Marianne Faithfull released her first record in 1965 and now aged 71 she's releasing her 21st. Titled Negative Capability, the album is inspired by loss, ageing, and love. She discusses being misunderstood, her refusal to live in the past, and why this album is her most honest. Last night Holly Willoughby made her I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! presenting debut in what is the first series not to be hosted by both Ant and Dec since the show began in 2002. Convicted of drink-driving earlie...
Nov 19, 2018•29 min
Jane Fonda, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress, film producer, political activist and fitness guru, looks back at her 60 year career with Kirsty Lang. The feminist classic film 9 to 5, about three female office workers who take on their chauvinist boss, is being rereleased in cinemas. Jane Fonda, who produced and stars in the film, explains how she came up with the idea, cast Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton in the other lead roles and why it's a comedy. We also speak to Lily Tomlin about he...
Nov 16, 2018•36 min
In Sebastian Barry’s inaugural speech as Laureate for Irish Fiction earlier this year, he stated that Ireland was in a 'golden age of prose'. As Northern Irish writer Anna Burns scooped the Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman last month, Front Row hears voices from the No Alibis bookstore in Belfast. We speak to former Irish Laureate and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright; Professor of Irish History and Literature, Roy Foster; award-winning, Belfast-born writer Lucy Caldwell; and writer, editor...
Nov 15, 2018•29 min
Arts education has become the focus of a great deal of passion and concern recently, since the core, knowledge-based subjects took precedence over the creative subjects when the EBacc was introduced in England by the then Education Minister Michael Gove, announced in 2010. With the arts not being a requirement in the GCSE syllabus for the English Baccalaureate (the EBacc), leaders in the arts and the lucrative creative industries have been very vocal in their criticism of government policy. Stig...
Nov 14, 2018•43 min
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the second in the Fantastic Beasts film franchise from JK Rowling which explores the Wizarding World before Harry Potter. Eddie Redmayne and Johnny Depp star, and Jude Law joins the cast as a young Dumbledore. James Walters, Head of the Department of Film at the University of Birmingham reviews. As CAPSID, a new exhibition which explores how viruses behave, opens in Manchester, Front Row brought together the artist behind it, John Walter, and scient...
Nov 13, 2018•29 min
Getting butterflies is something many performers admit to, and although some thrive off it, others are often more badly affected. Professor of Performance Science, Aaron Williamon and West End psychologist Dr Anna Colton discuss the power of stage fright and how to overcome it. This week Channel 4 airs a true crime drama about Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who in 1999 shot dead a burglar at his Norfolk farmhouse. His actions and subsequent murder trial sparked a national debate about household...
Nov 12, 2018•29 min
Helena Bonham Carter discusses how she drew on her own experience of depression for her new film 55 Steps which is based on the life of Eleanor Riese. Riese was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 25 and successfully sued a hospital in San Francisco for the right to refuse anti-psychotic medication. At the time of her court case in 1989 Riese was 44, and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for several years. This interview is part of Front Row’s occasional series exploring the wa...
Nov 09, 2018•29 min
To mark Armistice Day, Marin Alsop will be conducting Brahms's A German Requiem this weekend, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and in a break from tradition, she will be introducing the work from the podium. Marin discusses the reasons behind this move, and also reveals the various ways in which this requiem also broke from tradition. Russell Howard makes comedy out of political issues such as the tampon tax, junior doctors and the housing crisis, and is hugely successful with you...
Nov 08, 2018•29 min
On Folkestone beach, film-maker Danny Boyle discusses Pages of the Sea, his Armistice Day tribute to the servicemen and women who left these shores in the First World War, many never to return. Members of the public will be invited to visit a number of beaches around the country to pay their respects, and will be given a specially-commissioned poem The Wound in Time, by Carol Ann Duffy. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth gets a musical makeover, we review the new theatrical production put on in the same ...
Nov 07, 2018•29 min
Steve McQueen discusses his return to the big screen with Widows, an adaptation of the Lynda La Plante thriller. Set this time in Chicago, the widows must learn to survive after their husbands die in a botched heist leaving debts that need to be repaid in a city rife with professional crime and political corruption. Romeo and Juliet is more relevant to our young people than ever according to the RSC deputy director Erica Whyman. She's directed a new production which involves local young people t...
