Month: October 2011

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Start the Week - Afghanistan and the British Secret Service with Rory Stewart, Frank Ledwidge and Gordon Corera

In the run-up to the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, Andrew Marr discusses foreign intervention with the Conservative MP Rory Stewart and the former intelligence officer, Frank Ledwidge. Stewart looks back at the conflict to ask whether simple notions of winning foreign wars is counterproductive, while Ledwidge turns a critical eye on the army's lack of strategic thinking which he argues led to catastrophic failures in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera discusses the role of the British secret service, from the Cold War days of spies lurking in the shadows, to the disaster of the 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq. And Dr Rosemary Hollis, Professor of Middle East Policy Studies, considers the impact of recent revelations of complicity with Gaddafi's regime, and how 9/11 has skewed international relations. Producer: Katy Hickman.

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World Book Club - Lionel Shriver – We Need To Talk About Kevin

With the international release of the much anticipated film of We Need To Talk about Kevin in October, here's another chance to catch the World Book Club in which Harriett Gilbert and a studio audience talk to acclaimed American writer Lionel Shriver about this searing novel.

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005, We Need To Talk about Kevin is the profoundly disturbing story of a boy who, shortly before his 16th birthday, kills seven classmates in a high school massacre.

Grippingly but unreliably narrated through the letters of his mother Eva to his absent father Franklin, the novel raises questions about culpability, the limits of maternal love and the nature of evil itself.