Start The Week

Tom Sutcliffe talks to the academic Simon Morrison about the remarkable story of the Bolshoi ballet: a 250 year history that encompasses being the pride of Tsarist Russia to state control by Stalin to the scandal of acid attacks in the 21st century. Ismene Brown explores the different styles which set apart the Russian corps de ballet from its British counterpart. Art and politics are also at the forefront of Nigel Cliff's story of the Texan pianist Van Cliburn, who for a short time bridged the divide between the two superpowers during the Cold War, and the curator Edith Devaney explains how the CIA used Abstract Expressionism to promote the US. Producer: Katy HickmanPhoto: The Bolshoi Ballet perform for Prince Charles & the Duchess of Cornwall on a royal tour of Bahrain on 11th November, 2016 Credit: Chris Jackson/ Getty Images.

On Start the Week Kirsty Wark explores the history of protest. The Levellers were revolutionaries who brought 17th century England to the edge of radical republicanism. In his biography, John Rees argues the Levellers are central figures in the country's history of democracy. The original soldier-turned-saint and nationalist protester Joan of Arc takes centre stage in Josie Rourke's revival of Bernard Shaw's play, Saint Joan. The Labour MP, Rachel Reeves, finds inspiration in her fellow parliamentarian Alice Bacon, who she says helped usher in a new era of social justice post-war, while the political commentator James Frayne looks at the era post-Brexit and considers whether provincial England is now in revolt.Producer: Katy HickmanPhoto: Alice Bacon elected as the first female MP for Leeds, in 1945 Credit: The Yorkshire Post.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks at what happens during a health epidemic and its aftermath. The US activist Peter Staley was instrumental in forcing scientists and pharmaceutical companies to develop life-saving HIV/AIDs drugs. Thirty years later and with drugs now readily available, the concern is that the rate of new cases of HIV remains constant. Professor Anne Johnson was involved in the biggest-ever-official investigation of Britain's sexual habits, which was vetoed at the time by Margaret Thatcher. She says continuing to understand people's attitudes and behaviour is vital to the nation's health. More than eleven thousand people died during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. When the crisis hit its peak in 2014 there were no effective drugs and Professor Peter Horby was one of a team of scientists who conducted a drugs trial in the midst of the epidemic. He explains how what they discovered can be used for future health scares. The author Louise Welsh is completing a trilogy of novels in which a k

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back to the end of Empire when government officials systematically destroyed the records of imperial rule, and he explores the impact of outside organisations on a nation's ability to govern. The journalist Ian Cobain has uncovered details of the mass bonfires of sensitive official papers across Africa, which subverted the legal obligation to preserve important historical records. Edna Adan Ismail first came to Britain in the 1950s to train as a nurse before championing women's rights and health at the WHO and in her native Somaliland. She explains how the self-declared independent state of Somaliland, once a British protectorate, has been fighting for international recognition for the last 15 years. Baroness Amos has worked in international affairs both for the government and the UN. Now as the head of SOAS University she says it's vital to think about the world differently, from the perspective of the countries themselves. Keith Somerville has investigated the illegal ivo

On Start the Week Amol Rajan considers the making of the British landscape and an island mentality. The President of the Royal Geographical Society Nicholas Crane looks back over the last 12 millennia to understand how we have shaped our habitat but also how the landscape has shaped our lives. Madeleine Bunting travels through the Hebrides to see what the furthest reaches of these isles can tell us about the country as a whole. David Olusoga re-tells the story of the relationship between Britain and the people of Africa, which reaches back to the Romans, to demonstrate how black history has shaped our world, and the poet Imtiaz Dharker reflects on displacement and belonging. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr hears stories of virtue and vice. Lucy Bailey is directing Milton's Comus, a masque in honour of chastity, in which a Lady, lost in the woods, is tempted by pleasure. In Berg's opera Lulu the eponymous heroine appears to be the epitome of seductive pleasure, an amoral seductress, but William Kentridge's production questions how much she is the real victim. The academic Simon Goldhill charts the transition from the high Victorian period into modernity through one family's relationship with sex, psychoanalysis and religion, while the very modern preoccupation with therapy is laid bare, as Susie Orbach reveals what happens behind the therapist's door.Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the writer Alan Bennett about his life and work. As he publishes his third and, he says, final selection of his diaries, Keeping On Keeping On, Bennett reflects on his reputation for tweeness, his radical politics and sexuality. He writes, "Nothing is ever quite so bad that one can't write it down or so shameful either, though this took me a long time to learn with my earliest diaries reticent and even prudish." Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at winners and losers - from microbes and genes, to athletes and adventurers. Ed Yong seeks to expand our understanding of microscopic microbes which inhabit every corner of the earth, and influence our bodies more than we know. Each person's DNA is unique but Adam Rutherford reveals how collectively it tells the story of the history of our species - the successes and the failures. When one's own genetic make-up and hard work aren't enough, there's always chemical enhancement - Jonathan Maitland looks at doping in sport for his latest play, Deny, Deny, Deny. The polar scientist Felicity Aston was the world's first woman to ski alone across the Antarctic and knows what it's like to push your body to the limits. She's now off to Canada's frozen North in search of gold. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the former Chief of the General Staff Richard Dannatt about the history of the British Army, its role in present conflicts and relations with NATO. The writer Ben Macintyre reveals the wartime antics of one of the most secret regiments, the SAS and the historian Catherine Merridale recreates Lenin's journey across Europe in the midst of the Great War. John Lough was NATO's first representative based in Moscow and explores the tensions on Russia's borders.Producer: Katy Hickman.

