The Interview

What draws the novelist to such dark visions of femininity? Sarah Montague speaks to Leila Slimani, one of France’s most famous, and most controversial, authors. Her first book Adele, just published in English, shocked readers for breaking taboos about women and sex addiction. Infanticide is the subject of her second novel, Lullaby, which became a publishing sensation and has been translated into 40 languages.(Photo: Leila Slimani in the Hardtalk studio)

11 Feb 201924min

Ireland's former Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, negotiated the Belfast Agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland. Sarah Montague asks if Brexit is a threat to that peace.Image: Bertie Ahern (Credit: Getty Images)

8 Feb 201923min

Up until last month, Christian Zerpa was a Justice on Venezuela’s Supreme Court; now he is a high-profile defector from the Maduro regime. With two men claiming to be the country’s President and protestors on the streets, Stephen Sackur asks: is Venezuela's socialist revolution in its death throes?

6 Feb 201924min

Is Florida the state where the American dream turned sour? HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur talks to the writer Carl Hiaasen whose hugely popular newspaper columns and darkly comic novels cast a jaundiced eye on the Sunshine State where he was born and continues to live. His writing is fueled by anger - at rotten politics, crooked business and environmental vandalism.

4 Feb 201923min

Laura Boldrini is a centre-left Italian politician. Until last year she was the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, the Italian Parliament’s lower chamber. She has received many online threats wishing her dead or raped. Zeinab Badawi asks the Sicilian MP about her experiences, and what her current situation tells us about the state of politics in Italy and Europe’s changing mood.(Photo: Laura Boldrini. Credit: European Photopress Agency)

1 Feb 201923min

Shaun Ley talk to former spy chief Amrullah Saleh, now a candidate for vice-president in Afghanistan. Seventeen years on after the American-led invasion, the US and the Taliban are at last talking peace. With 45,000 Afghans who served their country dead in the last five years, and the Taliban still fighting, isn't it time for this war exhausted country to give peace a chance?(Photo: Amrullah Saleh (R) is embraced by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Credit: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

30 Jan 201923min

What drives an exclusive band of human beings to push beyond the boundaries of existing knowledge and experience? Hardtalk talks to Bertrand Piccard, the renowned explorer and aviator; the first to fly non-stop around the world in a hot air balloon. Right now, he’s using his own experience with solar powered aircraft to encourage sustainable tech innovation, but is decarbonising the global economy a challenge too far, even for this pioneer?(Photo: Bertrand Piccard. Credit: Remy Gabalda/AFP/Getty Images)

28 Jan 201923min

In little more than two months from now, Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union. That beguilingly simple statement is at the heart of a political crisis which deepens by the day. The ruling Conservative party is riven with splits; so too is the Labour opposition. If Parliament’s Brexit paralysis persists, then Britain will leave with no deal in place, no orderly transition, and the prospect of economic disruption. What will Labour do in this moment of political truth? HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur talks to the UK's Shadow Chancellor, Labour's John McDonnell.Image: John McDonnell (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

25 Jan 201923min