Novelist Nadifa Mohamed and translator Maureen Freely review the just-announced longlist for the International Booker Prize 2021. Author Joanne Harris talks to her Italian translator Laura Grandi, her collaborator of 22 years, about their special partnership. Plus writer and artist Khairani Barokka and Maureen Freely explore the question of how to choose who is the best person to translate each text, in light of the recent departure of several translators from the project of translating the work...
Mar 30, 2021•29 min
Kevin Macdonald’s new film The Mauritanian is based on the true story of a prisoner held in Guantánamo Bay for 14 years but never charged. The French-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim, recently seen in the TV drama series The Serpent, discusses the challenges of playing Mohamedou Slahi, who was shackled, beaten and waterboarded by the US authorities. The Lip depicts a hidden Cornwall, the one we rarely see. Its author, Charlie Carroll discusses writing about the second poorest region in all of Europe a...
Mar 29, 2021•28 min
For our Friday Review, critics Jacqueline Springer and Sophie Harris give their verdict on two new documentaries, Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil and Tina. Both detail each of the star’s respective troubles with abuse and drug addiction while in the limelight, and our reviewers discuss their candid telling of trauma. The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition winner was announced this Thursday in a virtual ceremony. The first prize, and the £5000 that came with it, was awarded to Marvi...
Mar 26, 2021•41 min
Emerald Fennell is the director and writer of Promising Young Woman, a darkly comic revenge thriller starring Carey Mulligan. The film is nominated for five Academy Awards and six BAFTAs. Emerald is also a successful actress, most recently starring as the then-Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown as well as a cameo in the movie. We hear about what sparked the film, reactions to it and what it’s like to combine direction, writing and acting. The Humboldt Forum in Berlin is currently planning to ret...
Mar 25, 2021•28 min
The playwright Mark Ravenhill joins us to talk about his new play Angela. It is a tender portrait of his parents; his mother, Angela, who died in 2019, and of his father, Ted. Angela had dementia and the play is about the memories that make us, and how time is more fluid than we might think. Ravenhill began Angela as a play for the stage that he was going to act - and even dance - himself. But Covid restirctions made that impossible so it became an audio play, starring Pam Ferris (Harry Potter, ...
Mar 24, 2021•28 min
Orlando Bloom talks to Samira Ahmed about taking on a very different kind of role in his intense and visceral film Retaliation, and the new career challenges he’s excited about. As the delayed Liverpool Biennial gets underway – showing only online and outdoor work for the moment because of the restrictions on galleries opening – art critic and editor of The Double Negative cultural website Mike Pinnington considers how the commissioned artists have responded to the theme of ‘the body’, and how t...
Mar 23, 2021•28 min
Nile Rodgers – guitarist, producer, songwriter, arranger, and co-founder of Chic in the 1970s – is the subject of what claims to be the world’s first voice-interactive digital portrait, In the Room with Nile Rodgers, in association with the National Portrait Gallery. Nile Rodgers and the project's director, Sarah Coward, discuss and explain the ambitious artwork. Hannah Peel’s latest album Fir Wave is inspired by nature, and finds links between patterns in nature and in early electronic music. S...
Mar 22, 2021•28 min
Today, Griff was awarded the 2021 BRITs Rising Star prize. The 20 year old singer-songwriter joins us to discuss how she writes her lyrics including to her breakout single Black Hole, making music in lockdown and what the future holds for her now she’s won this award. Line of Duty returns to our screens this weekend. Crime writers Dreda Say Mitchell and Abir Mukherjee review Jed Mercurio’s sixth series and consider the depiction of the police in TV drama more generally. After concern that the go...
Mar 19, 2021•41 min
A year ago, the poet and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen was admitted to hospital with Covid-19. Against all the odds, after months in hospital, including 48 days in intensive care and in an induced coma, he returned home and has written a new collection of prose poems and words about the experience. The poet discusses Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS and how the trauma affected him. This week sees the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Originally r...
Mar 18, 2021•28 min
Director Chase Joynt joins us to talk about his film No Ordinary Man, an in-depth look at the life of musician and trans culture icon Billy Tipton. Tipton was born in Oklahoma in 1914, and with the limited resources of the 1930s, had no choice but to transition alone. Entering the heady world of jazz as a pianist and band leader, he enjoyed a long and successful career, becoming a husband and father of three adopted sons in the 1960s. He never shared his gender history with anyone and when he di...
