Author: BBC Radio 4

Antony Gormley talks to Tom Sutcliffe about his forthcoming major show at the Royal Academy. The sculptor returns to his enduring interest in the inner dark space of the body and the body’s relation to its surroundings. As well as the famous casts of this own figure, seawater and clay fill one gallery, evoking the depths from which life emerged.

The award-winning playwright Laura Wade discusses her revolutionary adaptation of Jane Austen. Her new play, The Watsons, is based on Austen’s unfinished novel, and shows what happens when characters threaten to break free from the original work and take control of the drama.

The conductor Charles Hazlewood celebrates the rebellious side of classical music – minimalism. Minimalists in the 20th century, like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, flouted conventions and sought to redraw musical boundaries. But the music was also a direct response to the political and social fervour of the 1960s and 70s.

One of the most creative and hedonistic periods of British culture was the nineties: the era of Cool Britannia, born in Thatcher’s Britain and flaunted by Tony Blair. The writer Daniel Rachel looks back at how art, comedy, fashion, film, football and music came together in a flowering of national self-confidence, and what broke it apart.

Producers: Katy Hickman and Hannah Sander

Andrew Marr discusses how far nations have managed to confront the past. In Learning from the Germans, the philosopher Susan Neiman contrasts the way in which Germany continues to come to terms with its Nazi past, with the failure of the US to deal with slavery and the legacy of racial violence.

The historian Stuart James Ward is interested in how far the ghosts of Empire have haunted the debate around Brexit. From the simplistic caricature of hankering after the past to a global vision of the future, both sides have summoned their own image of Empire. As an Australian academic who has spent his career in Denmark, Ward believes he is in a unique position to observe the unfolding political drama.

The former MP David Howell argues it’s time to look ahead and not back in his new book, subtitled ‘Escaping the Prism of Past Politics’. Howell has been at the centre of government for four decades and was a member of Margaret Thatcher’s first cabinet. He believes Britain should be forging new relations and finding a new position in the world.

The political scientist Jane Green looks beyond the present impasse in the Commons over the direction of Brexit to focus on public volatility in voting. Not since 1931 has there been such a fracturing of voter loyalty, but Green asks how much we can learn from the past.

Producer: Katy Hickman