Front Row

Joan Collins discusses her memoir My Unapologetic Diaries. Tales of the City author and activist Armistead Maupin on his national tour and why he has moved from his beloved San Francisco to live in the UK. Engineering Value - Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry is a new play every word of which has been taken from what was said at that public inquiry. Directors Nick Kent and Nadia Fall consider the e...

Cush Jumbo’s long-awaited performance as Hamlet and debbie tucker green’s film ear for eye come under the critical gaze of Ekow Eshun, Vanessa Kisuule and Sarah Crompton. Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. He joins Front Row to discuss his work and how he feels about winning. The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage on his fresh and contemporary new transl...

Broadcaster Huw Stephens sends an audio postcard from Aberystwyth, the small seaside town with the big arts centre mounting exhibitions and concerts, the National Library of Wales, the country's oldest University, a thriving bilingual music scene, one of the UK's leading comedy festivals and now - a film industry. The true story of one family’s journey from Afghanistan to Wales twenty one years ag...

Wole Soyinka, the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells Samira Ahmed about what impelled him to write his first new novel in five decades, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. As theatres re-open across the UK and audiences return, are some theatre fans being left behind? We hear from Jamie Hale, an award-winning theatre director and playwright with...

In tonight's new look, 45 minute long Front Row... Hilary Mantel talks about turning her 874 page novel, The Mirror and the Light, the third volume in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, into a play of just a couple of hours. Kieran Hurley on The Enemy, his adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People for the National Theatre of Scotland. Lianne La Havas joins us live in the studio to perform a track fro...

The new 007 film No Time To Die has had its release pushed back and back and back due to Covid. But now it’s finally here with Daniel Craig playing James Bond for the final time. Critical responses have been mixed, what will our reviewers, Charlie Higson -writer of the Young Bond novels – and Naima Khan – who’s never seen a Bond film before – make of it? We’ll also preview Ridley Road a BBC histor...

Widely known as the nicest guy in rock, Dave Grohl has written a memoir ‘The Storyteller’ documenting his life in the rock and roll business, from early days sleeping in the tour van with Scream, to the moment that inspired him to return to music post-Nirvana, to performing at the White House. It is family and music that has kept him grounded, as well as seeing the toll the dark glamour of a rock...

American screenwriter, show-runner, director, and producer David Chase is best known for writing and producing the HBO drama The Sopranos which aired for six seasons between 1999 and 2007. He talks to Tom about why he's bringing back Michael Imperioli for The Many Saints Of Newark. Gary Raymond, editor of Wales Art Review, joins us to discuss the unveiling of the statue of the Welsh, black head te...

Kenyan British Comedian Njambi McGrath’s work focuses on identity politics, Brexit, colonialism, and race. She joins Kirsty to discuss her 2019 show, Accidental Coconut which opens at the Soho Theatre next week, and her new Radio 4 podcast series Njambi McGrath: Becoming Njambi. Controversy always rages over The Turner Prize. This year not a single artist has been shortlisted. Not one! Instead the...

Front Row announces this year’s winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction and Samira Ahmed interviews the winner. They are joined by Clarke Award judge Stewart Hotston to discuss the problem of diversity in the science fiction genre. K-pop group BTS opened the UN general debate last week with a speech and performance, which was streamed live by over a million people around the world...

Megan Swann is the first ever female President of The Magic Circle, and the youngest ever President at just 28 years old. She tells Tom how she got into magic, and how she uses magic to share an environmental message. Richard Smyth is one of the five authors shortlisted for the £15,000, 16th BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University. He tells us what his short story, ‘Maykopsky Dist...

On 6 October 1941 “The Coventry Telegraph” reported that women of Coventry had sent a message of support to the women of Stalingrad. And so began a relationship that became formalised by twin city status in 1844. Coventry now has 26 twin cities and those connections are celebrated in a new project, Twin Cities: Postcard Poems which paired ten poets from Coventry with poets from across the world. T...

There's some excitement in the world of English traditional music: Spiers and Boden have reunited, recorded a new album and are embarking on a month long tour. Squeezebox player John Spiers met fiddle player Jon Boden in a pub session twenty years ago and quickly established themselves as a duo playing English music, winning a devoted following and several awards. They formed the hugely successful...