Nov 05, 2018•29 min
As Boy George releases his first new album with Culture Club in almost 20 years – simply called Life - he talks about being a changed man and contrasts making music today with the band’s heyday in the 80s. Academy award winning director Peter Jackson has added colour to archival footage from WWI for the first time in his new film They Shall Not Grow Old. But how is this colourisation achieved and how does changing its colour affect the way we experience the film? BFI National Archive Curator Bry...
Nov 02, 2018•29 min
Best-selling Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern discusses her new short story collection, Roar, which features 30 stories about 30 different women. India has unveiled the world's tallest statue, which cost £330 million to build. The 182m high structure in the western state of Gujarat is a bronze-clad tribute to independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Pratiksha Ghildial in the BBC’s Delhi bureau reports on reactions within India. Lecturer in Korean Studies, Dr Anna Yates-Lu, explains the origins ...
Nov 01, 2018•29 min
Published in 2005, The Book Thief was an international bestseller that went on to become a successful Hollywood film. Now more than a decade later its author, Markus Zusak, is back with a new story, Bridge of Clay, about how five brothers deal with the disappearance of their father. American playwright Sarah DeLappe discusses her award-winning debut play, The Wolves, as it transfers to the UK. Played out through conversations that happen between the players of an American high school girls' socc...
Oct 31, 2018•29 min
Actor, comedian and opera fan Chris Addison discusses his role in La Traviata: Behind the Curtain, a new series of talks exploring the historical and social context of Verdi’s opera La Traviata for this year’s Glyndebourne Tour. He’s joined by musicologist Flora Willson, who explains why this 19th century work is the most-performed opera in the world. Dark Heart is the new ITV police procedural by Unforgotten writer Chris Lang, in which troubled detective DI Wagstaff takes on a case involving a ...
Oct 30, 2018•29 min
A six part adaptation of John le Carré’s 1983 spy thriller The Little Drummer Girl has begun BBC One. Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgård discuss their roles playing young actress Charlie who is sucked into the shadowy world of espionage amid rising tensions in the Middle East, and Becker, the Israeli intelligence officer who recruits her. As the clocks go back we investigate the affect the darkening days has on writers, particularly those with mental health issues. Poet Helen Mort and novelis...
Oct 29, 2018•29 min
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke explains how he composed his first feature film soundtrack for Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino’s remake of the 1977 Dario Argento horror film. If you've listened to an audiobook, can you say you've read the book? According to the Publishers Association UK, spending on audiobooks has more than doubled in the past five years, to £31m in 2017. We ask literary journalists Sarah Ditum and Sarah Shaffi whether listening to an audiobook counts the same as reading one. Tim Burton...
Oct 26, 2018•29 min
Bohemian Rhapsody, the new biopic of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, is finally in cinemas after eight years in the making. During production, two leading actors quit the project before Rami Malek took on the role of Freddie Mercury, Kate Mossman considers if film is worth the wait. As he approaches his 80th birthday this week, the conductor and composer Howard Blake looks back over his career which has included more than 700 compositions, including the music for 65 films – most famously for The...
Oct 25, 2018•29 min
Mike Leigh discusses his latest film Peterloo, an historical epic that depicts the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter's Field in Manchester turned into one of the most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reform. Novelist CJ Sansom discusses Tombland, his latest in his Tudor mystery series. The Lady Elizabeth sends lawyer Matthew Sha...
Oct 23, 2018•29 min
Author Luke Jennings on his Killing Eve novels, which inspired the recent television series. Jennings reveals what motivated him to create the ruthless assassin, Villanelle, and Eve, the agent hunting her, and the somewhat bizarre relationship the two of them seem to have. Revulsion is one of the strongest human reactions and if art is designed to instil an emotional response in the viewer, what is the role of disgust in art? As Halloween approaches we explore what makes us disgusted and how art...
Oct 22, 2018•29 min
Eric Idle is of course a member of the comedy phenomenon Monty Python. His autobiography, or as he fashions it sortabiography, is called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, after the song he wrote for the end of the troupe’s controversial 1979 film, Life of Brian. He’ll be talking about his role in Python, his career, his friendships with the likes of George Harrison and David Bowie, and the creation of Spamalot. The latest Halloween film is the 11th in the long-running Halloween franchise. ...
