Start the Week Folgen

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores the question of citizenship. While immigration issues dominate political debate, little attention is paid to the big increase in the number of people becoming British. The academic Thom Brooks and the Eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan look at the relationship between the two and the challenges for modern UK citizenship. Ben Rawlence spent four years reporting the stories of those who are stateless, living in the largest refugee camp in the world, while Frances Stonor Saunders explores the increasing complexity of today's border regimes and the obsession with the verified self. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany about his latest novel which charts the country's social upheaval through the prism of Cairo's elite Automobile Club of Egypt. The foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson looks back at the Egyptian revolution as the crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in 2011. The political economist Tarek Osman explores how Islamism has spread through the Middle East, and what its future prospects mean for the region, while Professor Hugh Kennedy charts the rise of the Caliphate and how the so-called Islamic State uses the iconography of early Islam as propaganda.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at Russia from the heyday of the Soviet Empire to its transformation under Putin. The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore writes about the Romanovs, the most successful dynasty of modern times, while Amanda Vickery highlights a moment of defiance and triumph during WW2's siege of Leningrad. The journalist Arkady Ostrovsky charts the huge changes that have taken place, from Perestroika to corporate state. And David Aaronovitch explores the emotional pull of communism in Britain through the story of his family and their ties to The Party. Producer: Katy Hickman.