250th anniversary, and Sir Antonio Pappano is marking the occasion with a new production of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. He tells Andrew Marr how this work combined the composer's keen interest in politics with his bold new symphonic style. But Beethoven was never happy with the finished opera, and redrafted it many times. Pappano also tells Andrew about the enormous - and inescapable - influence Beethoven had on later generations. Rembrandt was another artist who ha...
Feb 03, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The artist Grayson Perry turns to his formative years in a new exhibition of early works, The Pre-Therapy Years. He tells Amol Rajan about the ideas and influences that helped lay the foundations for his work, and about the emergence of his own identity as ‘the Transvestite Potter’. Hashi Mohamed has a very different story of success: he is now a barrister but arrived in Britain aged nine as a child refugee from Somalia. He warns that his own path is denied to the majority of people in Britain. ...
Jan 27, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate in the mid-seventeenth century lasted a mere six years and was England’s sole experiment in republican government. The historian Paul Lay tells Andrew Marr how Cromwell forged both his foreign and domestic policy according to God’s will - including waging wars in the Americas. Protestant separatists are at the heart of Stephen Tomkins's recreation of the journey of the Mayflower, three decades before Cromwell’s rule. Escaping religious persecution, the Pilgrim Fath...
Jan 20, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The economist Daniel Susskind tells Tom Sutcliffe that the threat of technological unemployment is real and imminent. In A World Without Work he considers the economic, political and social impact. He questions what happens to those for whom work affords meaning, purpose and direction. Journalist Anoosh Chakelian went behind the scenes at new magazines set up to rival the Big Issue, as she explored Britain's homelessness crisis. Like the Big Issue, these new journals enable rough sleepers to ear...
Jan 13, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrew Marr discusses the state of housing in Britain and what makes a house a home. Common wisdom states that owning a house makes you a Tory, but is this true? Political scientist Ben Ansell says that Thatcher was right to assume that Right to Buy would create more Conservative voters. But today we see the opposite: the people whose houses have risen most in value are also the most likely to support Labour. Ansell looks back at the 1909 British Liberal Party budget, when politicians tried to t...
Jan 06, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Westminster Abbey has been a place of worship for more than a thousand years, and holds a unique place in British – and world – history. In a special edition of Start the Week, recorded in the Abbey, the historian David Cannadine tells Andrew Marr how the building has been at the centre of religious and political revolutions and has maintained a special relationship with the monarchy and the royal court since the Tudor times. It was Henry VIII who converted the abbey into a cathedral, turning th...
Dec 23, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The mathematician Hannah Fry reveals the hidden numbers, rules and patterns that secretly control our daily lives, in this year’s Royal Institution Christmas lectures. She tells Kirsty Wark how maths and algorithms have the power to reveal the truth - and to obscure it. The economist Tim Harford is in search of the truth as he unravels the events that led to real life disasters. In the podcast series Cautionary Tales, Harford asks what we can learn from catastrophes. He wonders why we are so oft...
Dec 16, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Flooding remains a risk in many parts of the country this winter. Andrew Marr explores the impact of water on communities. The engineer David Lerner argues for the extension of the policy of daylighting – opening up rivers covered over by the Victorians. He says Britain’s towns and cities have a lot to learn from Zurich, which was an early pioneer in recovering streams from underground. The social and environmental benefits in Zurich are evident. Torrential rain in November forced many people ac...
Dec 09, 2019•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Corporate rapacity and government collusion are at the centre of William Dalrymple’s history of the East India Company. He tells Amol Rajan how the company moved relentlessly from trade to conquest of India in the 18th century. But Dalrymple warns against the distortion of history both by those in Britain nostalgic for an imperial past, and Hindu nationalists in India. 2019 marked the centenary of the Amritsar massacre in which more than a thousand Indians were killed by British soldiers. Althou...
Dec 02, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Classicist Bettany Hughes has traced the history of the goddess known as Venus or Aphrodite. Originally depicted with a phallus on her head, Venus was later drawn and sculpted as a beautiful naked woman. Hughes tells Andrew Marr why this powerful deity of love was thought to corrupt and to inspire. Tenor Mark Padmore depicts the irrationality of desire in Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice. He plays the lead role in the Royal Opera House's new production, based on Thomas Mann's novella, in which...
