Front Row

How people with dwarfism have been represented in art and culture, from Ancient Egypt to Velasquez to Game of Thrones. Kirsty is joined by Tom Shakespeare, Professor of Disability Research at East Anglia University and Richard Butchins, who has made the BBC Four film Dwarfs in Art: A New Perspective. Scottish artist Barbara Rae has travelled to the Arctic in the footsteps of the Victorian explorer...

Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul" known for hits like Respect, Natural Woman and Say a Little Prayer, has died in Detroit at the age of 76. Broadcaster Paul Gambaccini and music critic Kevin Le Gendre assess her life and work. Actor David Suchet, discusses taking on the role of a 90 year-old furniture dealer in a revival of Arthur Miller's The Price at the Theatre Royal, Bath. It's 50 years sin...

Queen guitarist Brian May fell in love with 3D photography as a child and has since gone on to establish his own publishing company devoted to sharing stereoscopic work from the Victorian era to the present day. May's latest publication is a book by Professor Roger Taylor about the Scottish photography pioneer George Washington Wilson. May and Taylor discuss why Wilson's 3D photographs of Scottish...

The drag girl band Denim was Cambridge University's first drag troupe when they formed in 2010. Now, they're back in Edinburgh and for Front Row perform a song from their Reunion Tour and discuss how their drag comes with a political and uplifting message. Author Maggie O'Farrell talks about the art of writing life stories as her own memoir I Am, I Am, I Am tops the bestseller charts, structured a...

Rosie Jones, a stand-up comedian whose material plays on her experience of living with Cerebral Palsy, discusses defying expectations - both onstage and off. Her one woman show is Fifteen Minutes. Janeane Garofalo is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and Saturday Night Liv...

The identity of the 'dark lady' of the Shakespeare's sonnets has mystified academics for years. As the Globe stage a new play about Emilia Bassano, one of the main candidates, Shakespearean academics Germaine Greer and Will Tosh consider how likely it is that Emilia is the dark lady and what we know about the real Emilia Bassano- a writer herself. Denzel Washington discusses starring in his first...

Disenchantment, Netflix's new animated series set in a fantastical medieval world from The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening is released this week. TV critic Andrew Collins and comedy writer Natasha Hodgson discuss whether the fantasy series has brought some Simpsons' magic to Netflix. Alan Garner's debut novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, is regarded as one of the great 20th century works of chi...

Sharks have long held a prominent place in mythology, the imagination and even religion for centuries. As The Meg, a thriller about a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark, hits cinema screens nature writer Philip Hoare and film critic Isabel Stevens discuss the ways in which sharks have been represented in the arts. How much is the cultural representation of these 400 million year old mysterious creatur...

The mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly is an opera star, singing the big roles at La Scala, The Met, Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House. Her latest project is much more modest yet very ambitious; 'Come to Me in My Dreams' is a CD of songs and poems, mostly English - Shakespeare, Blake, Housman - set by composers all of whom studied or taught at the Royal School of Music. She talks to Morgan Qua...

Craig and Charlie Reid, better known as The Proclaimers, are live in the Front Row studio playing the title track of their new album Angry Cyclist. They discuss passing the 30 year landmark as professional musicians, seeing their music inspire a theatre production and a film, and why the idea of an angry cyclist seemed for them the perfect way of capturing the current political mood. Two new produ...

The Artist's Way is a creative self-help book that has sold over 4 million copies and garnered dedicated fans around the world. As part of Front Row's Inspire season we speak to its author Julia Cameron who explains the philosophy behind her 12 week programme and answers listener's questions. Stephen Mangan stars as an online therapist in new Channel 4 comedy Hang Ups, loosely based on US series W...

Yesterday we launched our new season Inspire. Today we ask the key question: what is inspiration? The poet Kei Miller, the composer Philip Venables, the novelist Stella Duffy, the artist Aowen Jin and the philosopher Julian Baggini join Front Row to share their thoughts on the line between a magical moment and hard graft. On Monday Aurora Orchestra return to the BBC Proms to perform Shostakovich's...

We explore the natural landscape as artistic inspiration from three locations around the country. Writer Tracy Chevalier and artist Gayle Chong Kwan join John Wilson in Epping Forest to discuss why forests and trees have sparked ideas for them, composer Brian Irvine and broadcaster Marie-Louise Muir consider the art made about the sea and coastline from Helen's Bay, County Down and poet Kenneth St...

