Writer Charlotte Mullins and author Viv Groskop join Tom to discuss the Frida Kahlo exhibition at Tate Modern in London. It's the highest pre-selling exhibition in Tate's history, and contains 30 significant works, has her clothes on display, and looks at the artist's life and impact on contemporaries and later generations. They also offer their verdict on the Danish black comedy The Last Viking, which is the 6th film by director/actor trio Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Mads Mikkels...
Jun 25, 2026•42 min
25 years since she published her first Charlie and Lola book, former Children's Laureate Lauren Child returns with a new friendship-focused series featuring best-friends Lotta and Lola. She joins us to talk about her approach to writing for children and about the importance of reading together as a family. Refik Anadol, one of the creative team behind Dataland, a vast new museum dedicated to AI art which opened this weekend in Los Angeles, tells us about the multi-sensory experiences visitors wa...
Jun 24, 2026•42 min
Bill Nighy joins to talk about his new family drama 500 Miles, where he plays a reclusive painter on the west coast of Ireland who gets an unexpected visit from his two Sheffield-based grandsons. He also discusses his early days in acting, his famous role in Love Actually, and why he's become an agony uncle in a new podcast. Today, the Carnegie Medal for Writing was awarded to Beth O’Brien for her debut YA novel Wolf Siren, and Kate Rolfe won the Carnegie Medal for Illustration for her book Wigg...
Jun 24, 2026•43 min
Linda Perry came to fame as lead singer of the all-female band Four Non-Blondes. She went on to be a hugely successful songwriter and producer, writing hits for the likes of Pink and Christina Aguilera, and collaborating with Dolly Parton. She's now released her first solo album for 27 years - Let It Die Here - and a documentary film of the same name. Linda came to perform for Front Row and explain why she’d stepped back into the limelight. Mel Brooks is the filmmaker who gave us such comedies a...
Jun 22, 2026•42 min
Writer Stephanie Merritt and Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin join Tom to review Anish Kapoor’s immersive exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, which includes huge red sculptures, black holes and boundless mirrors that challenge perspectives. They also discuss The End Of Everything by M. John Harrison, a post-apocalyptic novel where the nature of the crisis remains unclear. And they review Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day – a film adaptation of her novel with a cast including Haley Benne...
Jun 18, 2026•43 min
Priya Parmar's novel The Original tells the story of how actor Katharine Hepburn set out to become one of the true movie icons of the 20th century and succeeded. She's joined to talk about Hepburn's life and career by film historian Pamela Hutchinson. As the Obama Presidential Center opens later this week in Chicago, we hear how its architecture is being viewed in the city, how it compares with other presidential libraries and what it might do for the people of Chicago. As the National Library o...
Jun 17, 2026•41 min
The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, is widely regarded as the man who helped the band break through. He's inspired plays, films, and even an artistic installation by the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller. He's now the subject of a new biography, Mr Moonlight, by Philip Norman. A Unesco-listed cathedral in Kyiv went up in flames on Sunday night after an intense Russian bombing attack. The Ukrainian government sees the attack on the historic Pechersk Lavra monastery complex as part of a s...
Jun 16, 2026•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe presents a special edition of Front Row on the art of David Hockney. The artists Maggi Hambling and Tacita Dean and Andrew Marr speak to Tom about Hockney's career and innovations. Tom also speaks to art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston and the art critic and author James Cahill, author of The Beverley Hills Housewife: Hockney’s Californian Muse and the World Beyond the Pool, published later this year. The programme also features excerpts from interviews with Hockney. Producer: Elia...
Jun 15, 2026•42 min
Film producer Jason Solomons and Guardian columnist Zoe Williams join Tom Sutcliffe to discuss Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day – a film which looks at whether aliens are really out there. John D. MacDonald’s psychological thriller The Executioners has inspired two Cape Fear films and now there’s a 10-part TV series starring Amy Adams and Javier Bardem. Jason and Zoe give their verdicts. They also talk about M. C. Escher’s major exhibition at Somerset House. Famous for drawing optical illusions...
Jun 11, 2026•42 min
Scotland's Makar Peter Mackay on his poems honouring Scotland's football team as they head to the FIFA World Cup - one, his own work, the other curated from lines submitted by members of the public. Can they help propel the team to victory in their first tournament in many years? Crime writer Denise Mina tells us about the extraordinary true crime case that inspired her book The Last Drop, now adapted into a theatre production at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre. Outdoor theatre takes place across the...
