Mike Newell discusses his film The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which stars Lily James as a writer uncovering a mystery from World War II on the Channel island. The director looks back at his career which includes Four Weddings and a Funeral, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Donnie Brasco. Joanna Walsh is one of the UK's leading experimental writers. She discusses her new novel, Break.up about a nameless woman recovering from a relationship with a man which was mainly co...
Apr 16, 2018•33 min
Sharlene Teo on her debut novel Ponti, an account of teenage friendship and fraught mother/daughter relationships set in a sweltering Singapore, that's been called remarkable by Ian McEwan. Is Coronation Street the most feminist soap on television? Emma Bullimore makes the case. Radio 4 poet-in-residence Alice Oswald and artist William Tillyer discuss their collaboration Nobody. Both a book and an exhibition, it fuses the written word with watercolour. They talk about the nature of collaboration...
Apr 13, 2018•30 min
As singer Janelle Monaé's video for her new single PYNK goes viral, music journalist Ruth Barnes looks back at other game-changers in the genre. The new Young People's Laureate for London was announced yesterday evening as Momtaza Mehri. We bring her together with the outgoing post holder Caleb Femi to discuss what he learnt in the role and ask Momtaza what she hopes to achieve. The soundtrack to the film "A Clockwork Orange" is as famous as Kubrick's film is notorious. What's less well known is...
Apr 12, 2018•30 min
Actress Naomie Harris talks about her latest role in Brad Peyton's big-screen video game adaptation Rampage, which sees her fighting a trio of oversized genetically-modified predators alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. Has it got harder for working class talent to make a career on stage and screen? This week the Anna Scher Theatre School, which is responsible for launching the careers of working class actors such as Kathy Burke, Daniel Kaluuya and Adam Deacon, celebrates 50 years, and there ar...
Apr 11, 2018•35 min
Viv Albertine was the guitarist in the cult punk band The Slits and a key player in British counter culture before working as a film maker and launching a solo career. Her new memoir, To Throw Away Unopened, unpicks family secrets which shaped her childhood and her early creative influences. This book begins when she is at the launch party for her hugely successful first book Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys and her sister calls with news that their mother is dyin...
Apr 10, 2018•33 min
Tate Liverpool's arts handler Ken Simons has just retired after working there since its opening 30 years ago. To mark his retirement, Tate have allowed him to curate his own exhibition, Exploring the Unseen, using works from the Tate collection. He explains how he chose the 30 works - one for each of his years at the gallery. As Audible launches three new podcasts featuring original short stories written exclusively for audio, Ben Okri, Booker prize-winning writer of The Famished Road, joins bes...
Apr 09, 2018•33 min
To mark 20 years of Front Row Kirsty Lang and John Wilson host a celebratory extended edition live from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in London. Liz Carr, Bob Geldof, Lionel Shriver and Testament make their case for what they think is the most significant art work of the last 20 years. Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum and familiar voice to Radio 4, considers cultural developments and diplomacy since 1998. There's a live performance from singer-songwriter Rae Mo...
Apr 06, 2018•44 min
Actor David Morrissey, well known for his roles in TV dramas like State of Play, The Deal, Red Riding, The Walking Dead and Britannia. He talks about his latest role is as Inspector Tyador in BBC Two's adaption of the China Miéville's novel The City and The City. The drama is a speculative science-fiction meets police procedural, set in two cities which share a geographical location but whose residents are trained to "unsee" the other city. Claude Monet had a fascination with buildings in his pa...
Apr 05, 2018•34 min
Cuba Gooding Jr is taking to the stage in the new West End production of one of the world's most successful musicals - Chicago. He talks to Stig Abell about his role as the lawyer Billy Flynn and his career; starring in Boyz n the Hood, playing OJ Simpson, the impact of winning an Oscar for Jerry Maguire, and how Hollywood is changing its attitude to black actors. Bob Honey who Just Do Stuff is a new novel. Its author is Sean Penn. He's not the only film star to feel, after coming to fame reciti...
Apr 04, 2018•31 min
Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna on the many different ingredients that make up her new novel, Happiness, a multi-layered story set in modern London, seen from the perspective of those passing through. The Alpha male sweeping a woman off her feet has long been a common trope in romantic fiction but can it survive in a world where the #MeToo movement has transformed the debate around gender politics? The Hollywood sign, on Mount Lee in Los Angeles, is one of the world's most famous cultural ic...
