Iraq War costs, Bush 43 v. Bush 41, Margaret Thatcher, Dorothy Wordsworth [audio 45min]

"Start the Week" sets the cultural agenda every Monday. Guests are drawn from the top movers and shakers in politics, history, science and the arts. This week's guests, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, writer and political commentator Jacob Weisberg, former Conservative Party MP Michael Portillo, and biographer Frances Wilson, discuss the costs of the Iraq War, Bush 43 v. Bush 41, Margaret Thatcher, and Dorothy Wordsworth. The White House originally estimated the Iraq war would cost $50 billion; however, in his new book, Stiglitz puts this figure at $3 trillion and counting. In The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, co-written with Linda Bilmes (Allen Lane [UK]; W. W. Norton [US]), he asks how the government could have underestimated the cost of the war so spectacularly and what price the US and the world is paying for this miscalculation. With nine months to go before a successor to George W Bush is elected, critics are already clamouring to provide an account of his dramatic time in office. In The Bush Tragedy: The Unmaking of a President (Bloomsbury [UK]; Random House [US]), Weisberg unpicks the presidency in terms of a psychological battle between father and son, asking how Bush 43 has defined himself in response to the failures and accomplishments of Bush 41. Self-confessed Thatcher protégé Portillo charts the rise and fall of his mentor Mrs Thatcher, and explores the long shadow she has cast over the Conservative Party. The successors she nominated fell one by one. Is David Cameron the first to break free of her legacy?"Portillo On Thatcher: The Lady's Not For Spurning" will be broadcast on BBC Four TV at 8.00pm GMT on Monday 25 February. William Wordsworth did not wander 'lonely as a cloud'; beside him, scribbling down his every word, was Dorothy, his beloved sister, collaborator and muse. In The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (Faber & Faber [UK]), Wilson charts the life of this often overlooked figure and asks what Dorothy's own writings reveal about her intense relationship with William.