Front Row

Could being visually impaired enhance an artist’s work? We’ll discuss that with Richard Butchins who’s made a BBC 4 documentary - The Disordered Eye - arguing just that. He looked at the work of artists who are known to have had low vision, such as Degas and Monet and those who were blind like Sargi Mann. And heard from contemporary artists like landscape painter Keith Salmon and sensory photograp...

We can't go to the movies for a fix of action now. We can, though, witness spectacle that even the biggest budget blockbusters can't match - by simply going outside into the weather. 'Use should be made of it,' wrote Virginia Woolf. 'One should not let this gigantic cinema play perpetually to an empty house.' The poet Alice Oswald discusses Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology that she's compiled...

In an extended interview, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas talks about relishing her latest role as the scary housekeeper Mrs Danvers in the new Netflix adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Kristin first trained to teach drama, not to perform in it and when she tried to transfer to the acting course, she was told, without any consoling words, that her only real chance of playing a big part was to j...

Steven Isserlis tells John Wilson about his new album of late works by Sir John Tavener. It is a very personal project: Tavener and Isserlis were friends, the composer wrote pieces for the cellist and Isserlis gave the first performances of some of Tavener's works. His music was greatly influenced by the liturgy and traditions of the Orthodox Church, but this album reveals his openness to other re...

When the singer Sam Smith came out as non-binary last year it was headline news around the world. After two global number one albums, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, multiple Grammys and 3 Brit awards, the 28-year-old singer is very much an international household name. And yet, as they release their third album, Love Goes, they are still beset by self-doubt. Sam Smith talks to Front Row about fame, hea...

Samira Ahmed talks to comedienne, actress and writer Dawn French. Dawn became famous with her comedy performimg partner of many decades; Jennifer Saunders. Together they won British Comedy Awards and BAFTAs but Dawn has also achieved acting success on her own - The Vicar Of Dibley, Murder Most Horrid, Delicious, Psychoville and many more. And she is also a best-selling, highly successful writer of...

For the second of Front Row's Booker Prize Book Groups, listeners put their questions to Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga whose novel This Mournable Body is shortlisted for the title. It’s the third part of a trilogy that began with the highly-acclaimed Nervous Conditions in 1988. The books tell the story of Tambudzai, a woman whose life has been full of promise but who now finds herself mired...

Elisabeth Moss on her latest role as the horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson in the new film Shirley. And she discusses the new series of The Handmaid’s Tale, which she’s now directing as well as starring in, and which has had to be filmed during the pandemic. Presenter: Elle Osili-Wood Producer: Timothy Prosser Main image: Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Image credit: Neon Films

Film-maker Sofia Coppola talks about reuniting with Bill Murray for her new film On The Rocks, a comedy about a martini-drinking playboy father who reconnects with his daughter (Rashida Jones) on an adventure through New York. Front Row is convening a series of Booker Prize book groups in which readers can put questions to the six shortlisted authors, ahead of the announcement of the winner on the...

In Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster, six performers from Battersea Arts Centre's Beatbox Academy interpret Mary Shelley’s classic novel from their own perspective; as young people growing up in 21st-century Britain. Using only their own mouths and voices to make every sound in the film, they explore how today’s society creates its own monsters. John Wilson talks to one of the creator performers...

Geeta Pendse presents Front Row live from Nottingham in a shared broadcast with BBC Radio Nottingham. In spite of virus restrictions, Nottingham Playhouse goes live for the first time since March this week with a season they're calling Notthingham Unlocks. We'll talk to the playwright and local James Graham about his brand new play, a lockdown romance played by TV stars Jessica Raine and Pearl Mac...

Acclaimed violinist Tasmin Little announced her retirement from the stage recently. The musician is selling her beloved violin to focus on teaching. She will perform her final UK recital at London's Royal Festival Hall tomorrow night. We talk to her about her career, why she took the decision to retire now and her plans for the future. Covid has had a huge impact on choral singing with choirs havi...

