Start the Week

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...

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 enduri...

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...

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...

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 ti...

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 biograph...

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 choco...

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 con...

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 phil...

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 Faul...

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. Philosoph...

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 th...

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...