Front Row

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke explains how he composed his first feature film soundtrack for Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino’s remake of the 1977 Dario Argento horror film. If you've listened to an audiobook, can you say you've read the book? According to the Publishers Association UK, spending on audiobooks has more than doubled in the past five years, to £31m in 2017. We ask literary journalists Sarah...

Bohemian Rhapsody, the new biopic of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, is finally in cinemas after eight years in the making. During production, two leading actors quit the project before Rami Malek took on the role of Freddie Mercury, Kate Mossman considers if film is worth the wait. As he approaches his 80th birthday this week, the conductor and composer Howard Blake looks back over his career whi...

Mike Leigh discusses his latest film Peterloo, an historical epic that depicts the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter's Field in Manchester turned into one of the most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reform. Novelist CJ Sansom dis...

Author Luke Jennings on his Killing Eve novels, which inspired the recent television series. Jennings reveals what motivated him to create the ruthless assassin, Villanelle, and Eve, the agent hunting her, and the somewhat bizarre relationship the two of them seem to have. Revulsion is one of the strongest human reactions and if art is designed to instil an emotional response in the viewer, what i...

Eric Idle is of course a member of the comedy phenomenon Monty Python. His autobiography, or as he fashions it sortabiography, is called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, after the song he wrote for the end of the troupe’s controversial 1979 film, Life of Brian. He’ll be talking about his role in Python, his career, his friendships with the likes of George Harrison and David Bowie, and the c...

Gerard Butler talks to John Wilson about starring alongside Gary Oldman in his latest action film, Hunter Killer. Set deep under the Arctic Ocean, Butler plays an American submarine captain on the hunt for another US vessel in distress when he discovers a secret Russian coup that could lead to another world war. Bigger budgets, bigger explosions and bigger torsos seem to be dominating our movie sc...

Willy Loman is very much the heart and soul of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-prizewinning play, Death of a Salesman. However as a new production opens at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, two actors Maureen Beattie and Marion Bailey - who have played the role of Linda Loman- join Stig to discuss what they found when they played the salesman’s wife. Crime novelist AA Dhand reviews ‘Informer’ a new crimi...

#MeToo one year on – what impact has the hashtag popularised by Hollywood actresses had on the arts and on women around the world? We speak to Jude Kelly, Founder & Director of the Women Of the World Foundation, film critic Larushka Ivan Zadeh, Helen Lewis, Associate Editor Of The New Statesman, and to Naomi Pohl, Assistant General Secretary Of The Musicians Union. Forgotten is a new play abou...

The 2011 Norwegian terrorist attack at Utøya island summer camp has been made into a film by Paul Greengrass. The director, whose previous work includes the Jason Bourne thrillers, Bloody Sunday and Captain Phillips, explains his approach to making such an emotional and politically charged picture, which shows both the attack itself and the perpetrator Anders Breivik’s justifying his actions in co...

Desiree Akhavan has not only co-written Channel 4's new comedy drama The Bisexual, but directs and stars in it as well. The series centres on Leila, who after splitting from her long-term girlfriend, attempts to navigate the dating scene as she becomes involved with both men and women. Film critic Rhianna Dhillon reviews ensemble thriller Bad Times at the El Royal starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Hems...

When Stig Abell was in his mid-twenties he went through a period where he would wake up in the middle of the night uncontrollably anxious and found reading, especially the novels of PG Wodehouse, provided respite. In this special programme on World Mental Health Day, Stig goes on a journey to try and understand what it is about reading which can improve mental well-being, and talks to writers Mari...

An entire disused swimming pool has been built on the ground floor of the Whitechapel Gallery in London for the new exhibition from the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset. The artists discuss how they have been inspired by the work of David Hockney and Ed Ruscha. Then film critic Mark Eccleston art critic Jacky Klein and artist and former Canadian national competitive swimmer Leanne Shapton r...

The actor and entertainer Bernard Cribbins, who will be 90 in December, discusses his new memoir Bernard Who?: 75 Years of Doing Just About Everything, in which he tells his own story, very much in his own way, about a busy career which includes Jackanory , Right Said Fred, Doctor Who, The Wombles, Shakespeare, Hitchcock’s Frenzy, The Railway Children, Crooks in Cloisters, three Carry On films and...

