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.

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