Music and Culture of WW1

Professor Roy Foster, the journalist and author Nick Cohen, Baroness Shirley Williams, Duncan Brack of the Liberal Democrat Party History Group and the author Bea Campbell join Philip Dodd to discuss a Landmark book which explores the collapse of Liberal values in Britain. And does 'The Strange Death of Liberal England' written by George Dangerfield in 1934 have a message for political debate and the wider culture now?

The BBC's Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, finds a revealing connection between the St. Petersburg of 1914 and its counterpart of today.

Tom Service uncovers a world of startling sounds and heightened feeling in Alexander Scriabin’s final composition, the Five Preludes Op.74. Written in 1914 in St Petersburg, months before Scriabin died, here is music riddled with the ambiguities of the time.

Jonathan Pryce reads a fictional postcard set in the St. Petersburg Conservatoire just before The Great War broke out, looking at the music of the time, particularly Prokofiev. Written by David Nice

Margaret Drabble and William Boyd take part in a Landmark discussion about Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities.

Novelist AS Byatt, the film expert Neil Brand and the cultural historians Alexandra Harris and Philipp Blom choose artworks form the period.

Stephen Evans, the BBC's Berlin Correspondent, reminds us that the German capital on the eve of war was the world's most innovative technological centre. Einstein was here, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1914. Mark Twain called Berlin the "German Chicago" because of its dizzying sense of modernity and progress.

Tom Service introduces Ferrucio Busoni’s Zwei Tanzstűcke Op.30a (Two Dance Studies), a piano work that captures the vibe of Berlin in early 1914. Tom also takes a glance at the frenetic music scene of the city of the time.

Jonathan Pryce reads a fictional postcard from Berlin charting the music landscape of the city. Written by Dr Mark Berry

Foreign Correspondent Hugh Schofield reimagines the French capital of Maurice Ravel, the Ballets Russes and Henri Matisse - but which politically suffered continuing angst over its neighbour across the Rhine: Germany.