Front Row

Professor Dame Mary Beard reveals the 2026 Booker longlist and how she has found the process of being Chair of the judges. British contemporary pop artist Philip Colbert’s latest installation has just been unveiled amidst the historic ruins of Pompeii. Philip talks to Samira Ahmed about being inspired by an ancient mosaic featuring a lobster, a symbol he frequently includes in his work, and how he...

Graeme Garden remembers his friend and Goodies colleague, Bill Oddie. Frank Miller reimagined Batman as a tougher, grittier sort of comic book hero: The Dark Knight. He has written a memoir and a guide for fans. The new Children's Laureate, writer Patrice Lawrence tells us about taking on such a prestigious role. And 850 years of the Eisteddfod - Archdruid Mererid Hopwood and Marc Rees discuss the...

Hanna Flint and Chris Power join Tom Sutcliffe to review: The new stage musical adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting, featuring famous songs from the 1996 Danny Boyle film as well as new compositions to bring Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud to life. On the Sea, a film by novelist and director Helen Walsh about a mussel fisherman in northern Wales and the romance that he kindles with...

In 1985, Wham were the first Western pop group to perform in communist China, and the tour changed people's lives. As a new documentary about this landmark moment in pop lands in cinemas - and screens on BBC Two next month - Andrew Ridgeley tells the story. From Merchant Ivory period dramas to Peaky Blinders, the art of costume making is celebrated in a new exhibition - Costume Couture - at Edinbu...

Actor Ruth Madeley on starring in new TV drama The Rapture - a psychological thriller where the competing interests of an oil company, a religious cult, a protest group and a disturbed young woman convicted of murdering her mother, are set against a backdrop of climate change. Singer Nadine Shah on her homecoming BBC Prom in Gateshead. After a three year standoff, Northern Ballet reaches an agreem...

Trent Park, the House of Secrets is a new museum in north London which explores the story of the secret listeners who eavesdropped on the conversations of German senior military prisoners of war. Samira is joined by Helen Lederer, whose grandfather who served as a WW2 secret listener, and the Chairman of Trent Park, Jason Charalambous. As Andy Burnham becomes the first Prime Minister to study Engl...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by film critic Tim Robey and classicist Edith Hall to discuss: Christopher Nolan's much anticipated film version of Homer's epic The Odyssey, shot with IMAX cameras and with a stellar cast which includes Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Samantha Morton. A new production of The Oresteia directed by acclaimed Australian director Simon Stone at the Bridge Th...

The coming-of-age series Heartstopper has been a phenomenon with young readers and viewers in recent years. Its creator Alice Oseman joins us as the film Heartstopper Forever lands on Netflix, and as the final graphic novel in her series is published. JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is one of the all-time greats of American literature and has inspired many writers including George Saunders, D...

British director Christopher Nolan discusses his biggest cinematic blockbuster yet: The Odyssey, which stars Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and more, in his retelling of Homer’s epic poem about the warrior Odysseus’s battles with ancient Greek monsters like the Cyclops, Circe and the Sirens on his quest to return to his family after the Trojan War. We talk with Tom Kiehl, CEO of the indust...

Diane Morgan on her BBC TV comedy series Ann Droid, in which she stars as the eponymous robot helper to Sue Johnston. We pay tribute to actor Sam Neill, who has died at the age of 78. His screen work stretched from blockbusters like Jurassic Park to small independent New Zealand releases. Anna Reynolds, Surveyor of the King's Pictures, on the rehang of Buckingham Palace Picture Gallery. Reopened r...

Critic and columnist Dr Kate Maltby and author Michael Donkor join Tom Sutcliffe to review Robota, the inaugural large-scale production at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in Oxford. The production explores what happens to humanity when the line between human and machine blurs. They also discuss Country People by Pulitzer Prize nominated author Daniel Mason. The novel explores a year in th...

Lynval Golding of two-tone and ska legends The Specials , on the band’s final album, Live from the Cathedral, which was recorded in Coventry Cathedral. and which pays tribute to the band's late frontman Terry Hall. Photographers Tish Murtha and Sandra George, whose work represented disadvantaged and marginalised communities in Newcastle and Edinburgh respectively, were not given the recognition th...

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has just created his largest site-specific exhibition - Ai Weiwei: Button Up! - which has now opened at Aviva Studios in Manchester. Xiaowen Zhu, Director of esea contemporary art gallery, has been to see the monumental works on show and shares her thoughts on whether in this case bigger is truly better. Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour on his ground-breaki...

Confessions II is Madonna's first album in 7 years. Novelist Matt Cain and journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer discuss going back to the dancefloor. Sky TV has offered £1.6 bn pounds for ITV's free to air channel and its streaming platform ITVX. Jake Kanter, journalist for the screen industry website Deadline, considers what it will mean for British television. With a new play about Daphne d...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by critics Bidisha and David Benedict to review: The Invite, a new film directed by Olivia Wilde about two couples who join each other for dinner, starring Seth Rogan and Olivia Wilde as hosts and Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz as their guests. Pride the Musical, created by the same team as the hit 2014 film, which tells the true story of a group of LGBT activists who supp...

The acclaimed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro talks about how he went about curating a season of films featuring trains for the BFI - from classics such as Shanghai Express by Josef von Sternberg and Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express to lesser known gems - and about how trains have inspired his own work - including songs, and his forthcoming novel, Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger. Actresses Mau...

Author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and The Circle, Dave Eggers is back with a new novel about a young aspiring artist. Contrapposto follows Cricket, an insular smalltown boy, enchanted by drawing, as well as an older girl, and in part draws on Eggers’ on experiences of the art world. Visiting the UK for the first time in over a decade, he speaks to Samira Ahmed in a rare intervie...

We mark the passing of actress Dame Penelope Keith, speaking with John Lloyd and Mel Giedroyc about her long career. Actor Russell Tovey plays a troubled police officer dealing with a late night emergency in The Guilty at The Donmar Warehouse in London. Katherine Rundell on updating Cinderella for a contemporary audience, as part of Radio 4's Once Upon a Time series. We discover the photographic g...

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,...

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 ar...

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...

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 explai...

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 revi...

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 ot...

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...