Apr 03, 2018•32 min
Ever since the legendary heroic outlaw Robin Hood first stole from the rich to give to the poor, Nottingham has had a tradition of political defiance, addressing social injustice and encouraging free expression. Sandeep Mahal, Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, assesses to what extent that still holds today in the city's rich cultural landscape, and talks to writers, poets, singers and actors about the challenges Nottingham has faced over the years. Samantha Morton discusses her t...
Apr 02, 2018•29 min
This year marks the centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth and to celebrate the occasion Front Row explores his life and music. John Wilson is joined by his son, Alexander Bernstein, who remembers his father composing at home, and who attended many of his Young People's Concerts; by his friend and biographer, Humphrey Burton, who discusses Bernstein's multiple talents as a conductor, composer and educator; and by his pupil, the conductor Marin Alsop, who was inspired by Bernstein to take up the ...
Mar 30, 2018•30 min
David Mamet, the American playwright, director and novelist, talks to Stig about his new novel, Chicago, set amongst the gangster rivalry of the 1920s. He explains his fascination with that era in the city of his birth, discusses the writers who have inspired him and explains the importance of imagination, inspiration and dialogue in the storyteller's craft. Meghan Markle's final season in US drama Suits is currently being broadcast on Netflix, last year the actress revealed she was retiring fro...
Mar 29, 2018•32 min
Wes Anderson discusses his film Isle of Dogs, including working with stop-motion animation and drawing inspiration from Studio Ghibli director Miyazaki for the Japanese setting for the film. What makes a great sports theme tune? As the 2018 Formula 1 season kicks off with a specially composed anthem, we speak to its composer Brian Tyler and consider the essential components of an iconic sports theme tunes with former BBC sport correspondent Adrian Warner. Seven publishers were in a bidding war t...
Mar 28, 2018•31 min
Steven Spielberg, director of films like The Post, The BFG and Bridge of Spies, returns to the science fiction genre with an action adventure set in a virtual-reality game world sometime in the future. Julia Hardy reviews the film and tells Samira whether it is a classic of the genre like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Back to the Future. The York Realist is a play set in 1963 when John, up from London and working as assistant director on a production of the York Mystery Plays, falls for ...
Mar 27, 2018•29 min
Anna Chancellor stars in the new TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's murder mystery Ordeal By Innocence this weekend, in which she plays Rachel Argyll, heiress, philanthropist and mother of five adopted children found murdered on Christmas Eve. Samira talks to the actress, who is well-known for her roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Hour, Spooks and Mapp & Lucia. Harshdeep Kaur, the popular Indian playback singer known for her Bollywood Hindi, Punjabi and Sufi songs, performs live. Pop...
Mar 26, 2018•31 min
Artist Sonia Boyce's career has been punctuated by series of firsts - the first black woman to have her work collected by the Tate, the first black woman to be elected a Royal Academician. As her first retrospective opens, Sonia discusses her art and why she removed a painting from the walls of Manchester Art Gallery. On the 100th anniversary of Debussy's death two interpreters of his music discuss his life, legacy and influences. Lucy Parham tours a show playing his piano music interspersed wit...
Mar 23, 2018•31 min
Macbeth is on at the National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House, and there will be at least 15 more Macbeths at theatres and festivals around the country this year. Rufus Norris, director of the National's production, and Kit Monkman, who has made the latest film version, discuss why Shakespeare's play has such urgent appeal today. The British Council has been in the news because Moscow has shut down its activities in Russia. But what does the Council actually do? ...
Mar 22, 2018•29 min
Director Steven Soderbergh on his latest film, Unsane, which stars Claire Foy as a woman admitted to a mental health facility against her will. The film was shot entirely on three iphones. Is this the future of film? America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper, a big exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford focuses on American artists in the early 20th century - including Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper - many of whom expressed their uncertainty about the rapid modernisation and urbanisation of...
Mar 21, 2018•32 min
Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon and Patti Smith are just a few of the artists who trusted an inexperienced recording engineer, Jimmy Iovine, at the controls of their albums in the '70s. Iovine discusses a new documentary series The Defiant Ones, in which he looks back at 40 years in the record business: from those early beginnings, teaming up with hip hop artist Dr Dre, creating the Beats audio brand and running Apple Music. Award-winning Irish novelist Donal Ryan on his fifth novel, From a Low a...
