Front Row

UK Culture Secretary LIsa Nandy talks us through the Government's new Creative Industries Sector Plan which aims to unlock growth and opportunity in culture, media and sport.

Last week 27-year-old Scottish author Margaret McDonald become the youngest ever winner of the Carnegie medal for children's writing, for her debut novel Glasgow Boys, a book which explores mental health, trauma, inequality and identity through the friendship b...

Billy Porter, famous for his Broadway roles in such shows as Kinky Boots and Grease, and onscreen in Pose and Cinderella is making his directorial debut in theatre with This Bitter Earth. Jesse is an introspective Black playwright and when Neil, Jesse’s boyfriend, who is a white Black Lives Matter activist, accuses him of political apathy, their passions and priorities collide. Playwright Harrison David Rivers and Billy Porter talk...

Samira talks to legendary Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose latest film F1 stars Brad Pitt as a racing car driver.

Alistair McGowan and Dr Caroline Potter celebrate the extraordinary music and life of the French composer Erik Satie, whose centenary is marked on Radio 3 on Saturday. Alistair's play about Satie, called Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear, is broadcast on Radio 4 on July 1st.

Nick Ahad visits Beamish, the Li...

Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi talk to tom Sutcliffe about directing Pixar's latest film Elio, about a lonely boy who wants to make contact with aliens. The film is then reviewed by film producer and critic Jason Solomons and art critic and writer Hettie Judah.

Tom and guests also discuss a major retrospective of the work of painter Jenny Saville at London's National Portrait Gallery, and The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey.

Jenny ...

On the opening night of the Glasgow Jazz Festival, Mercury Prize-shortlisted pianist Fergus McCreadie performs from his forthcoming album The Shieling live in the Front Row studio.

Writer and Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen talks about his debut novel Muckle Flugga – a story of love and family set on a remote Scottish island – and reads from the poem he has written for Independent Bookshop Week.

In the latest of our features on th...

RuPaul's Drag Race producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato join Nick Ahad to talk about their career making making television and movies, ahead of being guests of honour at this year's Sheffield DocFest.

Radio 3 presenter Tom Service discusses the life and legacy of Alfred Brendel who was a celebrated author, poet and pianist.

Caroline Norbury, the CEO of Creative UK, Stephanie Sirr, the Chief Executive of Nottingham Playhouse, and...

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland tell Tom Sutcliffe about their new film, 28 Years Later; a whole new take on the story which stars Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It's the follow up to their post-apocalyptic fast-paced, gory zombie movies 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. The Rage virus escaped a medical research laboratory and - nearly three decades later - one group of survivors has learned how to exist among th...

Professor John Mullan and writer Lucy O’Brien join Tom to review More, Pulp's first album in nearly 24 years. They also discuss exhibitions by the 20th century British artists Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun which are running in parallel at Tate Britain. Plus they give their verdict on Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, inspired by actual experiences of Laura Piani, who is making her directorial debut with this film.

Tom also talks to V...

Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys remembered

Turner Prize winning artist Rachel Whiteread talks about her retrospective exhibition at the brand new Goodwood Art Foundation in Sussex.

We celebrate the centenary of the National Library of Scotland and hear about its plans to send important items from its collection to museums around the country - from National Librarian Amina Shah and bestselling writer and Centenary Champion Val McDer...

Sarah Moss, the celebrated author of Ghost Wall, discusses her new novel Ripeness, which oscillates between tension-filled contemporary Ireland and a heady summer in 1960s Italy.

Dylan Jones discusses his new book 1975: The Year The World Forgot and debates whether this was the best year for music with chief music critic of the Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick.

After reports of an emerging deal between the UK and Greece around the s...

Ian Rankin pays tribute to the best-selling thriller author Frederick Forsyth, whose death was announced today.

Samira talks to Twin Peaks' co-creator Mark Frost and podcaster Mike Munser about the show's enduring legacy 35 years on, as Twin Peaks is re-released and celebrated at the BFI Film on Film Festival.

Playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti talks about her new play Marriage Material, which spans decades in the lives of a Sikh fami...

Tom and guests review What it Feels Like for Girl, the BBC's coming-of-age drama based on the memoir of Paris Lees; Taylor Jenkins Reid's new novel, Atmosphere, set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program and new film, Lollipop, about a young woman released from prison battling to regain custody of her children, written and directed by Daisy-May Hudson. We also talk to former Vice President of Washington's Kennedy C...

Daisy Goodwin discusses her debut play, By Royal Appointment, which stars Anne Reid as Queen Elizabeth and Caroline Quentin as her dresser, and which opens this week at Theatre Royal, Bath.

The life and legacy of Irish novelist playwright and poet Edna O'Brien is discussed by writer Jan Carson and the director of the documentary Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story, Sinead O’Shea.

And we hear from the curator of Design & Disabilit...

Comedian Nick Mohammed on his stand-up show Mr Swallow, and Deep Cover, his action thriller about a group of comedy improvisers.

Kate Wasserberg, Artistic Director of Theatr Clywd on the theatre's £50 million redevelopment, and opening the new auditorium with a production of the musical Tick Tick... Boom!

Ulrich Birkmaier, senior conservator of paintings at the J Paul Getty Museum in LA on restoring a work by Artemisia Gentileschi da...

Samira discusses the Olivier award-winning production of Fiddler on the Roof with its star Adam Dannheisser and director Jordan Fein.

Sarah Dunant talks about the women in the Renaissance who became art patrons, as she publishes her novel The Marchesa, about Isabella d'Este of Mantua.

Screenwriter Frederic Raphael, whose films include Far From the Madding Crowd, Darling and Eyes Wide Shut, on the art of writing film scripts.

Produce...

Samira Ahmed and writers Dreda Mitchell and Mark Ravenhill review Imelda Staunton and her daughter, Bessie Carter, in Mrs Warren's Profession.

They consider, too, theatre director Marianne Elliott's first foray into film, The Salt Path, based on a Raynor Winn's bestselling memoir of how she and her husband, after they have lost their house and farm and he has been diagnosed with a rare terminal disease, walk the 600 miles of the Sou...

Paul Hartnoll of electronic music duo Orbital talks about the reissue of the band's Brown album which was originally released in 1993, with the addition of 23 extra tracks of rarities and previously unreleased material and about the intersection between dance music and politics.

Frances Wilson, who has previously published acclaimed biographies of D H Lawrence and Thomas De Quincy tells us about her latest book Electric Spark: Th...

Stereophonic is a play about the creative process, power dynamics and fraught personal relationships of a 1970s rock band. It won a Tony and many other awards on Broadway. Now Stereophonic has come to the West End. Playwright David Adjmi and Will Butler, sometime of Arcade Fire, who has written the music, discuss their own artistic process as they created it. Plus Skin from Skunk Anansie on their first LP in almost a decade, news o...