Shakespeare has always been central to the American experience, argues the leading scholar James Shapiro. He tells Tom Sutcliffe how Shakespeare has been invoked – and at times weaponised – at pivotal moments in the history of America, from Revolutionary times to today’s divisionary politics.

The film critic Mark Kermode celebrates another global phenomenon: cinematic superheroes. The genre stretches back more than eight decades and taps deeply into timeless themes and storytelling traditions. Kermode also shows how spy-heroes such as Bond have shaped our political identity.

For the poet Don Paterson, the classic television series The Twilight Zone was the starting point for his latest collection. Elements of horror, science fiction and fantasy provide a backdrop to his exploration of the mid-life crisis.

The political theorist Teresa Bejan returns to the world of Shakespeare to explore what appears to be the most modern of dilemmas: Twitter spats and put-downs. Seventeenth-century thinkers understood there were competing conceptions of civility. They thought that outlawing heated political disagreement could lead to silencing dissent.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Morality has been outsourced to the markets and the state, argues the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. He tells Andrew Marr that society has become deeply divided, and that today’s challenges will never be met until we remember the importance of personal morality and responsibility. But this does not mean self-care, self-love and selfies - instead Sacks says we should focus on communities and caring for others.

For a decade Mervyn King was the most influential banker in Britain as Head of the Bank of England. In 2008 he oversaw the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. In his new book, King looks back at his career, exploring the difference between risk and uncertainty. He suggests ways to make decisions for an unknowable future.

If you wanted a decision from David Cameron during his time as Prime Minister you would have had to go through ‘the gatekeeper’, Kate Fall. In her memoir of her time at the centre of political power, Fall recalls the highs and lows of working at No. 10, and explains what happens when power and politics starts to fall apart.

Producer: Hannah Sander

Hilary Mantel is the two-time winner of the Man Booker prize. In a special edition of Start the Week with Andrew Marr, she discusses the final book in her Cromwell trilogy. The Mirror and The Light shows 16th-century England beset by rebellion at home, traitors abroad and Henry VIII still desperate for a male heir. In the centre sits Thomas Cromwell, a man who came from nowhere and has climbed to the very heights of power. His vision is an England of the future, but it is the past and the present mood of the King that will prove his downfall.

Reader: Ben Miles

Leila Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. From stories of poverty, exploitation and sexual addiction she now turns her attention to sexual politics within a deeply conservative culture. She tells Amol Rajan why she wanted to give voice to young Moroccan women suffocating under the strictures of a society which allowed them only two roles: virgin or wife.

The writer Olivia Fane questions whether liberal society is really that liberating. In ‘Why Sex Doesn’t Matter’ she argues that women have been sold the idea of sexual freedom, but that this has curtailed the way people think about love and desire.

The journalist Sally Howard asks why, after forty years of feminism, women still do the majority of the housework. While straight British women are found to put in 12 more days of household chores than their male partners, in the US young men are now twice as likely as their fathers to think a woman’s place is in the home.

But it’s not just women who are constrained by the roles society presents to them. As a new photographic exhibition into Masculinity opens at the Barbican, the academic Chris Haywood, believes it’s important to highlight the importance of visual representations of men. He asks whether men have become stuck between ideas of ‘toxic’ and ‘fragile’ masculinity.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Dan Jackson celebrates the distinctiveness of north-east England. He tells Andrew Marr how centuries of border warfare and dangerous industry has forged a unique people in Northumberland. With recent changes in political allegiance in towns and countryside across the region, Jackson questions whether the area can reassert itself after decades of industrial decline, indifference from the south, and resurgence north of the border.

The economist Colin Mayer is looking at how to harness the power of patriotism and regional pride to revitalise areas like the North East. He sees a much greater role for the private sector in fostering community cohesion.

But patriotism can be a dangerous force in disputed and diverse areas. Kapka Kassabova travels to two of the world’s most ancient lakes set in the borderlands of North Macedonia, Albania and Greece. This ancient meeting place in the southern Balkans has its own unique history of people living in harmony, and then erupting into catastrophic violence.

We live in a world that is far more connected than at any other time in history, but is there still value to the notion that travelling broadens the mind? The philosopher Emily Thomas turns to Descartes and Montaigne for an understanding of how travelling away from home can help disrupt traditional customs and ways of thinking.

Producer: Katy Hickman

As the 75th anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden approaches, the historian Sinclair McKay looks back at the obliteration of a city and its aftermath. He tells Tom Sutcliffe about the terrible suffering of the 25,000 people who were killed in one night.