Mar 20, 2018•34 min
As Andrew Lloyd Webber turns 70, Kirsty Lang talks to the composer about how he transformed musical theatre with hits like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. When Sunset Boulevard joined School of Rock, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway last year, Andrew Lloyd Webber became the only person to equal the record set in 1953 by his musical heroes Rogers and Hammerstein with four Broadway shows running concurrently. He talks about the process ...
Mar 19, 2018•35 min
Sir Tom Jones and Jennifer Hudson discuss mentoring the competitors in the TV talent show The Voice, how they coach their protégés and where the value of knockout singing competitions lies. Kirsty visits rehearsals at the studios of the television show and talks to the two judges. As The Square, a satire on modern art galleries hits cinemas, we consider the portrayal of the art gallery in film with Briony Hanson, Head of Film at British Council, and art critic Jacky Klein who also works at Tate....
Mar 16, 2018•34 min
Lara Croft remains one of the most famous gaming characters ever. Now as the film franchise of the games gets a reboot staring Alicia Vikander, film critic Kate Muir and gamer Julia Hardy discuss whether Lara Croft is a feminist icon or an object of male fantasy and what she reveals about the portrayal of women in gaming and film. Debut novelist Lisa Halliday won the prestigious American Whiting Award for her fiction writing - previously won by Colson Whitehead and Jonathan Franzen. No surprise ...
Mar 15, 2018•34 min
Mary Magdalene was Jesus Christ's most loyal friend, who stayed with him through the ordeal of his crucifixion, and was the first witness to his resurrection. But she was also denigrated by the church as a prostitute. Now her story is told in a new film with Rooney Mara as Mary and Joaquin Phoenix as Christ. Michèle Roberts, who wrote the novel The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene, reviews. With its population of 300,000, Iceland has more books published, and more writers per head, than anywhere ...
Mar 14, 2018•31 min
Paddy Considine discusses Journeyman, the new film he's written, directed and stars in. The film is centred on the life of a boxer who, after a damaging championship bout, discovers that he has far bigger fights on his hands. Four British mosques have just been given listed status or been upgraded in recognition of their historic, cultural and architectural importance. Architect Shahed Saleem, who has written The British Mosque, considers the cultural landscape for the 2000 or so places of Musli...
Mar 13, 2018•29 min
Eleanor Bron will be 80 on Wednesday. She is still working - she will be in Scottish Opera's production of Ariadne auf Naxos this year. Talking to Samira Ahmed she looks back over her long career, from the satire boom with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, through working with The Beatles in Help and roles in classical theatre such as in The Duchess of Malfi. The Great Wave at the National Theatre explores the abduction in the 1970s of Japanese citizens by North Korea. A look at these kidnappings thr...
Mar 12, 2018•29 min
Sir Ian McKellen looks back at his acting life in anticipation of a film out later this year, McKellen: Playing the Part. Madeleine L'Engle's classic children's book A Wrinkle in Time has been made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey. The book itself was written in 1962 after being turned down by no less than 26 publishers. Professor Diane Roberts and Dr Vic James discuss the way in which the book reflects preoccupations in the author's own life, why it became one of America's most banned books a...
Mar 09, 2018•34 min
Reluctant superhero Jessica Jones is back for a second series. She despatched her nemesis at the end of season one but season two finds her looking to find the answers for her special powers. Cultural critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reviews. The longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction has just been published. On International Women's Day Alex Clark looks at the surprise inclusions and exclusions and discerns the trends. This week a new production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard opens at Bristol O...
Mar 08, 2018•29 min
David Attenborough talks about the art of his friend the painter John Craxton as a new exhibition Charmed Lives in Greece opens at the British Museum. Deborah Alma has edited #MeToo, an anthology of poetry by women, rallying against sexual assault and harassment. She is joined by poet and human rights lawyer Mona Arshi to discuss poetry as activism. Woody Allen's film Wonder Wheel is released this week. In the light of renewed allegations of sexual assault from his adopted daughter, Anna Smith r...
Mar 07, 2018•29 min
Radio 4 celebrates the 40th anniversary of the iconic science fiction satire by Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a new series this week. Comedy producer and friend of the originator John Lloyd stars as the voice of the book. He and radio producer Dirk Maggs talk about the return of the ground breaking show, which fans call H2G2. Tate Modern's first solo exhibition of Pablo Picasso focuses on one year of the great artist's life, 1932. Picasso's grandson, Olivier Widmaier ...
Mar 06, 2018•32 min
