Start the Week Folgen

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 philosopher, humanist and former Professor of Geriatric Medicine Raymond Tallis, and the former Conservative MP John Gummer, now Lord Deben, who converted to Catholicism in 1994.Producer: Katy Hickman.

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 Faulks explores the history of the novel, and discusses the challenges in both historical and contemporary fiction.Producer: Katy Hickman.

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. Philosophy is under attack as advances in neuroscience question many of its assumptions, and yet Barry Smith argues that the science of the mind needs philosophers now more than ever, to make sense of its new discoveries. And Robert Douglas-Fairhurst celebrates the great Victorian journalist Henry Mayhew and his captivating portraits of life on the streets of London. Producer: Katy Hickman.