Nov 25, 2019•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nothing is certain in this world except death and taxes. If this is true, then the comedian-cum-finance writer Dominic Frisby says it’s time we better understand the latter! He tells Tom Sutcliffe how taxes have shaped our past, are upsetting our present and could be the answer to changing our future. The economist Vicky Pryce also wants to change the future, by reforming capitalism so that it stops failing women. She interrogates the pay gap and glass ceiling. But she also argues that the free ...
Nov 18, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast How cultured are animals? It’s a question the marine biologist Karsten Brensing explores as he studies dolphins calling one another by name, ducklings scoring well in abstract reasoning, and the loyalty, forgiveness and empathy that are becoming apparent in the animal kingdom. He tells Andrew Marr that the latest scientific findings reveal animals with behaviour and cognitive sophistication very similar to our own. The intricate lives of animals and birds plus their spectacular habitats are on t...
Nov 11, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Esther Duflo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics this autumn for her work in the developing world. In her latest book, Good Economics for Hard Times, the French economist turns her attention to the thorniest issues of our time, from global immigration to climate change. She tells Tom Sutcliffe how the lessons from the world's poorest countries can be applied to Western economies, and why we should be wary of complacency. One of the worst economic crises imaginable struck Weimar Germany in ...
Nov 04, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast “The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have.” So said the celebrated artist Lucian Freud. His biographer William Feaver tells Andrew Marr how Freud’s work revealed not only something about the subject of the painting, but also what the artist was feeling. The two are combined in a new exhibition of Freud’s self-portraits in which the painter turns his unflinching eye on himself. In 2006 the artist Humphrey Ocean started making a series of portraits of v...
Oct 28, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hospitality and hostility come from a common root, according to the writer Priya Basil. In her latest book, Be My Guest, she explores the diverse meaning of the Indo-European word ‘ghos-ti’ which combines host, guest and stranger. She tells Kirsty Wark how breaking bread together is a way of breaking down barriers. Shamil Thakrar is the co-founder of the award-winning restaurant chain, Dishoom. He traces the roots of the restaurant’s success, looking back to the sights, sounds and tastes of the ...
Oct 21, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The writer Fatima Bhutto celebrates the new global popular culture emerging from the East. She tells Andrew Marr that the West’s soft power dominance is on the wane as K-Pop, Dizi and Bollywood take the world by storm. The Korean artist Nam June Paik was among the first to foresee the importance of mass media and new technologies, coining the phrase ‘electronic superhighway’. Sook-Kyung Lee is co-curating a global tour of his work, starting at Tate Modern. A new play, Museum in Baghdad, brings t...
Oct 14, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lenny Henry was 16 when he first appeared on television making people laugh in the 1970s. He tells Kirsty Wark about coming of age in the spotlight at a time of casual chauvinism and blatant racism, all while under his Jamaican mother’s strict instruction to integrate. The novelist Tessa McWatt knows only too well the complexity of fitting in. Born in Guyana, raised in Canada and working in Britain, McWatt explores themes of the outsider in society and conflicting ideas of belonging. The writer ...
Oct 07, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Against a backdrop of fierce political battles in Parliament and in court, Andrew Marr explores political power and examines those who wield it - from absolutism to anarchism. The political commentator Steve Richards has been in the House of Commons for many nights of political strife. Watching the behaviour of parliament and government today, he considers how different British Prime Ministers have used their many powers. In his new book 'The Prime Ministers' he reflects on the individual charac...
Sep 30, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Antony Gormley talks to Tom Sutcliffe about his forthcoming major show at the Royal Academy. The sculptor returns to his enduring interest in the inner dark space of the body and the body’s relation to its surroundings. As well as the famous casts of this own figure, seawater and clay fill one gallery, evoking the depths from which life emerged. The award-winning playwright Laura Wade discusses her revolutionary adaptation of Jane Austen. Her new play, The Watsons, is based on Austen’s unfinishe...
Sep 23, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrew Marr discusses how far nations have managed to confront the past. In Learning from the Germans, the philosopher Susan Neiman contrasts the way in which Germany continues to come to terms with its Nazi past, with the failure of the US to deal with slavery and the legacy of racial violence. The historian Stuart James Ward is interested in how far the ghosts of Empire have haunted the debate around Brexit. From the simplistic caricature of hankering after the past to a global vision of the f...