“It’s about time” is the tagline for the new Doctor Who series, referencing the programme’s time-travelling exploits, but also the arrival of the first female Doctor in the show's history. Jodie Whittaker will be the 13th Doctor and tells us how she's tackling a role with so much history, attention and anticipation around it. Haruki Murakami's novels are awaited by eager audiences not just in his...

Alice Walker is famous for prose books such as The Color Purple and In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. But her first book was a collection of poems and she has published eight more. Alice talks about her latest, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart, which ranges from poems of rage about injustice, poems of praise to great figures - BB King for instance - and celebration of the ordinary like making fr...

In the week Rowan Atkinson returns to the big screen as the hapless spy in Johnny English Strikes Again, which sees him batter innocent bystanders and himself in a series of pratfalls, we look at the art of physical comedy. Jonathan Sayer of Mischief Theatre, classicist and stand-up Natalie Haynes and Dr Oliver Double of the University of Kent attempt to answer an eternal question: why is the unfo...

We announce the winner of the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award and the Young Writers' Award live from West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge and celebrate the power and possibilities of the short story. Judges Sarah Howe and Stig Abell discuss the merits of the entries from the shortlisted authors. In contention for the £15,000 prize are Kerry Andrew, Sarah Hall, Kiare Ladner, Ingrid Persaud and Nel...

Sarah Perry discusses Melmoth, her eagerly awaited novel after her award-winning The Essex Serpent. Her new novel is about an English translator who, hiding from her past in Prague, uncovers the legend of Melmoth – a woman in black who wanders the world bearing witness to humanity’s worst crimes. BBC1’s new Sunday night drama is a television adaptation of Helen Fitzgerald’s novel The Cry, in which...

After being appointed director of last year’s opening event for Hull’s year as City of Culture, award-winning and Hull-born filmmaker Sean McAllister decided to make a documentary looking at the impact of the City of Culture on Hullensians by following the work of one man to set up a hip-hop project for disadvantaged kids. He discusses the result, A Northern Soul, and explains his current efforts...

In Theatr Clywd’s new production of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, the group of schoolboys stranded on a remote island have all been reimagined as girls. Critic Gary Raymond reviews. Forty playwrights and actors have accused National Theatre Wales of favouring English artists and companies over Welsh ones. In an open letter on the Wales Arts Review website, the Welsh artists al...

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie - The Goodies - join Samira to look back at their 1970s cult comedy series. As a complete box set of every episode is released, they reflect on their comedy writing that tackled police brutality, redefined comedy music and introduced television audiences to the little-known Lancastrian martial-art Ecky Thump. This week marks the centenary of the firs...

Oceania at the Royal Academy is the first ever major exhibition in the UK of art from the Pacific. It is very ambitious, showing 200 works from across that vast ocean, from Hawaii to New Zealand, New Guinea to Easter Island. It spans time, too, the earliest piece being about 500 years old, the latest completed last year. A Hawaiian writer, Vanessa Lee Miller, and a western maritime historian, Robe...

Cary Fukanaga, recently announced director of the next James Bond film, discusses his new Netflix series Maniac. The show explores the minds of two strangers, played by Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, who take part in a mysterious drug trial in the hope of changing their lives for the better. The Royal Opera House has unveiled the results of its £50m, two-and-a-half-year Open Up project. For the first...

New documentary Matangi/Maya/MIA about the political rapper MIA, uses self-filmed archive footage of the outspoken and ‘controversial’ Sri Lankan immigrant artist who took up the Tamil cause. So how does the film by director and friend Stephen Loveridge help us understand her life and music? Journalist Kieran Yates reviews. The Man Booker Prize 2018 shortlist of six books has just been announced a...

Eileen Atkins talks about her latest stage role in Florian Zeller’s The Height of the Storm, a play about a couple who have been in love for 50 years. The actress, who began her career in the 1950s explains the challenges of Zeller’s writing and her preference for new theatre. 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, John Kampfner, co-founder of the Creative Industries Federation, and arts...