Start the Week - 27/04/2009

Financial journalist Gillian Tett explains how she predicted the economic downtown from her background in social anthropology. Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe is published by Little, Brown. Historian Tristram Hunt believes that it is time to re-evaluate the writings of Friedrich Engels, 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down. He argues that the diversity of Engels's writing has perhaps more relevance today than his colleague Karl Marx. The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels is published by Allen Lane. Director of The Queen, Stephen Frears's latest film is Chéri. An adaptation of Colette's novel, it addresses the power of strong women and how to age with elegance. The Marshall Plan aimed to rebuild Europe after WWII, which was partly achieved through educational films. Sandra Schulberg has rediscovered these films and suggests that they tell us much about that time and now. Banned in the USA! Re-discovering the Lost Films of the Marshall Plan, 1948-1953 is at the Barbican, organised by Sandra Schulberg and curated with Ed Carter of the Academy Film Archive.