Mar 17, 2021•28 min
One year after theatres closed due to the Covid pandemic, leading figures from the industry join Front Row to look at how the past year has impacted upon theatres and the people who work in them. Sonia Friedman reflects on this time last year, when the unthinkable happened, and looks forward to when theatres might re-open. Julian Bird, CEO of SOLT and UK Theatre, reports on the results of their survey, just in, which asked questions of theatres and individuals around the UK. Actor Michael Balogu...
Mar 16, 2021•28 min
Inspired by the real-life story of three men in a lighthouse who mysteriously vanished, Emma Stonex’s novel The Lamplighters is part thriller, part history and part ghost story. She explains why she felt drawn to write about the sea and what we can learn from the solitary lives of lighthouse keepers. David Fincher's film Mank leads the field in today's Oscar nominations, but who else stood out in the announcement? Film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reflects on the nominations in a year when most ci...
Mar 15, 2021•28 min
The podcast ‘Aria Code’ from WQXR and the Metropolitan Opera aims to pull back the curtain on some of operas most well-known moments. Each episode “decodes” one aria, with academics and opera singers diving in to the music. But there are also a variety of unexpected guests, such as a marriage therapist talking relationships in Carmen or a former sex worker giving perspective on La Traviata. Host Rhiannon Giddens explains what’s coming up in the third series of the podcast. The 2020 film The Lege...
Mar 12, 2021•41 min
The recent death of Lou Ottens - the inventor of audio cassettes who later went on to work on the development of CD technology - gives us the opportunity to look back at the glory days of cassettes, their subsequent decline and the latest unexpected return to fashion, with music journalists Laura Barton and Jude Rogers. Young British poet Luke Wright describes himself as 'a louche poet (who) loves a bit of bathos'. He has a new collection of work, The Feelgood Movie Of The Year, with poems writt...
Mar 11, 2021•28 min
Netflix’s new drama, The One, set five minutes in the future, depicts a world where a DNA test can find your perfect partner. Kohinoor Sahota joins us to discuss its mix of sci-fi and romance, as well as whether this format could be the future of dating. The longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction is announced today. Critic Alex Clark joins Front Row to talk about the themes, highlights, whether there are any surprise inclusions and omissions, and which book might take the prize. At the weeke...
Mar 10, 2021•28 min
The Bafta Film Awards have unveiled a highly diverse nominations list, with 16 of the 24 acting nominees this year coming from ethnic minority groups. This follows criticsm in previous years about shortlists that didn’t reflect modern Britain. Film maker, poet and founder of The Caramel Film Club Be Manzini joins us to ask whether this is the beginning of greater representation. Violinist Hilary Hahn’s new CD ‘Paris’ brings together music inspired by a city that has been pivotal in her career. S...
Mar 09, 2021•28 min
Novelist Oana Aristide discusses her debut novel Under the Blue, about a reclusive artist forced to abandon his home and follow two young sisters across a post-pandemic Europe in search of a safe place. It has been described as eco-fiction and it explores themes of environmental destruction, the melting of the polar ice, eco-terrorism, all within a suspenseful story of three survivors on a terrifying road trip. The British poet Stevie Smith, best known for her work “Not Waving, But Drowning” die...
Mar 08, 2021•28 min
David Mamet's latest play, The Christopher Boy’s Communion is about a couple in New York whose son is facing trial charged with an appalling crime. First performed on the stage in Los Angeles last year, it’s premiers in the UK in the form of a radio play next week. He discusses the tricky issues it deals with and how he adapted a lengthier stage play it for radio (BBC Radio 4, Monday 8 March 8, 1415) In this week’s Friday Review, critics Karen Krizanovich and Jan Asante discuss two films with di...
Mar 05, 2021•41 min
As World Book Day we’re speaking to teacher turned rapper turned internet sensation MC Grammar. He's created lots of videos setting information about grammar to a rap beat. He joins us to explain why it succeeds with school children and we hear the song he's composed specially for the day. Since the arrival of Amazon and online bookselling, independent bookshops have been facing an existential crisis, one that has only accelerated under Coronavirus. Going online to sell books feels like a natura...
Mar 04, 2021•28 min
Pat Metheny has won 20 Grammy Awards, predominantly for his work as a jazz guitarist, but also for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and Best Instrumental Composition. His latest work is as a composer. The album Road to the Sun has two major works for classical guitar. Four Paths of Light is a four movement suite for a solo instrument, played by Jason Vieaux, and Road to the Sun, a piece in six parts, performed by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. Metheny himself plays his arrangement of Arvo Pä...