Sep 16, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The playwright David Hare is adapting Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, an epic story of vanity and egotism. He tells Tom Sutcliffe his radical new working keeps the mountain of trolls but becomes a contemporary reflection of toxic masculinity in the age of the selfie. The writer Lucy Hughes-Hallett reincarnates ancient myths and folklore in her collection of short stories, Fabulous. Old tales from Orpheus to Mary Magdalen and Psyche, find new homes in the lives of a people-trafficking gangmaster and a well-be...
Jul 01, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rowan Williams celebrates The Book of Taliesin – legendary Welsh poems of enchantment and warfare. The former Archbishop of Canterbury tells Andrew Marr how the collection of poems speak of a lost world of folklore and mythology, and the figure of Taliesin is an elusive and exuberant creative poetic fiction. Martin Sixsmith tells the extraordinary story of the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin at the turn of the 20th century. Yesenin lived through the most turbulent times in Russian history, and durin...
Jun 24, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrew Marr discusses money, from central banks to personal finances. The historian John Guy looks back to the emergence of London as the financial centre of the world. His latest biography focuses on the life and world of Sir Thomas Gresham, Elizabeth I’s banker – a flawed and ambitious man who dabbled in blackmail, fraud and adultery and left his widow saddled with debt. Few of today’s central bankers could match Gresham’s tumultuous private life, but they do wield enormous power in the market...
Jun 17, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Diego Maradona was a footballer of unrivalled talent, but off the pitch his story is one of despair and betrayal. Chris King, the editor of a feature documentary on the player, tells Kirsty Wark that the film reveals the life of this flawed icon through his own words and personal archive. Hussein Kesvani also aims to tell a story that goes beyond the usual headlines, exploring the unexpected online worlds of British Muslims. He reveals a new generation of young media-savvy Muslims creating their...
Jun 10, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jared Diamond explores how countries survive national crises. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and polymath talks to Andrew Marr about the process seven countries went through at moments of huge upheaval – from Japan and Finland to Australia and Chile. Using the lessons learnt in overcoming personal trauma, Diamond charts the painful process of self-appraisal, selective change and flexibility needed to move forward. Britain is facing its own national crisis, with the public and political partie...
Jun 03, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a special edition recorded live at the Hay Festival, Tom Sutcliffe discusses the impact of human ingenuity. From the myth of Frankenstein to geoengineering, he explores how normality and deviancy became entrenched in society. In her latest novel, the award-winning writer Jeanette Winterson moves between 1816, when the young Mary Shelley wrote the great Gothic novel of scientific hubris, Frankenstein, and the present day, exploring the far-reaching consequences of the AI revolution. John Brown...
May 27, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr Joshua Mezrich is a leading transplant surgeon. He tells Andrew Marr how death and life are intimately connected in his field of expertise. And he explains the extraordinary breakthroughs that have emerged in transplant surgery, along with the ethical questions that arise when choosing who will be given the chance of a new beginning. Scientific research needs to be evidence-based. But it can too easily be based on underlying assumptions and biases. The science writer Angela Saini reports on t...
May 20, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kerry Hudson grew up in all-encompassing and grinding poverty. She is now an acclaimed author, but tells Tom Sutcliffe why she returned home to explore the impact and trap of being lowborn. Howard Brenton’s latest play is loosely inspired by Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and features a clever, ambitious young woman fighting for an opportunity, yet held back by her background. Will Tanner, director of the think tank Onward, looks at what social mobility - or a lack of it - means in the politica...
May 13, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chaucer is renowned as the father of English literature. But in a new biography Marion Turner argues he is a far more cosmopolitan writer and thinker than we might assume. She tells Andrew Marr how the 14th-century author of The Canterbury Tales moved from the commercial wharves of London to the chapels of Florence, and from a spell as a prisoner of war in France to the role of diplomat in Milan. The academic Emma Smith challenges audiences to look with fresh eyes at the plays of Shakespeare. In...
May 06, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 'Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced', wrote the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. His new biographer, Clare Carlisle, explores the life experiences that moulded Kierkegaard's ideas as he struggled to understand how to be a human being in this world. She tells Amol Rajan that Kierkegaard was very much a philosopher of the heart. DeRay Mckesson’s reality became one of struggle and action after he quit his job as a school teacher and became a key figure in the Black Li...
Apr 29, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