The artist Edmund de Waal is showcasing his latest work in Dresden. The installation ‘library of exile’ is a place of contemplation and dialogue, and celebrates the cultures of migration. De Waal also outlines the importance of Dresden as the centre of European porcelain.

In recent decades this former East German city has seen a huge increase in support for far-right groups. The journalist Stefanie Bolzen argues that there are many who feel their lives have not benefited either from the rebuilding of the city after the war or from the unification of Germany since.

Sasha Havlicek is the founding CEO of the global counter-extremism organisation, ISD, which studies the online tactics of far-right groups across Europe and the US. She has seen a rise in the support of anti-migrant political parties, as well as increases in hate speech and terror attacks against minority communities.

Producer: Katy Hickman

This year is Beethoven's 250th anniversary, and Sir Antonio Pappano is marking the occasion with a new production of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. He tells Andrew Marr how this work combined the composer's keen interest in politics with his bold new symphonic style. But Beethoven was never happy with the finished opera, and redrafted it many times. Pappano also tells Andrew about the enormous - and inescapable - influence Beethoven had on later generations.

Rembrandt was another artist who had an enormous influence on later generations. But a new exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford, curated by An Van Camp, shows the Dutch artist also redrafting and learning his craft. Young Rembrandt assembles drawings and paintings showing Rembrandt's astonishing rise, from unknown teenager to celebrity artist within a decade.

Dame Mary Beard looks at a more pervasive artistic influence in her new BBC Two series, The Shock of the Nude. Beard shows how artists from the classical era to the present day have decided what we think a body should look like and how we should respond to naked flesh. She explores what happens when the artistic traditions of the past confront the Me Too scandals and gender fluidity of the present.

Producer: Hannah Sander

The artist Grayson Perry turns to his formative years in a new exhibition of early works, The Pre-Therapy Years. He tells Amol Rajan about the ideas and influences that helped lay the foundations for his work, and about the emergence of his own identity as ‘the Transvestite Potter’.

Hashi Mohamed has a very different story of success: he is now a barrister but arrived in Britain aged nine as a child refugee from Somalia. He warns that his own path is denied to the majority of people in Britain. Social mobility is a myth, he says, with power and privilege concentrated among the privately educated population.

At just 26 Theresa Lola is already a prize-winning poet and Young People’s Laureate for London. Her first collection, In Search of Equilibrium, is an unflinching study of death and grieving. But she finds hope and solace in words, and believes in the power of poetry to bring about change.

Photograph: Grayson Perry as Claire (detail), 1988 © Matthew R Lewis

Producer: Katy Hickman

Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate in the mid-seventeenth century lasted a mere six years and was England’s sole experiment in republican government. The historian Paul Lay tells Andrew Marr how Cromwell forged both his foreign and domestic policy according to God’s will - including waging wars in the Americas.

Protestant separatists are at the heart of Stephen Tomkins's recreation of the journey of the Mayflower, three decades before Cromwell’s rule. Escaping religious persecution, the Pilgrim Fathers built their version of a brave new world in America.

In the 400 years since the sailing of the Mayflower the USA has become a world superpower. Lindsay Newman from Chatham House looks at President Trump’s foreign policy decisions, especially in relation to Iran, and examines the political ideology that drives them.

It is 70 years since the death of George Orwell. The academic Lisa Mullen explores the contemporary relevance of his writings on political and religious ideology, republicanism and the freedom to express heretical views.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The economist Daniel Susskind tells Tom Sutcliffe that the threat of technological unemployment is real and imminent. In A World Without Work he considers the economic, political and social impact. He questions what happens to those for whom work affords meaning, purpose and direction.

Journalist Anoosh Chakelian went behind the scenes at new magazines set up to rival the Big Issue, as she explored Britain's homelessness crisis. Like the Big Issue, these new journals enable rough sleepers to earn money rather than beg, and creates respectable employment opportunities. But Chakelian worries about a country with so many homeless people that it can create an industry around them.

The psychologist Suzi Gage looks at the science behind recreational drugs – debunking common myths and misconceptions. She also looks at how and why they work on the mind and body, and the associations between drug use and mental health.

A quarter of adults in England are taking potentially addictive prescription medicines, with half of them in long-term dependency, according to Public Health England. The epidemiologist Sir John Strang says there is greater dependency in areas of greatest deprivation. He also calls for greater action in stemming the rise in opioid-related deaths.

Producer: Katy Hickman