Oct 18, 2018•31 min
Gerard Butler talks to John Wilson about starring alongside Gary Oldman in his latest action film, Hunter Killer. Set deep under the Arctic Ocean, Butler plays an American submarine captain on the hunt for another US vessel in distress when he discovers a secret Russian coup that could lead to another world war. Bigger budgets, bigger explosions and bigger torsos seem to be dominating our movie screens, with actors such as Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg known for their intense workout regimes....
Oct 17, 2018•29 min
Willy Loman is very much the heart and soul of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-prizewinning play, Death of a Salesman. However as a new production opens at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, two actors Maureen Beattie and Marion Bailey - who have played the role of Linda Loman- join Stig to discuss what they found when they played the salesman’s wife. Crime novelist AA Dhand reviews ‘Informer’ a new criminal intelligence thriller set in East London about a police informant programme targeting radicalise...
Oct 16, 2018•29 min
#MeToo one year on – what impact has the hashtag popularised by Hollywood actresses had on the arts and on women around the world? We speak to Jude Kelly, Founder & Director of the Women Of the World Foundation, film critic Larushka Ivan Zadeh, Helen Lewis, Associate Editor Of The New Statesman, and to Naomi Pohl, Assistant General Secretary Of The Musicians Union. Forgotten is a new play about the Chinese Labour Corps, the 140,000 Chinese men who at the height of the First World War travell...
Oct 15, 2018•29 min
The 2011 Norwegian terrorist attack at Utøya island summer camp has been made into a film by Paul Greengrass. The director, whose previous work includes the Jason Bourne thrillers, Bloody Sunday and Captain Phillips, explains his approach to making such an emotional and politically charged picture, which shows both the attack itself and the perpetrator Anders Breivik’s justifying his actions in court. Best mates and actors Lisa Hammond (formerly of EastEnders) and Rachael Spence wanted to make t...
Oct 12, 2018•29 min
Desiree Akhavan has not only co-written Channel 4's new comedy drama The Bisexual, but directs and stars in it as well. The series centres on Leila, who after splitting from her long-term girlfriend, attempts to navigate the dating scene as she becomes involved with both men and women. Film critic Rhianna Dhillon reviews ensemble thriller Bad Times at the El Royal starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Hemsworth and Dakota Johnson, where seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at a rundown motel...
Oct 11, 2018•29 min
When Stig Abell was in his mid-twenties he went through a period where he would wake up in the middle of the night uncontrollably anxious and found reading, especially the novels of PG Wodehouse, provided respite. In this special programme on World Mental Health Day, Stig goes on a journey to try and understand what it is about reading which can improve mental well-being, and talks to writers Marian Keyes and Laura Freeman, and comedian Russell Kane about the role reading has played in helping t...
Oct 10, 2018•32 min
An entire disused swimming pool has been built on the ground floor of the Whitechapel Gallery in London for the new exhibition from the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset. The artists discuss how they have been inspired by the work of David Hockney and Ed Ruscha. Then film critic Mark Eccleston art critic Jacky Klein and artist and former Canadian national competitive swimmer Leanne Shapton reflect on the swimming pool in the arts. Kwame Kwei-Armah opens his first season as the Artistic Dir...
Oct 09, 2018•29 min
The actor and entertainer Bernard Cribbins, who will be 90 in December, discusses his new memoir Bernard Who?: 75 Years of Doing Just About Everything, in which he tells his own story, very much in his own way, about a busy career which includes Jackanory , Right Said Fred, Doctor Who, The Wombles, Shakespeare, Hitchcock’s Frenzy, The Railway Children, Crooks in Cloisters, three Carry On films and lots of radio. La La Land duo Ryan Gosling and director Damien Chazelle reunite for First Man, a fi...
Oct 08, 2018•29 min
“It’s about time” is the tagline for the new Doctor Who series, referencing the programme’s time-travelling exploits, but also the arrival of the first female Doctor in the show's history. Jodie Whittaker will be the 13th Doctor and tells us how she's tackling a role with so much history, attention and anticipation around it. Haruki Murakami's novels are awaited by eager audiences not just in his native Japan but the world over. Killing Commendatore is his latest and it delivers all the things h...
Oct 05, 2018•29 min
Alice Walker is famous for prose books such as The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. But her first book was a collection of poems and she has published eight more. Alice talks about her latest, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart, which ranges from poems of rage about injustice, poems of praise to great figures - BB King for instance - and celebration of the ordinary like making frittatas. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known for her pumpkin installations and her obsession with ...
Oct 04, 2018•28 min
