Author: BBC Radio 4

On Start the Week the classicist Mary Beard tells Tom Sutcliffe that Ancient Rome matters: its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty. The Magna Carta is the starting point for the playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker's latest play which draws parallels between the King's abuse of power in 1215 and the global business elite today. The film director Stephen Frears tells the story of the meteoric rise and fall of one of the most celebrated and controversial sportsmen in recent history, Lance Armstrong, and of the journalist who was vilified when he tried to expose him. Lurid headlines take centre stage in the play Clarion, directed by Mehmet Ergen, which takes a satirical look at nationalism and the state of the British media. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to historian Niall Ferguson about his biography of Henry Kissinger. Reviled and revered in equal measure Kissinger was the statesman at the heart of American foreign policy for decades, and Ferguson argues that far from being a Machiavellian realist he was driven by idealism. Jane Smiley's trilogy of novels chart a hundred years of American life through the lives of one family. She shows clearly how the big political and social upheavals of the time were reflected in the day-to-day. The personal and political come together in the extraordinary diaries of Ivan Maisky, the Russian ambassador to London before WWII. Gabriel Gorodetsky has compiled the diaries which document Britain's drift to war during the 1930s. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the American writer Jonathan Franzen about his latest novel, Purity. One of Franzen's characters compares the internet with the East German Republic and he satirises the utopian ideas of the apparatchik web-users. The head of the Oxford Internet Institute Helen Margetts counters with her research on the success and failure of political action via social media. The artist Tacita Dean laments the ubiquity of digital at the expense of film, and the financial journalist Gillian Tett roots out tunnel vision - both personal and business - in her new book on silos. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Mary Ann Sieghart explores how far leaders and governments have shaped our world. Matt Ridley dismisses the assumption that history has been made by those on high, whether in government, business or religion, and argues for a system of evolution in which ideas and events develop from the bottom up. The historian Tom Holland revels in the antics of the house of Caesar, from Augustus to Nero, and how this imperial family greatly influenced the ancient world. Barry Cunliffe tells the story of the beginnings of civilisation across Europe and the Far East over the course of ten millennia while the curator Julia Farley concentrates on one of those groups - the Celts - and celebrates their distinctive stylised art in a new exhibition at the British Museum. Producer: Katy Hickman.