Front Row

As two new productions prepare to take on Shakespeare in fresh and unexpected ways, the women behind them - Jeanie O'Hare, creator of new play Queen Margaret, and Jude Christian creator of OthelloMacbeth - discuss developing new dramas from Shakespeare's canon. Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull is a theatre classic that has been produced in many different ways for stage and screen since its premier...

John Simm stars in new ITV drama Strangers as a man who has to fly to Hong Kong to identify his wife's body, only to discover she has a secret other life. We talk to the actor about filming the thriller in Hong Kong and why he's so often cast as an everyman figure. In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab vows vengeance against the white whale which took his leg and chases him around the globe. In his new book...

After a devastating fire at the newly-opened Alexandra Palace in London in 1873, a new building was designed and built which included an elaborate and elegant theatre, and the opening concert was of the early Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, Trial by Jury. The theatre hasn't been used as a performance space for 80 years, but tomorrow the BBC Proms will be broadcast live from the newly-restored spa...

Television drama Mother's Day charts the aftermath of the 1993 Warrington bombing, telling the stories of Colin and Wendy Parry (played by Anna Maxwell Martin and Daniel Mays), the parents of Tim Parry, one of two young boys who died in the attack, and Dublin housewife Sue McHugh (Vicky McClure). The BAFTA award-winning writer Nick Leather, who grew up in Warrington and who was a teenager on his w...

Idris Elba is a man of many parts - actor, DJ, kick-boxer and now film director. He discusses his first feature, Yardie, based on the hit novel of the same name, by Victor Headley which, in 1992, told the tales of "D", a Jamaican in London engaged in the super-violent drugs trade of the 1970s. The former Raleigh Cycle Company headquarters in Nottingham recently became the 400,000th listed building...

Andrew Miller, who won the Costa Book of the Year Award for his novel Pure, discusses his new book Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, an adventure story set during the Napoleonic wars. We consider how the idea of the artist's muse has changed over time, and ask what makes a modern muse? With art critic Louisa Buck, novelist and critic Matt Thorne and Andrew Miller. As the latest TV adaptation of Willi...

Poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan takes us on a guided tour of Darfield churchyard near Barnsley, as part of Front Row's Inspire season. Patrick Gale, who wrote last year's TV drama Man In An Orange Shirt, discusses his new novel Take Nothing With You, a coming-of-age story as a young boy obsessed with the cello realises how messy adult life can be. Are internet horror movies becoming a new genre?...

Monday sees the performance of a ‘Relaxed Prom’ at the Royal Albert Hall, offering an informal environment for children, young people and adults with autism, sensory and communication impairments, learning disabilities and other challenges. The Prom will feature the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and its ensemble BSO Resound, comprising six disabled musicians led by conductor James Rose who has ce...

Jed Mercurio's new drama Bodyguard follows Richard Madden as a troubled war veteran assigned as protection officer to the Home Secretary played by Keeley Hawes. TV critic Alison Graham reviews this latest offering from the writer of police thriller Line of Duty. As a One Direction themed fanfiction is now being turned into a feature film; we ask if fanfiction has finally gone mainstream with books...

Spike Lee's new film BlacKkKlansman is based on a true story from the 1970s. John David Washington plays Ron Stallworth the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Determined to make a name for himself he sets out on a dangerous mission to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. Natty Kasambala reviews. Canadian author Esi Edugyan on her Man Booker Priz...

This year Sir Lenny Henry marks his 60th birthday with a special television programme with Sir Trevor McDonald. As well as performing some new sketches, he talks about bunking off school to appear in the TV talent show New Faces and how he fell in love with Shakespeare. He joins Stig to discuss a career that has spanned over four decades. In the US TV drama series Instinct, Alan Cumming stars as D...

How people with dwarfism have been represented in art and culture, from Ancient Egypt to Velasquez to Game of Thrones. Kirsty is joined by Tom Shakespeare, Professor of Disability Research at East Anglia University and Richard Butchins, who has made the BBC Four film Dwarfs in Art: A New Perspective. Scottish artist Barbara Rae has travelled to the Arctic in the footsteps of the Victorian explorer...

Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul" known for hits like Respect, Natural Woman and Say a Little Prayer, has died in Detroit at the age of 76. Broadcaster Paul Gambaccini and music critic Kevin Le Gendre assess her life and work. Actor David Suchet, discusses taking on the role of a 90 year-old furniture dealer in a revival of Arthur Miller's The Price at the Theatre Royal, Bath. It's 50 years sin...

Queen guitarist Brian May fell in love with 3D photography as a child and has since gone on to establish his own publishing company devoted to sharing stereoscopic work from the Victorian era to the present day. May's latest publication is a book by Professor Roger Taylor about the Scottish photography pioneer George Washington Wilson. May and Taylor discuss why Wilson's 3D photographs of Scottish...

The drag girl band Denim was Cambridge University's first drag troupe when they formed in 2010. Now, they're back in Edinburgh and for Front Row perform a song from their Reunion Tour and discuss how their drag comes with a political and uplifting message. Author Maggie O'Farrell talks about the art of writing life stories as her own memoir I Am, I Am, I Am tops the bestseller charts, structured a...

Rosie Jones, a stand-up comedian whose material plays on her experience of living with Cerebral Palsy, discusses defying expectations - both onstage and off. Her one woman show is Fifteen Minutes. Janeane Garofalo is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and Saturday Night Liv...

The identity of the 'dark lady' of the Shakespeare's sonnets has mystified academics for years. As the Globe stage a new play about Emilia Bassano, one of the main candidates, Shakespearean academics Germaine Greer and Will Tosh consider how likely it is that Emilia is the dark lady and what we know about the real Emilia Bassano- a writer herself. Denzel Washington discusses starring in his first...

Disenchantment, Netflix's new animated series set in a fantastical medieval world from The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening is released this week. TV critic Andrew Collins and comedy writer Natasha Hodgson discuss whether the fantasy series has brought some Simpsons' magic to Netflix. Alan Garner's debut novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, is regarded as one of the great 20th century works of chi...

Sharks have long held a prominent place in mythology, the imagination and even religion for centuries. As The Meg, a thriller about a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark, hits cinema screens nature writer Philip Hoare and film critic Isabel Stevens discuss the ways in which sharks have been represented in the arts. How much is the cultural representation of these 400 million year old mysterious creatur...

The mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly is an opera star, singing the big roles at La Scala, The Met, Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House. Her latest project is much more modest yet very ambitious; 'Come to Me in My Dreams' is a CD of songs and poems, mostly English - Shakespeare, Blake, Housman - set by composers all of whom studied or taught at the Royal School of Music. She talks to Morgan Qua...

Craig and Charlie Reid, better known as The Proclaimers, are live in the Front Row studio playing the title track of their new album Angry Cyclist. They discuss passing the 30 year landmark as professional musicians, seeing their music inspire a theatre production and a film, and why the idea of an angry cyclist seemed for them the perfect way of capturing the current political mood. Two new produ...

The Artist's Way is a creative self-help book that has sold over 4 million copies and garnered dedicated fans around the world. As part of Front Row's Inspire season we speak to its author Julia Cameron who explains the philosophy behind her 12 week programme and answers listener's questions. Stephen Mangan stars as an online therapist in new Channel 4 comedy Hang Ups, loosely based on US series W...

Yesterday we launched our new season Inspire. Today we ask the key question: what is inspiration? The poet Kei Miller, the composer Philip Venables, the novelist Stella Duffy, the artist Aowen Jin and the philosopher Julian Baggini join Front Row to share their thoughts on the line between a magical moment and hard graft. On Monday Aurora Orchestra return to the BBC Proms to perform Shostakovich's...

We explore the natural landscape as artistic inspiration from three locations around the country. Writer Tracy Chevalier and artist Gayle Chong Kwan join John Wilson in Epping Forest to discuss why forests and trees have sparked ideas for them, composer Brian Irvine and broadcaster Marie-Louise Muir consider the art made about the sea and coastline from Helen's Bay, County Down and poet Kenneth St...

Melvin Burgess, who's been dubbed the Godfather of Young Adult fiction, talks about his new book The Lost Witch about a teenage girl who discovers she has magical powers. A record-breaking 3.6 million people watched this year's Love Island final. That's more viewers than were watching BBC One, BBC Two or ITV in the same time slot. Journalist and critic Alix O'Neill discusses the show's cultural im...