Jun 11, 2026•42 min
Barry Manilow on maintaining his musical curiosity as he releases his 33rd studio album, What A Time, and what it's like to have one of his biggest hits, Copacabana, sung by Sabrina Carpenter. With the start of the World Cup this week, sports photographer Tom Jenkins, and Tim Marlow, Director of The Design Museum and one of the judges for this year's Football Art Prize at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield, discuss the art of making art out football. As the Rambert dance company turns 100, Aman...
Jun 09, 2026•42 min
Samira Ahmed talks to Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter about their new album Mirage Ekow Eshun, writer and broadcaster, and Polly Savage, Lecturer in the Art History of Africa at SOAS, University of London, discuss an exhibition of Pan African art at the Barbican, Project a Black Planet Front Row introduces its AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker for 2026, Genevieve Robyn Arkle, who is a Lecturer in Music History at King's College London And Opera director David Pountney on John Tavener's last opera Kri...
Jun 08, 2026•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by writer Alexander Larman and critic Arifa Akbar to discuss: A new production of High Society, Cole Porter's musical showcase at London's Barbican, starring Call the Midwife's Helen George in the role of the amorously vexed Long Island socialite Tracy Lord who finds her heart pulled in every which direction. Also starring Freddie Fox and Felicity Kendal. The film Savage House starring Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy, a dark satire telling a cautionary tale of greed and s...
Jun 04, 2026•43 min
As the Belfast Book Festival opens Kirsty Wark is joined by a range of guests at the Crescent Arts Centre. She'll be discussing reading and freedom of expression with Hilary McCollum, whose new book As A Lover is inspired by the scandal which followed the publication of Radclyffe Hall's story of lesbian love The Well of Loneliness in 1928, and by novelist and short story writer Lucy Caldwell whose work often examines what were once taboo subjects. Head of Cuba Pictures Dixie Linder, who's made T...
Jun 03, 2026•42 min
Award winning jazz saxophonist and broadcaster Soweto Kinch and writer and director of new film Köln 75, Ido Fluk, join Tom to explore the importance of Keith Jarrett’s seminal performance at the Cologne Opera House in 1975, and its subsequent album, which became the bestselling solo album in jazz history. Sex Education and Rivals writer Sophie Goodhart on her award-winning comedy-drama Alice and Steve, starring Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement. It’s about best friends turned enemies, after Ste...
Jun 03, 2026•42 min
On what would have been her 100th birthday, we look at the enduring popularity of Marilyn Monroe, with film journalist and fan Kim Morgan and reviewer Angie Errigo Sathnam Sanghera talks about the meaning of George Michael. Jazz legend and saxophonist Courtney Pine talks about his career, forty years after his seminal debut album Journey to the Urge Within. And poet Joelle Taylor, author of Maryville and TS Eliot Prize-winning collection C+nto & Othered Poems, pays tribute to writer and acti...
Jun 01, 2026•42 min
Rachel Lloyd, Deputy Culture Editor of The Economist, and writer Lawrence Norfolk join Tom to discuss Channel 4's new queer drama Tip Toe, which is the latest series by Russell T Davies and stars Alan Cumming as a gay bar owner in Manchester and David Morrissey as his long-standing neighbour whose previously friendly relationship takes a dark turn. They also talk about Paul McCartney’s 18th studio album The Boys of Dungeon Lane which was 5 years in the making and includes tracks where Paul refle...
May 28, 2026•43 min
Nashville-based novelist Ann Patchett tells us about her tenth novel, Whistler, in which a chance encounter between a woman and her stepfather after many years leads to unexpected revelations. As a new publisher - Conduit Books - launches with the intention of promoting work by male authors, we discuss why this might be needed, with its founder, the writer Jude Cook, and with Ellah Wakatama, Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, who has worked in the publishing industry for many years. Pioneering ...
May 27, 2026•42 min
Writer and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre, and trumpeter and composer Yazz Ahmed on 100 years of Miles Davis - the musician regarded as the Picasso of jazz. Artist Keith Tyson has just donated a quarter of a million pounds for an astronomy post at Oxford University. He's joined by Professor Ken Arnold, director of the Medical Museum at the University of Copenhagen, to discuss the relationship between art and science. Playwright Rory Mullarkey on his new play at the Royal Exchange, Even These Things...
May 26, 2026•43 min
Live from Hay, celebrating reading and writing in many different forms, Samira is joined on stage by Jack Thorne - multi-award-winning screenwriter of the TV sensation Adolescence and his newest drama Falling, about a nun and a priest who fall in love. Also, Tartan Noir titan Val McDermid speaks about crime fiction and her 40 years of writing. The Ian Fleming estate has granted novelist Vaseem Khan permission to write a book in the Bond-iverse. This time, it's set in the world of Q, Bond's gadge...