We announce the winner of the 2021 Art Fund Museum of the Year, the world’s largest museum prize. Front Row broadcasts a special programme from London's Science Museum, reflecting on the resilience and imagination of museums throughout the pandemic. John Wilson will be joined by judges Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate; artist Thomas J Price, Lead of Strategic Projects at Google Suhair Khan and broa...

Everybody’s Talking about Jamie is a feature film based on the stage musical of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the BBC Three documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16. It centres on Jamie, a gay teenager from Sheffield who wants to attend his prom in drag. Ellen E Jones reviews. We talk to another of the authors shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2021. Rory Gleeson’s story...

Visible Skin: Rediscovering the Renaissance through Black Portraiture is a new outdoor exhibition across King’s College London’s Strand Campus, showcasing artworks by opera singer Peter Brathwaite. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about creating the portraits and images, as well as his role in the new opera The Time of Our Singing. Indecent, a play which has just opened at London’s Menier Chocolate Facto...

If you go down to the Oastler Centre carpark in Bradford over the next few days, you’re sure of a big surprise because this derelict multi-storey is the venue for a new theatrical production - Peaceophobia - exploring the passions and the lives of three young Pakistani-heritage Muslim men from Bradford as they attend a car meet. Evie Manning is co-director of the show and joins Front Row to explai...

Award-winning author Anuradha Roy crafts pots as well as prose. She joins us live from India to discuss the fusion of ceramics and storytelling, pottery and politics in her new novel, The Earthspinner, a coming of age story set between two continents. At a recent auction some 19th century pottery jugs, expected to fetch £100 or so, sold for £3,000 - £4,000. They were bought by major museums vying...

The role of Norman, the longsuffering, waspish eponymous dresser in Ronald Harwood's 1980 play, might have been written for Julian Clary. It's about a touring theatre company bringing Shakespeare to the provinces during the Blitz. As all the young actors are away fighting it's a motley crew, led by Sir, a monstrous yet pathetic veteran actor. Sir's mind and his world are crumbling. Only Norman can...

Liane Moriarty is the best-selling author of nine novels including, Big Little Lies, and Nine Perfect Strangers, both of which have been adapted for television. Her latest novel, Apples Never Fall, is a mystery wrapped up in a domestic drama which focuses on an Australian family shaped by their passion for tennis. Described as a pianist like no other, Igor Levit describes himself as a citizen and...

Front Row announces the shortlist for the £15,000, 16th BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University. Judge Fiona Mozley, author of Booker-shortlisted novel Elmet, joins us live to discuss the stories Australian tenor Stuart Skelton is a fan of a party. And what bigger party in classical music than the Last Night of the Proms?! Stuart will be taking centre stage and singing the traditi...

Elijah Wood tells Tom Sutcliffe about his new film No Man of God. Elijah Wood plays criminal profiler Bill Hagmaier in a story based on interview transcripts. Hagmaier is sent by the FBI to visit the serial killer Ted Bundy on death row. A fascinating, troubling relationship develops which becomes all the more intense when the date of Bundy's execution is announced. It's just a week away; Bundy ag...

The recent Netflix comedy drama, The Chair, centres on an English professor, played by Sandra Oh who has just been appointed the first female chair of the department and has big dreams about modernising it. Hanna Flint joins us to review We hear live from the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021, announced this evening: Susanna Clarke for her novel Piranesi. This year’s chair of judges is...

Iranian-born artist, photographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat talk to us about her latest work - a feature film entitled Land of Dreams which premiered at The Venice Film Festival last week -and her exhibition at Photo London of still images connected to New Mexico. The last of our Women’s Prize for Fiction-shortlisted authors, Yaa Gyasi, talks to Front Row ahead of the winner’s announcement tomor...

Guitarist Peter Green last performed with Fleetwood Mac, the band he help found, in 1970. Fellow founding-member Mick Fleetwood has honoured Green's legacy in an all-star concert that will be shown in cinemas, celebrating the band's early music. Mick Fleetwood talks to Samira about the early days of Fleetwood Mac, working with Peter, and dreams of a Fleetwood Mac reunion. Filmmaker Cathy Brady has...