Front Row

Sharlene Teo on her debut novel Ponti, an account of teenage friendship and fraught mother/daughter relationships set in a sweltering Singapore, that's been called remarkable by Ian McEwan. Is Coronation Street the most feminist soap on television? Emma Bullimore makes the case. Radio 4 poet-in-residence Alice Oswald and artist William Tillyer discuss their collaboration Nobody. Both a book and an...

As singer Janelle Monaé's video for her new single PYNK goes viral, music journalist Ruth Barnes looks back at other game-changers in the genre. The new Young People's Laureate for London was announced yesterday evening as Momtaza Mehri. We bring her together with the outgoing post holder Caleb Femi to discuss what he learnt in the role and ask Momtaza what she hopes to achieve. The soundtrack to...

Actress Naomie Harris talks about her latest role in Brad Peyton's big-screen video game adaptation Rampage, which sees her fighting a trio of oversized genetically-modified predators alongside Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. Has it got harder for working class talent to make a career on stage and screen? This week the Anna Scher Theatre School, which is responsible for launching the careers of working...

Viv Albertine was the guitarist in the cult punk band The Slits and a key player in British counter culture before working as a film maker and launching a solo career. Her new memoir, To Throw Away Unopened, unpicks family secrets which shaped her childhood and her early creative influences. This book begins when she is at the launch party for her hugely successful first book Clothes, Clothes, Clo...

Tate Liverpool's arts handler Ken Simons has just retired after working there since its opening 30 years ago. To mark his retirement, Tate have allowed him to curate his own exhibition, Exploring the Unseen, using works from the Tate collection. He explains how he chose the 30 works - one for each of his years at the gallery. As Audible launches three new podcasts featuring original short stories...

To mark 20 years of Front Row Kirsty Lang and John Wilson host a celebratory extended edition live from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in London. Liz Carr, Bob Geldof, Lionel Shriver and Testament make their case for what they think is the most significant art work of the last 20 years. Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum and familiar voice to Radio 4, considers cult...

Actor David Morrissey, well known for his roles in TV dramas like State of Play, The Deal, Red Riding, The Walking Dead and Britannia. He talks about his latest role is as Inspector Tyador in BBC Two's adaption of the China Miéville's novel The City and The City. The drama is a speculative science-fiction meets police procedural, set in two cities which share a geographical location but whose resi...

Cuba Gooding Jr is taking to the stage in the new West End production of one of the world's most successful musicals - Chicago. He talks to Stig Abell about his role as the lawyer Billy Flynn and his career; starring in Boyz n the Hood, playing OJ Simpson, the impact of winning an Oscar for Jerry Maguire, and how Hollywood is changing its attitude to black actors. Bob Honey who Just Do Stuff is a...

Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna on the many different ingredients that make up her new novel, Happiness, a multi-layered story set in modern London, seen from the perspective of those passing through. The Alpha male sweeping a woman off her feet has long been a common trope in romantic fiction but can it survive in a world where the #MeToo movement has transformed the debate around gender poli...

Ever since the legendary heroic outlaw Robin Hood first stole from the rich to give to the poor, Nottingham has had a tradition of political defiance, addressing social injustice and encouraging free expression. Sandeep Mahal, Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, assesses to what extent that still holds today in the city's rich cultural landscape, and talks to writers, poets, singers...

This year marks the centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth and to celebrate the occasion Front Row explores his life and music. John Wilson is joined by his son, Alexander Bernstein, who remembers his father composing at home, and who attended many of his Young People's Concerts; by his friend and biographer, Humphrey Burton, who discusses Bernstein's multiple talents as a conductor, composer and...

David Mamet, the American playwright, director and novelist, talks to Stig about his new novel, Chicago, set amongst the gangster rivalry of the 1920s. He explains his fascination with that era in the city of his birth, discusses the writers who have inspired him and explains the importance of imagination, inspiration and dialogue in the storyteller's craft. Meghan Markle's final season in US dram...

