On Start the Week Anne McElvoy discusses our obsession with violence. The historian Richard Bessel explores its past ubiquity, but argues that our modern attitudes towards it have changed. There's little change in the attitudes towards women in the armed forces, according to a play by the academic Helen Benedict. Diana Preston sees history repeating itself as weapons of mass destruction continue to be used in much the same way as a century ago. For June Oscar, an Indigenous leader from North Western Australia, the history of her people has been dominated by the violent struggle with settlers from the 1770s.