Start the Week Folgen

On Start the Week Kirsty Wark explores what it means to live either side of a wall, and whether barriers are built to repel or protect. Supporters of the US President urge him to 'build a great wall' along the Mexican border but the journalist Ed Vulliamy points out that there is already a wall and border guards, supported and funded by US Presidents for decades. And yet still drugs, guns, money and people continue to move north and south. Israel has been building its own separation barrier since the turn of the century, but Dorit Rabinyan is more interested in psychological barriers that drive Palestinians and Israelis apart. The map-maker Garrett Carr travels Ireland's border to explore the smugglers, kings, peacemakers and terrorists who've criss-crossed this frontier, and asks what it will become when the United Kingdom leaves the EU. The historian Tom Holland looks back at the successes and failures of wall-building from Offa's Dyke to Hadrian's Wall and asks whether they work more as statements of power than as insurmountable barriers between people. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the poet Elaine Feinstein about her work from over half a century of writing, from her early poems of feminist rebellion to reflections on middle age and marriage, to wry amusement on the fallibility of memory. The curator Rebecca Daniels looks back at the life and work of one of Australia's most celebrated modern painters, Sidney Nolan, and challenges the audience to look beyond his early depictions of the outback and the outlaw Ned Kelly, to see a world artist. The theatre director Trevor Nunn finds the comedy in pitting idealistic Hamlet-esque youth against a wealthy businessman in his production of Rattigan's Love in Idleness. The composer Ryan Wigglesworth has produced a new operatic interpretation of The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's study of love, loss and reconciliation. Producer: Katy HickmanIMAGE: A section of 'Myself' by Sidney Nolan, 1988.

On Start the Week, Tom Sutcliffe considers the relationship between play and creativity. Steven Johnson examines how the human appetite for amusement has driven innovation throughout history. Writer and theatre maker Stella Duffy has revived Joan Littlewood's 1960s concept of The Fun Palace- a 'laboratory of fun' for all. The economist Tim Harford advocates embracing disorder in every area of our lives, from messy desks to messy dating. Journalist and former cricketer Ed Smith believes that creativity in sport is a combination of skill and luck.Producer: Kirsty McQuire.