Start the Week Folgen

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.

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 economist Martin Wolf assess the rise of the technocrat in Europe. Producer: Katy Hickman.

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 Labour, into drama and documentaries for television. In 1939 the Whitechapel gallery in London was the space chosen to show Picasso's overtly political work, Guernica. The gallery's present director Iwona Blazwick talks about how artists have reflected the political and present day concerns. And the singer/ songwriter Sarah Gillespie argues that the key to a good protest song is to harness the experience of the individual. producer: Katy Hickman.