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.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr celebrates myth and fairy tales. With the coming 200th anniversary of the first edition of the Grimm Brothers' Tales, Philip Pullman presents new versions of his favourite stories, from the classic quests and romance to the lesser-known tales of villainous kings and wicked wives. Sara Maitland explores the idea that these fairy tales are intimately connected to forests. The theatre director, Tim Supple looks east to the tales of life and death in One Thousand and One Nights. And at the Royal Opera House, Keith Warner, presents his production of the vast, mythical world of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle. Producer: Katy Hickman.

In a special edition of Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Salman Rushdie. For a decade the writer was forced to live under police protection after being 'sentenced to death' by the Ayatollah Khomeini following the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. He talks about living in hiding, under an alias, Joseph Anton, and how he gradually secured his freedom. Rushdie argues that we are 'story-telling animals', but more than twenty years since his controversial book was banned around the world, Andrew Marr asks what impact this has had on the stories we tell.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Maajid Nawaz about his journey from Islamist extremist to a champion of democracy. Growing up in Britain in the 1980s Nawaz found his sense of identity in political Islam. National identity and the state of the nation is at the heart of Robert Chesshyre's book in which he argues that the roots of many of today's problems, especially the increase in inequality, were planted under Margaret Thatcher's leadership. But one of the new intake of Conservative MPs, dubbed the 'New Radicals', Elizabeth Truss, looks to an alternative future where "decline is not inevitable." And the former ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer, turns his attention to the rich and powerful across the world, to see how different power networks operate.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr goes in search of a better life. The psychoanalyst Adam Phillips praises the life unlived: the people we have failed to be, and explores how far frustration is interlinked with satisfaction. While the philosopher Julian Baggini argues that Aristotle has more to tell us about how to live than Freud. The writer Helen Dunmore slips between past and present, and in her latest collection of poems stories of loss intermingle with rediscovery. And the scientist Frances Ashcroft has transformed the lives of those born with diabetes, and discusses how her breakthrough gave meaning to her own life.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr asks how far scientific evidence can influence the political agenda. Professor David Nutt is a respected researcher working in the field of drugs, but is best known as the government advisor who was sacked by the Home Secretary for comparing the risks of horse-riding with taking ecstasy. He argues for a rational debate on drugs policy based on objective evidence. Mark Henderson despairs that this will never happen while only one of our 650 MPs is a scientist. But the former Labour minister, David Blunkett, defends his profession, arguing that even evidence-based policy must take into account public opinion and perception. And for former No. 10 advisor Jill Rutter evaluates the evidence for and against. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses how World War II still grips the public imagination. No other period in history has presented greater dilemmas for both leaders and ordinary people, and in two sweeping accounts Max Hastings and Antony Beevor discuss the power politics at play, ideological hypocrisy, egomania, betrayal and self-sacrifice. Juliet Gardiner discusses how military history has been largely replaced by social history, as the lives of those who lived through war and its aftermath take centre stage. And for this year's Reith Lectures, Niall Ferguson questions whether the Western world, in the aftermath of WW2 and the Cold War, has become so in thrall to its institutions of democracy and the rule of law that it can no longer find solutions to today's crises. Producer: Katy Hickman.

In a specially recorded edition of Start the Week Andrew Marr is at the Charleston Festival with Grayson Perry, Virginia Nicholson, Faramerz Dabhoiwala and Janice Galloway. As the home of Vanessa Bell, Virginia Nicholson's grandmother, Charleston was a by-word for sexual freedom and the Bohemian lifestyle. But Dabhoiwala insists that far from the 1920s being the time of real sexual revolution, that honour goes to the 18th century, the origin of our modern attitudes to sex. Janice Galloway brings the story up-to-date as she relives her adolescence in small town Scotland in the 1970s. And the celebrated potter Grayson Perry explores changing social attitudes in relation to taste: the choices people make in the things they buy and wear, and uses these details of modern life to create six tapestries, called 'The Vanity of Small Differences'. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr goes in search of ancient landscapes with the writer Robert Macfarlane. With a mix of geology, cartography and natural history, Macfarlane journeys on foot to explore ideas of pilgrimage, trespass and ancient pathways. Jonathan Meades is equally preoccupied with a sense of place, but turns his attention to its architecture and the futility of landmark buildings. Anna Minton argues against the increasing privatisation of public space. And size is no matter to the designer Thomas Heatherwick - from a new London double decker, to a bridge that curls up and a handbag made from zips - he always has the human scale in mind. Producer: Katy Hickman.