Anne McElvoy talks to the historian Geoffrey Parker about Global Crisis, his influential game-changing account of the political and social upheavals which characterised the Seventeenth Century around the world. As Tate Modern opens an exhibition Conflict Time and Photography, former New Generation Thinker Dr Zoe Norridge from Kings' College London discusses images of war with Austrian photographer Alex Schlacher. And Agata Pyzik and Michael Goddard discuss Krzysztof Kieslowski an auteur director more interested in the general human condition than politics per se.