Front Row

Front Row pays tribute to Les Murray, Australia’s foremost contemporary poet, who died today aged 80. Unlike famous compatriots such as Germaine Greer and Clive James, Murray stayed in Australia and spent his last years on the farm in Bunyah, New South Wales, that had been his family’s home. Murray reacted against modernism, believing poetry should be accessible. He wrote poems about Australian people, animals and landscape in plain, lively and demotic language and so became known as the country’s Australia’s bush-bard. His books were always dedicated ‘to the glory of God’. Louis de Berniere’s best-selling novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin has been adapted for the stage and will be touring the UK. Sam Marlowe joins Samira to review the play and discuss how it compares with the book (and the film).The shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 has been announced.Critics Sarah Shaffi and Toby Lichtig comment on the six novels that made it through from the longlist of 16.A major new exhibition celebrating

Avengers: Endgame marks the culmination of 10 years of interlinking Marvel movies. After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War, and the loss of some of the world’s biggest heroes, the remaining Avengers re-assemble to try and undo Thanos's actions and restore order to the universe. Critic Gavia Baker-Whitelaw reviews.Linda Grant discusses her new novel, A Stranger City, a detailed portrait of contemporary, Brexit-scarred London, told through its myriad people living disparate yet interconnected lives, and exploring current-day ideas of home and belonging.Henrik Ibsen wrote plays about domestic difficulties and social hypocrisy in 19th century small-town Norway. But they clearly speak to 21st-century Britain. With new adaptations soon to be staged across the UK, and Rosmersholm on in the West End and a new production of Ghosts in Northampton, John Wilson talks to Lucy Bailey, director of Ghosts, and Duncan MacMillan, who has adapted Rosmersholm, about the contemporary relevance of Ibsen’s drama and

We announce the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2019 shortlist. Chair of the Judges and Director of the Art Fund Stephen Deuchar explains why these museums are in contention for the £100,000 prize.A recent report commissioned by President Macron has recommended that France should return all of its African artefacts unless they can prove that they legitimately acquired them, marking a significant shift away from the status quo in how museums deal with contested objects. As the debate about cultural repatriation and restitution intensifies we consider what impact it'll have on the way museums operate in practice. Subhadra Das, Curator at the UCL Collections, and Neil Curtis, Head of Museums and Special Collections at Aberdeen University, reflect on this complex issue. The Cranberries were in the process of recording their eighth album in 2018 when lead singer, Dolores O’Riordan, tragically died. The remaining band members decided to finish the album and on tonight’s Front Row, Noel Hogan, guitarist and co-songwrite

Adeel Akhtar, who stars in the new BBC1 series Back to Life, talks about his acting career – from Four Lions to becoming the first non-white male to win a Best Actor BAFTA for the TV drama Murdered By My Father.Doris Hatt (1890-1969) was a painter, feminist, socialist and pioneer of British Modernism. Her work spanning five decades is the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton near where she lived. Curator Sarah Cox and historian Denys Wilcox discuss the life and art of Doris Hatt. It's fifty years since Joe Orton's play What the Butler Saw shocked audiences with its black comedy. Orton cultivated his image as a doyen of 60s counterculture but new research into his record collection reveals a surprising taste in music. Emma Parker has been listening to Orton's LPs. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser

We consider the connection between the public house and the arts. Why do pubs make such great settings, provide so much inspiration and serve as great venues for the arts? Al Murray ponders the longevity of his pub landlord and what this character allows him to explore about Britishness, as literary journalist Suzi Feay considers the representation of pubs in books and TV. Musician Eliza Carthy remembers her first ever public performance in The Bay Hotel in Robin Hood’s Bay, where she was a regular at the folk club there, while crime novelist David Mark tells us how he finds inspiration from the host of intriguing characters he meets down his local, the Samson Inn in Gilsland, Cumbria.But, as pubs continue to be in decline – 25% of pubs have closed since 2001 - we consider how some hostelries are reinventing themselves as cultural destinations. Dawn Badland runs The Inn Crowd, a project which supports rural pubs to host spoken word performances, and Adam Lacey is manager of The Old Joint Stock, a Birmingham

Liz Pichon on her creation Tom Gates, the hugely popular series of books for young readers now on stage.Zanib Mian is the author of a new book about a Muslim family, Planet Omar - Accidental Trouble Magnet. Last year a report found that only 1% of children's books featured a main protagonist of colour. Alongside commentator and blogger Darren Chetty she considers whether that picture is changing - and whether any change will last.One in three books sold is aimed at children. Is this a golden age for children's books? Celebrity authors such as David Walliams are clocking up huge sales but what is the range and quality of all the books on offer? Children's book experts Dawn Finch and Imogen Russell Williams discuss.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Sarah Johnson