Wes Anderson discusses his film Isle of Dogs, including working with stop-motion animation and drawing inspiration from Studio Ghibli director Miyazaki for the Japanese setting for the film. What makes a great sports theme tune? As the 2018 Formula 1 season kicks off with a specially composed anthem, we speak to its composer Brian Tyler and consider the essential components of an iconic sports the...

Steven Spielberg, director of films like The Post, The BFG and Bridge of Spies, returns to the science fiction genre with an action adventure set in a virtual-reality game world sometime in the future. Julia Hardy reviews the film and tells Samira whether it is a classic of the genre like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Back to the Future. The York Realist is a play set in 1963 when John, up...

Anna Chancellor stars in the new TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's murder mystery Ordeal By Innocence this weekend, in which she plays Rachel Argyll, heiress, philanthropist and mother of five adopted children found murdered on Christmas Eve. Samira talks to the actress, who is well-known for her roles in Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Hour, Spooks and Mapp & Lucia. Harshdeep Kaur, the popu...

Artist Sonia Boyce's career has been punctuated by series of firsts - the first black woman to have her work collected by the Tate, the first black woman to be elected a Royal Academician. As her first retrospective opens, Sonia discusses her art and why she removed a painting from the walls of Manchester Art Gallery. On the 100th anniversary of Debussy's death two interpreters of his music discus...

Macbeth is on at the National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House, and there will be at least 15 more Macbeths at theatres and festivals around the country this year. Rufus Norris, director of the National's production, and Kit Monkman, who has made the latest film version, discuss why Shakespeare's play has such urgent appeal today. The British Council has been in the...

Director Steven Soderbergh on his latest film, Unsane, which stars Claire Foy as a woman admitted to a mental health facility against her will. The film was shot entirely on three iphones. Is this the future of film? America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper, a big exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford focuses on American artists in the early 20th century - including Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward...

Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon and Patti Smith are just a few of the artists who trusted an inexperienced recording engineer, Jimmy Iovine, at the controls of their albums in the '70s. Iovine discusses a new documentary series The Defiant Ones, in which he looks back at 40 years in the record business: from those early beginnings, teaming up with hip hop artist Dr Dre, creating the Beats audio bra...

As Andrew Lloyd Webber turns 70, Kirsty Lang talks to the composer about how he transformed musical theatre with hits like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. When Sunset Boulevard joined School of Rock, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway last year, Andrew Lloyd Webber became the only person to equal the record set in 1953 by his musical hero...

Sir Tom Jones and Jennifer Hudson discuss mentoring the competitors in the TV talent show The Voice, how they coach their protégés and where the value of knockout singing competitions lies. Kirsty visits rehearsals at the studios of the television show and talks to the two judges. As The Square, a satire on modern art galleries hits cinemas, we consider the portrayal of the art gallery in film wit...

Lara Croft remains one of the most famous gaming characters ever. Now as the film franchise of the games gets a reboot staring Alicia Vikander, film critic Kate Muir and gamer Julia Hardy discuss whether Lara Croft is a feminist icon or an object of male fantasy and what she reveals about the portrayal of women in gaming and film. Debut novelist Lisa Halliday won the prestigious American Whiting A...

Mary Magdalene was Jesus Christ's most loyal friend, who stayed with him through the ordeal of his crucifixion, and was the first witness to his resurrection. But she was also denigrated by the church as a prostitute. Now her story is told in a new film with Rooney Mara as Mary and Joaquin Phoenix as Christ. Michèle Roberts, who wrote the novel The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene, reviews. With it...

Paddy Considine discusses Journeyman, the new film he's written, directed and stars in. The film is centred on the life of a boxer who, after a damaging championship bout, discovers that he has far bigger fights on his hands. Four British mosques have just been given listed status or been upgraded in recognition of their historic, cultural and architectural importance. Architect Shahed Saleem, who...

Eleanor Bron will be 80 on Wednesday. She is still working - she will be in Scottish Opera's production of Ariadne auf Naxos this year. Talking to Samira Ahmed she looks back over her long career, from the satire boom with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, through working with The Beatles in Help and roles in classical theatre such as in The Duchess of Malfi. The Great Wave at the National Theatre expl...