Front Row

Acclaimed author Siri Hustvedt on Ghost Stories, her memoir of her marriage to novelist, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster and her grief following his death in 2024.

Following last night's live report on the controversies surrounding this year's Venice Biennale, we are joined by one of the curators of the Ukrainian Pavillion, to hear how a concrete sculpture of a deer rescued from the frontline of the conflict in Ukraine forms the cen...

Antony Gormley joins Samira Ahmed. The sculptor and artist is best known for landmarks such as Angel of the North or the beach figures of Another Place, in Liverpool. But Antony has also been exhibiting drawings since the 80s and with the publication of the book Drawing he tells Samira what this art means to him.

After the Devil Wears Prada 2 topped the box office this week, BBC New Generation Thinker Dr. Sarah Smyth and author and ...

As the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration prepares to open in London, we find out how illustrators are adapting to a changing world.

Starting with a rare interview from Quentin Blake, we'll hear how this once undervalued side of the visual arts still creates the defining images of childhoods, whilst also now playing a central role in the visual language of the internet.

Featuring voices working across illustration, including Posy...

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by playwright Mark Ravenhill and academic and critic Maria Delgado to review:

The first major UK exhibition of Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán at the National Gallery.

A new Spanish language series adaptation of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits on Amazon Prime video.

Please Please Me by Tom Wright, a play about manager Brian Epstein and The Beatles at the Kiln Theatre in London.

Plus Tom speaks to ...

From the rebellious spirit of The Jam in the 1970s to the soulful sound of The Style Council and mellow ballads as a solo artist, singer-songwriter Paul Weller is about to release Weller At The BBC Volume 2 - a series of session recordings of his classic hits and interpretations of other artists' songs. He .discusses his musical evolution and his influences.

She's been rather overshadowed by fellow writers such as James Kelman and...

Children's Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce launches the Children's Booker Prize and discusses some of the themes of his forthcoming Waterstones Children's Laureate Lecture - The Kids Are Not Alright- which calls for the reading of physical books to made a central part of childhood.

Soap writer and aficionado Sharon Marshall on how long-running television dramas are employing bold storytelling techniques to retain and attract audience...

The Devil Wears Prada 2 director David Frankel on why it was time to bring the old gang back together again. David Haig's new play "Magic" imagines the real life friendship between Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A new play "Stage Kiss" looks at what kissing on stage entails. Playwright Sarah Ruhl and actress Emma Fielding discuss how to do it well (and badly). And Luke Roberts, lecturer in Modern Poetry at KCL, pays tribute t...

Critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Ludovic Hunter-Tilney join Tom to review Half Man, Richard Gadd’s follow up to his hit Baby Reindeer.

They also discuss Anne Hathaway as a faded pop star looking to make a comeback in supernatural thriller Mother Mary.

Plus they assess Deborah Levy’s book My Year in Paris With Gertrude Stein: a fiction.

To celebrate Shakespeare's birthday, author and translator Daniel Hahn reveals the challenges of t...

A new biopic chronicles one of the 20th century’s biggest and most controversial music icons, but appears not to paint the whole picture about his life. We discuss Antoine Fuqua's Michael, which stars the pop legend Michael Jackson's nephew Jaafar in the lead role.

Stand and Deliver is a National Theatre of Scotland production which tells the story of a legendary industrial dispute. In 1981, workers at a Lee Jeans factory in Greeno...

Primavera, a new film about Vivaldi tells the story of his composing for pupils of an institution for abandoned girls. We speak to the film's director Damiano Michieletto, better known as an award-winning opera director, about his film and about Vivaldi himself. The Music is Black is the inaugural exhibition at London’s new V&A East Museum and it celebrates 125 years of Black British music. Lead curator Jacqueline Springer join...

Director Charlotte Regan on her new BBC thriller, Mint

Have heterosexual male novelists stopped writing sex scenes? We discuss with writer Luke Kennard, author of Black Bag, and editor of the Erotic Review Lucy Roeber.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage plays live in studio with his band L.Y.R.

Video game writer and critic Cara Ellison joins us to run through the highlights from the recent BAFTA Games Awards.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer...

Scottish Ballet's Starstruck honours Gene Kelly's creative legacy and his passion for creating "dance for the common man". His wife Patricia Ward Kelly tells us about this fusion of ballet, jazz, tap and tango danced to the music of Chopin, Ravel and Gerswhin.

As the winner of the inaugural Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing is announced as Adam Weymouth for his book Lone Wolf, about a journey from Slovenia to Italy across the Alps...

Jack Savoretti sings a song from his latest album We Will Always Be The Way We Were, which is leading the race to top the charts this week.

David Szalay's Booker Prize-wnnning novel Flesh is currently at the centre of a debate around inspiration and homage, as critics point to similarities between his novel and Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon. Literary critics Aled Maclean-Jones and Alex Clark discuss.

Turner Prize-winning arti...

Mark Gatiss takes on the role he's always wanted to play, the lead in Brecht's Hitler satire The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

As the Government considers charging tourists to visit England's national museums, we discuss these proposals with TV executive and arts advocate Sir Peter Bazalgette, who’s been an advisor to the DCMS, and Alison Cole - Director, The Cultural Policy Unit think tank.

As she releases her new collection of sh...

On the review show this week: critics Muriel Zagha and Tahmima Anam review Francois Ozon's film The Stranger., based on the Albert Camus novel which has often been described as unfilmable.

Amitav Ghosh's novel Ghost Eye, set in India and dealing with parallel timelines, multiple global locations, environmental catastrophe and a young girl with mysterious powers.

Jim Jarmusch's latest film Father Mother Sister Brother won the Golden...

Writer and director John Morton, one of the team behind 2012 and W1A, on the new comedy Twenty Twenty Six, set in the run up to this year's football World Cup.

Artist Lachlan Goudie's new book The Secrets of Painting explores the creative big bangs in art over the centuries which have given us artistic movements - from Giotto and Rembrandt's use of oil paint to Berthe Morisot's use of an outdoor easel and Jackson Pollock's use of ma...

Writer Daisy Goodwin on Victoria: A Queen Unbound. Was the marriage between Victoria and Albert as idyllic as it has been portrayed? Her new play explores the idea that Prince Albert exerted coercive control over Queen Victoria.

Following the launch of the Official UK Christian & Gospel Singles Chart, we speak to the founder of the chart's partner organisation, O'Neil Dennis, and Mobo winning Christian rapper Guvna B, who's pla...

100 years ago, inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated his new 'televisor' to the public for the first time. In this special edition of Front Row, Samira Ahmed and guests explore the origins of television in the UK, charting how those early experimental days set a template for this exciting new medium.

Guests: TV producer and historian Professor John Wyver, whose new book Magic Rays of Light tells the story of the early days of TV L...