A Point of View

Roger Scruton concludes his series of talks on the nature and limits of democracy. "We in Europe are moving not towards democracy but away from it," he says."There is no first-person plural of which the European Institutions are the political expression," he argues. "The Union is founded in a treaty, and treaties derive their authority from the entities that sign them. Those entities are the nation states of Europe, from which the loyalties of the European people derive. The Union, which has set out to transcend those loyalties, therefore suffers from a permanent crisis of legitimacy.".

Roger Scruton continues his series of talks on the nature and limits of democracy. This week he argues that nations should be defined by language and territory rather than by party or faith. And, looking at examples across the Middle East and in particular in Egypt, he explains why - in his view - a modern state cannot be governed by Islamic law.Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Roger Scruton continues his series of talks on the nature and limits of democracy. Roger Scruton argues that democracy works only if we are prepared to be ruled by our opponents, however much we may dislike them. We need to accept politics as a process of compromise and conciliation. And for that, he says, the state must be secular.

Roger Scruton argues that democracy alone is not enough for political freedom. Democracy, freedom and human rights do not necessarily coincide."In the underground universities of communist Europe ... my friends and colleagues prepared themselves for the hoped for day when the Communist Party, having starved itself of all rational input, would finally give up the ghost," he says. "And the lessons that they learned need to be learned again today, as our politicians lead us forth under the banner of democracy, without pausing to examine what democracy actually requires.".

It's exactly 500 years this summer since Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his famous book 'The Prince', on how to gain and retain political power. Sarah Dunant takes us back to the hot Tuscan summer when Machiavelli put down his thoughts, including the view that in politics, virtue must be tempered by expediency.He based his thesis on what he'd witnessed during his career as a diplomat and adviser in Florence, and also on lessons learned from Ancient Greek and Roman historians.While fortune had smiled on him during the fourteen years he served the Florentine Republic, it stopped doing so when the Medicis were restored and he was imprisoned and tortured. Released into exile on his family's estate south of Florence, he started writing the book that became a foundation of political theory. In a further twist of fortune, his exile, far from being his ruin, made his name for posterity. He was never completely rehabilitated in Florence, but ended up writing one of the most provocative and influential political works of all time.Producer: Arlene Gregorius.

Sarah Dunant says Pope Francis should use his Twitter account to demonstrate that he's prepared to deal with the 'mess' inside the Catholic Church. Perhaps, she says, with this Tweet, he's already started: 'If we wish to follow Christ closely, we cannot choose an easy, quiet life'.

The recent New Yorker cover showing Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie as a gay couple, delighted by the American Supreme Court ruling that the Defence of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, prompts Sarah Dunant to reflect on the power of cartoons to convey social messages. "Those cartoon characters - or their puppet equivalents - which touch us at our most formative moments of early childhood will become part of the bedrock of our cultural belonging." Producer: Sheila Cook.

As Britain basks in post-Wimbledon glory, amid the Ashes, Sarah Dunant reflects on how sport has - throughout history - been used by the authorities to help populations let off steam.In Florence, in the late 1500s, townspeople played a form of football that allowed them to wrestle, punch and immobilize their opponents in any way they liked. Venice had a spectacularly violent sport of bridge-fighting where opposing teams "armed with sticks...dipped in boiling oil beat the hell out of each other".Civic sporting therapy - past and present - has for centuries, Sarah argues, "proved a creative alternative to our recurring tendency to kill each other".Producer: Adele Armstrong.

At a party to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the feminist press Virago last week, writes Sarah Dunant, the current head of the company told the story of how one night she asked one of Virago's founders why she had started the company. "To change the world of course" was the reply.Forty years on, Sarah, a Virago author herself, wonders just how much Virago has changed the world.She talks about how, a few weeks ago, as she waited for an hour in the studio of the Today Programme to be interviewed for a piece about female characters in fiction, she didn't hear a single women's voice.She tells how last month, the Australian writer and academic, Kathryn Heyman, got into a very public spat with The London Review of Books because of a dearth of women writers in its pages.And the ousting of Julia Gillard as Australia's Prime Minister last week is the most striking example that Virago's mission is not yet complete.But Sarah takes some comfort from the fact that Kevin Rudd, the new PM, has an unprecedented six new women in his cabinet.Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Isn't it time to democratize art? Shouldn't we, the public, be allowed to borrow works of art from our national collections? That way we could have an affair with art, rather than a one-night stand. Tom Shakespeare presents the last of his four essays.