Mar 03, 2021•29 min
Your Honour is a new Showtime miniseries starring Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston as a respected New Orleans judge whose son is involved in a hit-and-run. He faces a series of impossible choices questioning how far a Father will go to go to save a son's life. Developed by British Peter Moffat it's a remake of the hit Israeli show Kvodo. Novelist and journalist Lionel Shriver reviews. Stories To Get You Through is a new podcast performed by the people of Doncaster as part of the National Theatre's ...
Mar 02, 2021•28 min
Kazuo Ishiguro has just published his eighth novel, the first to be written since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 and was knighted. Klara and the Sun is about an Artificial Friend, a robot whose role is to be a companion to the teenage Josie, though it becomes apparent that more may be expected of Klara. With resonances of two of his previous novels Never Let Me Go and of The Remains of the Day, it is a much-anticipated addition to Ishiguro’s body of work. Sameer Rahim, books editor...
Mar 01, 2021•28 min
We review a new biopic of jazz singer Billie Holiday, directed by Lee Daniels, which tells the story of the FBI’s campaign against her. They were afraid that performing her most famous song Strange Fruit, about the lynching of Black Americans, would incite unrest. Andra Day stars as Holiday. Barb Jungr and Be Manzini give their verdict, comment on the week's arts news and give recommendations for what they've been enjoying recently. A True Born Englishman, a monologue written 30 years ago for Ra...
Feb 26, 2021•41 min
Artists Gilbert & George open a new exhibition at the White Cube next week. The pair first met in 1967 whilst studying sculpture at Central St Martin’s art college. They’ve lived and worked together in East London for fifty years. The show - New Normal Pictures - consists of twenty-six new pictures which feature the pair in gritty London landscapes including bin bags, bus shelters and graffiti. It was first due to exhibit in April last year. They join John Wilson to discuss how they’ve been ...
Feb 25, 2021•28 min
As she is awarded one of British crime writing’s top accolades, the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger, Samira talks to crime novelist Martina Cole. Hailed as the Queen of Crime Drama, Cole has written 25 novels and sold 10 million books since records began but her work is rarely reviewed - so what’s her secret? Under the road map unveiled by Boris Johnson on Monday public museums and galleries in England will be allowed to reopen no earlier than 17 May, along with other indoor venues suc...
Feb 24, 2021•28 min
John Keats was just 25 when he died in Rome 200 years ago. To mark the anniversary The Poetry Society has commissioned new work from award-winning contemporary poets responding to Keats’s work, and two of them – Rachael Boast and Will Harris – join us to share their poems and discuss why Keats is still important to contemporary writers 200 hundred years after his death. “The Best Is Yet To Come” is Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler’s 18th studio album. Pushed back by the pandemic, it’s a return to the b...
Feb 23, 2021•29 min
As the Prime Minister sets out his roadmap to ending the Covid lockdown we get reaction from Dominique Frazer, Founder of the Boileroom, a music venue in Guildford, and Hamish Moseley, Managing Director of an independent film distribution company Altitude Film Entertainment, and ask if this offers them enough information to start to plan for the year ahead. Radio Wales DJ Huw Stephens discusses is three part documentary, The Story of Welsh Art, which looks as visual art in the country more assoc...
Feb 22, 2021•28 min
Leicester Curve’s recent award-winning revival of the musical The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s novel, has been reimagined, filmed and is being streamed for audiences. Dreda Say Mitchell and David Benedict review. David Rodigan joins us to celebrate the life of the great Jamaican musician U-Roy, who died recently. He was a master of the toasting mic style – the precursor of rapping, MC-ing and freestyling. Niven Govinden studied film before becoming an award-winning writer. In his sixth ...
Feb 19, 2021•41 min
Dame Sarah Connolly sings the role of the goddess Fricka in the Royal Opera House's production of Wagner's The Ring Cycle, currently being broadcast on BBC Radio 3. She discusses the challenge of performing this 15 hour operatic epic. Chris Brandon on writing the new BBC crime drama series Bloodlands - which stars James Nesbitt as a detective - is exec produced by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty and Bodyguard), and which draws on Brandon's own upbringing in Northern Ireland. Visual artist Jessie Bren...
Feb 18, 2021•28 min
Is listening to K-Pop like buying sweatshop-made clothes? From rigorous childhood performance academies to long, labour-intensive contracts for young idols, does the South Korean music industry have an exploitation problem? High profile suicides, sexual harassment claims and industry standards are complicating the nature of the industry and the fandom as it booms in the English speaking world. Musicologist Haekyung Um and journalist Taylor Glasby weigh in. Poet Kate Fox talks about her new colle...
Feb 17, 2021•29 min