May 25, 2026•42 min
Samira Ahmed is joined by writer Matt Cain and critic Suzi Feay to review: Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart's new novel John of John, set on the Isle of Harris. New series The Boroughs, which stars Alfred Molina and Geena Davis in a retirement community, executive produced by Stranger Things' Duffer Brothers. And Holy Pop!, a new exhibition at Somerset House in London that celebrates fandom. Also, film critic Tim Robey joins Samira from the Cannes Film Festival to talk...
May 21, 2026•42 min
Canadian author Rachel Reid talks to us about the the phenomenon which has followed the publication of her books about the romantic relationship between rival ice hockey players. We speak to author Yang Shuang-zi and translator Lin King, the author and translator of this year's International Booker Prize winning book, Taiwan Travelogue. And Mull Historical Society's latest album In My Mind There’s A Photograph sees singer-songwriter Colin Macintyre work with lyrical contributions from a panoply ...
May 20, 2026•42 min
The paintings of Winston Churchill are being exhibited at the Wallace Collection in London. Xavier Bray, Director of the Wallace Collection, and Katharine Carter, curator at Chartwell, Churchill’s country house in Kent, discuss what we learn about Churchill from his art. Creator and star Phil Dunning talks about series two of Smoggie Queens, which follows a close-knit group of friends; it’s a celebration of queer culture and a love letter to Middlesbrough and its community. As questions are bein...
May 19, 2026•42 min
Leo Woodall stars in the film Tuner, about a young piano prodigy who turns to crime, in cinemas on the 29th May. The classical music world has been paying tribute to the soprano Dame Felicity Lott, who died on Friday at the age of 79. Critic David Benedict joins us to discuss her life in music. Ronald Firbank is considered a pioneering queer voice of modernist fiction, but he's often overlooked. Sir Alan Hollinghurst and the poet and critic Jack Parlett join us to assess his literary impact and ...
May 18, 2026•42 min
Observer Theatre critic Susannah Clapp and Heat's Entertainment Director Boyd Hilton join Samira to discuss The Christophers - Steven Soderbergh’s film about an ageing artist and a young forger hired to copy his work, starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. They also discuss the second series of Rivals, based on Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster novel which was set in the affluent 80s world of commercial TV. Plus, they talk about the West End transfer of 1536. It's Ava Pickett’s award-winning historica...
May 14, 2026•42 min
From landmark releases to hidden treasures, director Mark Cousins on his 16-hour epic The Story of Documentary Film, which is screening at the Cannes Film Festival this week. A hundred years since Virginia Woolf published her essay On Being Ill, writer Darcey Steinke is presenting a newly commissioned work in response at the Charleston Festival this week. She joins us alongside poet Jade Cuttle to discuss the challenges of writing about pain and sickness and about the most visceral examples in l...
May 13, 2026•42 min
This year marks the tercentenary of polymath Sir John Vanbrugh, regarded as the rockstar architect of the Baroque era. Art historian Sir Charles Saumerez Smith, co-curator of the Vanbrugh exhibition at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, and Rory Fraser who is writing a biography on Vanbrugh, discuss the man happy creating dramas for the British stage and dramatic buildings on the British landscape. Turner Prize-winning artist Lubaina Himid is known for her distinctive brightly coloured paintings of bl...
May 12, 2026•42 min
Critics Ben Luke and Aviva Dautch bring us all the news from The Venice Biennale. Following the death of the great Shakespearean actor Michael Pennington, we speak to former RSC Director Gregory Doran about his impact on the stage. A new small exhibition Elizabeth I: Queen and Court Is running in London. It includes rarely seen portraits of The Virgin Queen that are normally held in private collections. Historians Tracy Borman and Siobhan Clarke join Tom to talk about the crossover between portr...
May 11, 2026•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by journalist and podcaster Nick Hilton and writer and historian Catherine McCormack to review a selection of cultural items from this week: They'll look at The Sheep Detectives, starring Hugh Jackman, a live-action film in which a group of ovine sleuths attempt to solve the murder of their shepherd. Elizabeth Strout's latest novel, The Things We Never Say, about a Massachusetts school teacher dealing with major changes and crises in his life And a new exhibition: Kew in ...
May 07, 2026•42 min
Acclaimed author Siri Hustvedt on Ghost Stories, her memoir of her marriage to novelist, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster and her grief following his death in 2024. Following last night's live report on the controversies surrounding this year's Venice Biennale, we are joined by one of the curators of the Ukrainian Pavillion, to hear how a concrete sculpture of a deer rescued from the frontline of the conflict in Ukraine forms the centrepiece of their exhibit. As a new documentary - Salm Nan Daoine...
May 06, 2026•42 min
