Front Row

In the first instalment of our new series, Inside the Songs, Paul McCartney talks about his life and song-writing through the prism of ten key lyrics, beginning with The Beatles’ classic All My Loving. Poet Paul Muldoon discusses working with Paul McCartney on his intimate and revealing new book, The Lyrics, and explains why he sees McCartney as a great literary figure. In the latest of our Booker...

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

Producer-director Sarah Smith made her animation debut with the festive favourite, Arthur Christmas. Ten years on she’s back with Ron’s Gone Wrong, a warm-hearted romp with a robot and a critique of social media’s impact on young minds. For this week’s audio postcard, presenter and local boy Nick Ahad is in Bradford. He dons his hard hat to check out what’s happening at the famous art deco buildin...

We announce the winners of the BBC National Short Story Award 2021 and the BBC Young Writers' Award 2021. Kirsty Lang is joined for the show by National Short Story Award judges James Runcie and Fiona Mozley and Young Writers' Award judges Katie Thistleton and Louise O'Neill. The BBC National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receivi...

Arinzé Kene talks to Samira Ahmed about playing Bob Marley in the new musical Get Up, StandUp! Singer Clare Norburn is live in the studio to perform a piece by 16th Century composer John Dowland and discuss her new play about Dowland, I, Spie. We discuss the inaugural Working Class Writers Festival taking place in Bristol this weekend with organiser Natasha Carthew and publisher Sarah Fortune. Pre...

Front Row goes live to Coventry to announce the winner of the 2021 Riba Stirling Prize and discuss the shortlist with BBC Arts and Media correspondent David Sillito and architecture critic for the Guardian, Oliver Wainwright. Author Charlotte Philby and arts and books editor for Prospect Magazine Sameer Rahim join Tom Sutcliffe to review the new series of Succession and Silverview, John le Carré’s...

Theatre director Emma Jordan discusses The Border Game, a new play to mark 100 years of the Irish border. We hear from Omagh in County Tyrone as reporter Freya McClement explores a moving new installation by artist Paula Stokes at the Ulster American Folk Park. And director Ridley Scott talks to Samira about his new film The Last Duel starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer. Presenter: Sa...

Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama on her play White Noise, which has its the UK premier tonight. Life is not so bad for four liberal friends, two couples, black with a white partner, until Leo has a run in with the cops and it all begins to unravel. The poet, playwright, and novelist, Owen Sheers, has written a new BBC One drama, The Trick. He t...

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...