Front Row

Ben Lewis talks about his book The Last Leonardo, about the world's most expensive work of art, the painting Salvator Mundi. Authenticated as a Leonardo in 2011, he examines its journey from Leonardo’s workshop in Milan through to the present day and explains why he has doubts about its authenticity. Art critic Waldemar Januszczak and editor of The Art Newspaper Alison Cole assess Leonardo's extra...

JRR Tolkien’s literary canon has inspired some of the highest-grossing films ever, now a biopic about his life is being released to cinemas. Tolkien stars Nicholas Hoult as The Lord of the Rings author and looks at his formative years at school and during World War One. But last week the family of Tolkien have issued a rare public statement disavowing the film. Fantasy author and Tolkien fan Saman...

Front Row pays tribute to Les Murray, Australia’s foremost contemporary poet, who died today aged 80. Unlike famous compatriots such as Germaine Greer and Clive James, Murray stayed in Australia and spent his last years on the farm in Bunyah, New South Wales, that had been his family’s home. Murray reacted against modernism, believing poetry should be accessible. He wrote poems about Australian pe...

Avengers: Endgame marks the culmination of 10 years of interlinking Marvel movies. After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War, and the loss of some of the world’s biggest heroes, the remaining Avengers re-assemble to try and undo Thanos's actions and restore order to the universe. Critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reviews. Linda Grant discusses her new novel, A Stranger City, a detailed port...

We announce the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2019 shortlist. Chair of the Judges and Director of the Art Fund Stephen Deuchar explains why these museums are in contention for the £100,000 prize. A recent report commissioned by President Macron has recommended that France should return all of its African artefacts unless they can prove that they legitimately acquired them, marking a significant shif...

Adeel Akhtar, who stars in the new BBC1 series Back to Life, talks about his acting career – from Four Lions to becoming the first non-white male to win a Best Actor BAFTA for the TV drama Murdered By My Father. Doris Hatt (1890-1969) was a painter, feminist, socialist and pioneer of British Modernism. Her work spanning five decades is the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Somerset in Taun...

We consider the connection between the public house and the arts. Why do pubs make such great settings, provide so much inspiration and serve as great venues for the arts? Al Murray ponders the longevity of his pub landlord and what this character allows him to explore about Britishness, as literary journalist Suzi Feay considers the representation of pubs in books and TV. Musician Eliza Carthy re...

Liz Pichon on her creation Tom Gates, the hugely popular series of books for young readers now on stage. Zanib Mian is the author of a new book about a Muslim family, Planet Omar - Accidental Trouble Magnet. Last year a report found that only 1% of children's books featured a main protagonist of colour. Alongside commentator and blogger Darren Chetty she considers whether that picture is changing...

The saxophonist Jess Gillam was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician award in 2016 and went on to take the Last Night of the Proms by storm last year. She plays live in the studio and talks to Samira about her beginnings in a carnival band in Cumbria and how she wants to expand the repertoire for sax players in classical music. The influential graphic designer Abram Games, who created The Festival...

Two female icons of the music industry release new works today. Beyonce’s new film Homecoming is released alongside a surprise new live album. The film focuses on her historic 2018 Coachella performance in which she celebrated America's historically black colleges and universities, black culture and black female empowerment. Also today, Madonna releases a new single ahead of her upcoming album and...

As France vows to restore Notre-Dame de Paris after last night's devastating fire, we discuss the artistic, musical and cultural significance of this great Cathedral. With music historian Mark Everist, art critic Waldemar Januszczak and French literature academic Eve Morisi. Roger McGough, one of Britain’s most widely read poets, talks about his latest anthology, joinedupwriting, in which he explo...

Andrew Scott, who played the priest in the recent run of the TV comedy drama Fleabag, talks about the sexual chemistry between him and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, how he approached “that wedding speech” in the series finale and his new film Steel Country, in which Scott plays a garbage collector in Pennsylvania who believes a boy has been murdered. Dame Maggie Smith returns to the stage after 12 years t...