Melvin Burgess, who's been dubbed the Godfather of Young Adult fiction, talks about his new book The Lost Witch about a teenage girl who discovers she has magical powers. A record-breaking 3.6 million people watched this year's Love Island final. That's more viewers than were watching BBC One, BBC Two or ITV in the same time slot. Journalist and critic Alix O'Neill discusses the show's cultural im...

Chris Dunkley, for many years television critic of the Financial Times, discusses the impact and ongoing popularity of Dad's Army, which was first broadcast fifty years ago this week. Music streaming platforms have reported a rise people aged under 30 listening to jazz, with the genre's new sound also being produced by musicians in that age group. Music journalist Teju Adeleye and jazz musician Em...

New film Iceman was inspired by Ötzi, the prehistoric man who was found perfectly preserved in the ice in the Ötztal Alps in 1991. Dubbed "The European Revenant" the characters speak in an extinct language which isn't subtitled. We review with film critic Hannah McGill and survival enthusiast and Costa Children's Book Award winner Katherine Rundell. A recent Parliamentary meeting addressed the iss...

Fran Ross was a gifted African-American author who died in 1985. Her novel Oreo, written at the height of the Black Power movement, tells the rollercoaster story of a black-Jewish girl's quest for her white father using Greek myth, slang, Yiddish, puns, made-up words and Ross' own extraordinary imagination. The novel sank without much trace but Man Booker-Prizewinning author Marlon James, who's wr...

Andre Holland is perhaps best known for his role as Kevin, the chef (and love interest) in the Oscar winning film Moonlight. Now he is in Britain playing Othello at Shakespeare's Globe in a production also featuring Mark Rylance as Iago. He tells Kirsty Lang how, unlikely as it might seem, his southern American accent fits the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare's lines perfectly. The arrival of arti...

Playwright Patrick Marber and actress Indira Varma on Exit the King, Marber's adaptation for the National Theatre of the Romanian absurdist drama by Eugène Ionesco, in which Varma stars as Queen Marguerite alongside Rhys Ifans' King, about to make his final exit. John talks to Nick Drnaso, the first graphic novelist to be longlisted for the Man Booker prize, and critics Arifa Akbar and Toby Lichti...

John Hurt as Artist is a new exhibition in Norfolk which reveals a less well-known side of the actor who died last year. Sir John Hurt's widow Anwen discusses the mainly figurative paintings and drawings which mostly relate to the actor's off-screen life, but also include self-portraits of him in prosthetic make-up for his role as John Merrick in The Elephant Man from 1980. Ian McKellen is playing...

American footballer-turned-opera star Morris Robinson is returning to the Proms this weekend to perform as the bass soloist in Mahler's epic Symphony of a Thousand. He sings live and discusses his extraordinary move from the football stadium to the opera house. Sitting around of an evening with friends, a bottle of wine, discussing a good book - that's the cosy image of the Book Club. But the Rich...

The Lehman Trilogy at the National Theatre is an epic new play directed by Sam Mendes, which tells the story of the American banking dynasty from its humble beginnings in Alabama to its bankruptcy in the 2008 crash. John talks to Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles, who play the founding Lehman brothers and many other characters too. As the 100th Now That's What I Call Music album is re...

Alan Bennett's new play Allelujah! is set in the geriatric ward of a Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure. It follows a singing, dancing choir of quick-witted elderly patients whose problem is not that they are ill so much as they have nowhere to go. Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner discuss working together and how Alan manages to take on big themes - English identity, education and...

Sacha Baron Cohen's return to TV is Who Is America?, a new series in which he dupes figures such as Sarah Palin and Bernie Sanders into giving interviews to him, heavily disguised with prosthetics. TV critic Boyd Hilton reviews. As the decision is taken to rebuild the Glasgow School of Art after its second devastating fire, Sally Stewart, Head of Architecture at the school, discusses the latest pl...

Pierce Brosnan discusses his long and varied career which began as an artist, as he reprises the role of Sam Carmichael in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again - with less singing this time. The Irish government has recently announced a new arts strategy and funding of Euro 2.billion Euros in a programme called "Investing in Our Culture, Language and Heritage. Journalist and Art Historian Robert O' Byrne,...