Author: BBC Radio 4

On Start the Week the journalist Ian Cobain reveals how torture has been systematically used by the British from WWII to the War on Terror, via Kenya and Northern Ireland. David Anderson QC reviews the risks posed by terrorism in the UK. Extraordinary rendition and the language of concealment form the heart of Clare Bayley's new play, and there are more secrets uncovered by the criminal barrister-turned-crime writer, MR Hall. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at the legacy of modernism. Kevin Jackson returns to 1922, the year he argues changed the literary world with publications of Joyce's Ulysses and TS Eliot's The Waste Land. And Ali Smith reveals how her writing today melds different forms to explore style, love, death and the art of writing. But Will Gompertz and the composer Julian Anderson argue that art and music respectively embraced modernism earlier and more profoundly than the world of literature. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to two American authors, Richard Ford and Lionel Shriver about the state of the US. In the run-up to the Presidential elections, the journalist Edward Luce argues that the country's politics are broken, and America is facing the spectre of decline. But the chair of Republicans Abroad UK, Thomas Grant, disputes such a negative assessment. Producer - Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the dying art of handwriting with the novelist Philip Hensher. As the typewriter has taken over from the pen, so email is killing off letter-writing, and Diana Athill celebrates the art of correspondence. But the poet Wendy Cope, who has just left thousands of emails to the British Library, welcomes the advent of digital communication, and the philosopher Nigel Warburton tweets, blogs and podcasts. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses Central Europe from the Soviet occupation to membership of the EU. Anne Applebaum looks back at what happened when the Iron Curtain came down after WWII. Victor Sebestyen and Helen Szamuely disagree over the benefits of European integration after 1989. And Mark Mazower explores the chequered history of international government, and the vision of harmony at the heart of the European project. Producer: Katy Hickman.