A collaboration with the Aké Festival: leading black writers and artists discuss Black Lives Matter and related issues of this year in connection to their work. With Tayari Jones, Derek Owusu, Victor Ehikhamenor and Sara-Jayne Makwala King. The Aké Festival is the world's largest literary festival of black voices on black issues. Usually held in Lagos, Nigeria, this year it's online and free, from...

Nicole Kidman talks about starring in new thriller The Undoing. A therapist's life unravels after she learns that her husband might be responsible for a horrific murder. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself. The Undoing will...

Roddy Doyle talks about his latest novel, Love. In the course of one summer’s evening in Dublin, two old drinking buddies revisit the pubs and the love affairs of their youth, and talk openly about their marriages and other relationships, downing several pints of stout along the way. Gairloch Museum in the Highlands of Scotland is one of the winners of the 2020 Art Fund Museum of the Year prize. I...

Anaïs Mitchell took the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and turned it into Hadestown, which became an immensely successful musical at the National Theatre and on Broadway. Now she has written Working on a Song, a book that gets down to the nitty-gritty of writing for musical theatre, tracing the development of the songs of Hadestown from the spark of an idea to performance by a big ensemble and a ful...

The global bestselling author Jodi Picoult discusses her 26th novel The Book Of Two Ways. It’s the story of a hospice worker who - when her plane crashes in the opening pages -is surprised at the life that flashes before her eyes. Rather than her scientist husband and teenage daughter, she sees the life that might have been had she made different choices when she was a student. Jodi Picoult discus...

Hugh Laurie talks about Roadkill, a major new political drama for BBC One written by David Hare. Roadkill is a four-part fictional thriller about a self-made, forceful and charismatic politician trying to outrun his past. Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum is one of the winners in Art Fund’s Museum Of The Year 2020. We discover how they’ll be spending their £40,000 prize to benefit the local artistic...

This year’s Art Fund Museum of the Year Prize will be split 5 ways rather than a winner being chosen from a shortlist. Jenny Waldman, director of Art Fund, announces the museums who will each receive £40,000. We’ll also be looking at each individual museum over the course of this week on Front Row On the day that the government awarded Culture Recovery Fund grants totalling £257m to arts organisat...

Alex Wheatle discusses his new novel Cane Warriors, based on the true story of a group of slaves in Jamaica who, in 1760, rose up against their white British slavemasters in a fight for the freedom of all enslaved people in the nearby plantations. As Forest Green Rovers become the UK's first football club to appoint an Artistic Director, Robert Del Naja, founding member of Massive Attack, explains...

Skin - the singer, songwriter, DJ and lead vocalist of the multi-million-selling British rock band Skunk Anansie - looks back over her life in her new memoir It Takes Blood and Guts. Born to Jamaican parents, Skin - real name Deborah Dyer - grew up in Brixton in the 1970s which influenced her musical direction. The shaven-headed singer reflects on how a gay, black, working-class girl with a vision...

We discuss the future of music making in the UK. We speak to Mel C, formerly Sporty Spice, about her eighth studio album, Melanie C, which reflects her new influences – as a dance music DJ, an LGBTQ+ icon and mother to a music-mad daughter. She joins John Wilson to talk about musical reinvention, putting aside her demons and how to read the dancefloor when you’re the DJ. Freelance musicians unable...

We announce the winner of the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers' Award on its 15th anniversary. Judges Irenosen Okojie and Jonathan Freedland discuss the merits of the entries from the shortlisted authors. In contention for the £15,000 prize are Caleb Azumah Nelson, Jan Carson, Sarah Hall, Jack Houston and Eley Williams. Writer and musician Testament performs Point Blank -...

The London Film Festival opens this week with Mangrove, by the Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen. It’s the first in an ambitious five-part film series looking at individual stories about the West Indian Community in London from 1968 to 1985. Anna Smith joins us to review Mangrove, the story of a notorious 1970 prosecution that exposed police harassment of Black Britons, as well as to give us he...

Radha Blank won the Directing Prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival for her debut film, The 40-Year-Old Version. She also wrote and stars in the movie which is inspired by her own experiences as a Black New York based playwright and rapper approaching her 40th birthday and frustrated at the lack of creative opportunities. It’s been praised as astute and funny and it’s filmed in black and white...