In a special edition of Start the Week Andrew Marr is at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool. He's joined by the writer Phil Redmond, historian John Belchem and journalists Gary Younge and Kajsa Norman to discuss historical myth-making, segregation and assimilation - from Liverpool's radical past, to the US and its obsession with guns and race, to the Transvaal and the survival tactics of the Afrikaner community. With the Labour party conference in full swing in Liverpool Andrew Marr will also be discussing how far people will go to retain their cultural identity and what happens when splits appear. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the MP Margaret Hodge who challenged multinational companies to explain their tax affairs and shone a light on the billions wasted by government every year. The former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee argues that it's time Ministers and Civil Servants learnt from their mistakes. Sir John Armitt masterminded the successful delivery of the 2012 London Olympics and explains why big projects are notorious for budget overspends. MPs will have to decide soon on a multi-billion pound proposal to renovate the Palace of Westminster which would involve them moving out for several years: the political journalist Philip Webster reflects on working in the House of Commons for four decades and how the building influences the business of politics. The best-selling novels of Robert Harris reveal the machinations behind the closed doors of those in power, or seeking it - from Ancient Rome to New Labour. His latest book centres on the intrigue in the corridors of the world's smalles

On Start the Week Andrew discusses love, loss and scandal. Carrie Cracknell is directing Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, the story of an overpowering, self-destructive love affair set in post-war Britain. Michel Faber's collection of poetry explores the loss and grief at the death of his beloved wife, Eva. AE Housman wrote a series of poems at the end of the 19th century - A Shropshire Lad - which were hugely popular and came to encapsulate the nostalgia for an unspoilt pastoral idyll, but the writer Peter Parker says they're also shot through with unfulfilled longing for a young man. Homosexuality only became legal in the late 1960s and John Preston retells the story of the MP Jeremy Thorpe - a tale of sex, lies, murder and scandal at the heart of the establishment. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores food and politics. Churchill charged Lord Woolton with the daunting task of feeding Britain during WW2. The food writer William Sitwell looks at the black markets and shop raids Woolton had to battle as the country teetered on the edge of anarchy. Economist Jane Harrigan argues that it was rising food prices that sowed the seeds for the Arab Spring Uprisings, and food historian Bee Wilson asks what governments can do now to control what we eat.Producer: Hannah Sander.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe asks if one day we might know everything. The mathematician Marcus du Sautoy and the physicist Roger Penrose explore the far reaches of knowledge, questioning whether certain fields of research will always lie beyond human comprehension. They ask how much fashion and faith shape scientific theories. The experimental physicist Suzie Sheehy attempts to build machines to test the latest theories, while Joanna Kavenna plays with a philosophical Theory of Everything in her latest novel A Field Guide to Reality. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores the state of the arts. The English National Opera has lost £5 million of funding and its chorus recently went on strike, but the newly appointed Artistic Director Daniel Kramer, hopes to turn it around. He's directing a new production of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and the philosopher Roger Scruton celebrates the mastery of Wagner to express truths about the human condition. The biographer Franny Moyle looks at the life and career of Britain's most famous landscape painter, JMW Turner. Born as the Royal Academy was founded and British art was deemed inferior to its Continental counterpart, his work pushed the boundaries of what was accepted as art at the time. Julia Peyton-Jones looks back at a quarter of a century at the Serpentine Gallery in London, and makes a case for London as the centre of the art world. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr traces the quest to decipher the human genome. The idea of a 'unit of heredity' first emerged at the end of the 19th century: cancer physician Siddhartha Mukherjee recounts the history of the gene and the latest research into genetic heredity and mutation. Giles Yeo looks at what genes can tell us about body weight, while Aarathi Prasad explores how India practises medicine - from cutting-edge science to traditional healing. The historian Emily Mayhew traces the medical breakthroughs that have emerged from the battlefield, from World War I to the conflict in Afghanistan. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Start the Week is at Hay Literary Festival this week discussing war and intelligence. Michael Hayden is a former Air Force four-star general who became director of the US National Security Agency and then the CIA. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about the decisions made during America's war on terror: from rendition and interrogation to widespread surveillance. Harry Parker was in his twenties when he signed up to join the British Army - he uses the paraphernalia and weaponry of war to tell the story of conflict; while the journalist Janine di Giovanni reports on ordinary people caught up in the fighting in Syria. The human rights lawyer Philippe Sands looks back at his own family's history to make sense of crimes against humanity. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the artist Cornelia Parker about the secrets revealed in found objects. Parker's latest exhibition at the Foundling Museum is inspired by the 18th Century tokens left with babies by their mothers. Simon Armitage finds a new way of telling the medieval poem Pearl, an allegorical story of grief and lost love. Archaeologist Cyprian Broodbank explains how Must Farm, the first landscape-scale investigation of deep Fenland, is transforming our understanding of Bronze Age life, while British Museum curator Aurelia Masson-Berghoff celebrates the finding of two lost Egyptian cities submerged at the mouth of the Nile for over a thousand years. Producer: Katy Hickman.

World on the Move: on Start the Week Andrew Marr explores how the mass movement of people has changed societies, in a special edition broadcast in front of an audience as part of a day of programmes on BBC Radio 4. The historian Sir Hew Strachan looks back at the largest single influx of people into Britain when 250,000 Belgians arrived during the Great War, while Frank Dikötter explores the biggest forced internal migration as tens of millions of young Chinese were sent to work in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. The poet Patience Agbabi humanises the mass movement of people with her tale of one refugee's story. And what of those who return? The Bangladeshi author Tahmima Anam looks at what happens when you try to go back home. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores the use of technology in education. Professor Sugata Mitra has installed an internet-connected PC in a slum in India and watched how curiosity leads children to learn together. Digital technology is increasingly used in schools but the educationalist Neil Selwyn questions whether this is a positive step. The writer Lynsey Hanley looks at how class is embedded in the education system and the former Headmaster at Eton, Tony Little, on his vision for the future of schooling. Producer: Katy Hickman.