Seamus Heaney died in 2013. Had he lived tomorrow would have been his 80th birthday. Heaney was a rare writer - a poet both beloved and respected. He was an eloquent advocate for the place and craft of poetry. Who would have thought Beowulf could be a modern day bestseller? Seamus Heaney's translation was. He made a profound social impact, too, and at the time of the Good Friday Agreement Presiden...

British painter Jenny Saville, the most expensive living female artist in the world, discusses her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt's masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles. Cellist Laura van der Heijden, who won the BBC Young Musician competition when she was 15, plays live and discusses her debut album of Russian music called 1948, which last night won the BBC Music Magazi...

The contemporary classical composer Gavin Bryars talks about the latest incarnation of his acclaimed 1971 work, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – a 12-hour overnight rendition at Tate Modern in London. The piece is based on a fragment of tape of a homeless man singing, and this performance combines the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bryars’s own ensemble, the Southbank Sinfonia, and the part...

Alistair Hudson, Director of the Whitworth in Manchester and Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven have been awarded a Transformative Grant to rethink their respective art institutions. They join Front Row to discuss how the concept of useful art has the power to remake museums and galleries fit for the 21st century. England has one, Scotland has one, Wales has two, but Northe...

The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is best known for The Scream, and a rare lithograph of the picture is at the heart of a major new exhibition of Munch’s work which opens at the British Museum this week. Critic Jacky Klein gives her response to Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, which focuses on the artist’s experimental prints, almost 50 of which are on loan from Norway’s Munch Museum. There's just on...

Carlos Acosta went from an impoverished upbringing in Havana, Cuba to a world-renowned ballet dancer and the first black Principal of The Royal Ballet. He tells John Wilson about his new film Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story, and his plans for Birmingham Royal Ballet; he starts his role as its director in January 2020. Composer Iain Bell on the world premiere of his new opera Jack the Ripper: The Wom...

Tomorrow sees the opening of an ambitious new multi-purpose arts venue, The Shed, in New York. This £360m building, featuring a vast telescoping outer shell which travels on rails, is at the heart of Hudson Yards, a major new £20bn property development in Manhattan, and sits alongside a new, copper-coloured ‘vertical park’ designed by the Thomas Heatherwick studio. Critic Sarah Crompton gives her...

Sir David Attenborough discusses Our Planet, his new eight-part series and Netflix debut, which explores the unique wonders of the natural world, from the Arctic wilderness to the diverse jungles of South America. In partnership with World Wildlife Fund, the series continues the conservation campaign raised by Attenborough's earlier series Blue Planet II. Lee Ridley, aka The Lost Voice Guy, is the...

Toby Jones tells us about turning his hand to writing for the new six part BBC2 TV series, Don’t Forget The Driver. It's a dark and poignant comedy about Brexit Britain, set in a coach company in Bognor Regis. The latest DC comics film Shazam! flies into cinemas this week. Originally published as a comic strip in 1939, it's the story of Billy Batson, a normal 14-year-old who is given the ability t...

Suzi Quatro was the first female bass player to become a rock star in the 1970s, with hits like Devil Gate Drive and Can the Can. Fifty-five years after her first performance, Suzi talks about her new album No Control which she wrote with her son. Playwright and actor John Kani and director Janice Honeyman discuss John's new play for the RSC – Kunene and the King - which reflects on South Africa's...

The 1983 Scottish film Local Hero was a much-loved comedy drama about an American oil company rep who is sent to a fictional village in Scotland to purchase the town for his company. This film has now been adapted into a stage musical at the Edinburgh Lyceum with all 19 songs composed by Mark Knopfler, who wrote the film soundtrack. So does Local Hero the musical work? Novelist Ian Rankin delivers...

Tash Aw, winner of the Whitbread Award and Commonwealth Book Prize, discusses his new novel We the Survivors, about a man born in a Malaysian fishing village who tries to make his way in a country and society that is transforming. He describes the book as a tribute to those battling to survive in a ruthless, rapidly changing world. As museums such as the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Modern s...

Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s exhibition at Turner Contemporary, Margate, explores our relationship with the vastness and mysteries of the universe, as she works with scientists who have pioneered research on the cosmic spectrum. The artist discusses her fascination with the physical world. So many successful TV shows have non-celebrities at their heart, from documentaries to reality programmes...