The saxophonist Jess Gillam was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician award in 2016 and went on to take the Last Night of the Proms by storm last year. She plays live in the studio and talks to Samira about her beginnings in a carnival band in Cumbria and how she wants to expand the repertoire for sax players in classical music. The influential graphic designer Abram Games, who created The Festival of Britain 1951 poster and the BBC’s first television logo, first came to prominence as the 'Official War Poster Artist' during the Second World War. Over 100 of the posters he created while employed by the War Office are on display at new exhibition at the National Army Museum in London. Curator Emma Mawdsley discusses the significance of the artist and his work. Tayari Jones’s novel, An American Marriage, tells the story of a young African-American couple whose lives are torn apart when the husband is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Tayari Jones discusses the inspiration for her the book which has been ch

Two female icons of the music industry release new works today. Beyonce’s new film Homecoming is released alongside a surprise new live album. The film focuses on her historic 2018 Coachella performance in which she celebrated America's historically black colleges and universities, black culture and black female empowerment. Also today, Madonna releases a new single ahead of her upcoming album and has revealed a new alter-ego - Madame X. Academic Emma Dabiri and broadcaster Katie Puckrik discuss Beyonce’s cultural significance and Madonna’s latest reinvention.Choreographer Aletta Collins talks about her work for the Manchester Royal Exchange’s new production of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s classic, West Side Story. She reveals why they chose to change Jerome Robbins's famous choreography, the first time a professional production has done so.Ahead of a Front Row bank holiday special on children’s literature, two award-winning writers of children’s fiction, Katherine Rundell and Bali Rai, discuss th

As France vows to restore Notre-Dame de Paris after last night's devastating fire, we discuss the artistic, musical and cultural significance of this great Cathedral. With music historian Mark Everist, art critic Waldemar Januszczak and French literature academic Eve Morisi.Roger McGough, one of Britain’s most widely read poets, talks about his latest anthology, joinedupwriting, in which he explores themes of childhood, ageing and politics. He reflects on the appeal of different forms of verse and how the critical reaction to his work sits with its popular appeal. Lucy Kirkwood's hit 2013 play Chimerica comes to Channel 4 as a new TV drama series, updated to the Trump era. Sarah Crompton reviews. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser

Andrew Scott, who played the priest in the recent run of the TV comedy drama Fleabag, talks about the sexual chemistry between him and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, how he approached “that wedding speech” in the series finale and his new film Steel Country, in which Scott plays a garbage collector in Pennsylvania who believes a boy has been murdered. Dame Maggie Smith returns to the stage after 12 years to deliver a one hour forty minute monologue as Joseph Goebbels' secretary Brunhilde Pomsel, her words based on an interview the 103 year old former Nazi gave recently to filmmakers. Adapted by Christopher Hampton, A German Life is at London’s Bridge Theatre. Susannah Clapp reviews. Pioneering colour photographer William Eggleston is about to celebrate his 80th birthday, and a new exhibition of some of his groundbreaking work has just opened in London. A series of images of rusted cars, industrial decline and the mundane details of everyday life in 1970s California are typical of his work, featuring the vivid saturate

Seamus Heaney died in 2013. Had he lived tomorrow would have been his 80th birthday. Heaney was a rare writer - a poet both beloved and respected. He was an eloquent advocate for the place and craft of poetry. Who would have thought Beowulf could be a modern day bestseller? Seamus Heaney's translation was. He made a profound social impact, too, and at the time of the Good Friday Agreement President Clinton memorably quoted his lines from 'The Cure at Troy' '...once in a lifetime/ The longed-for tidal wave/ Of justice can rise up,/ And hope and history rhyme.' Front Row this evening is devoted to Heaney's work, life and continuing inspiration. Kirsty Lang talks to Leontia Flynn, one of the leading younger writers of the North of Ireland; to his friend the poet Bernard O'Donoghue, who is working on a new edition of Heaney's Collected Poems with Rosie Lavan - from whom we hear, too. The composer Mohammed Fairouz explains how he set some of the poems in his piece for choir and viola, 'In a New Light', which wi

British painter Jenny Saville, the most expensive living female artist in the world, discusses her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt's masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles. Cellist Laura van der Heijden, who won the BBC Young Musician competition when she was 15, plays live and discusses her debut album of Russian music called 1948, which last night won the BBC Music Magazine's Newcomer of the Year Award. Plus the art of working to a deadline, with authors Robert McCrum and Sophie Heawood and Teresa Amabile from Harvard Business School.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jack Soper

The contemporary classical composer Gavin Bryars talks about the latest incarnation of his acclaimed 1971 work, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – a 12-hour overnight rendition at Tate Modern in London. The piece is based on a fragment of tape of a homeless man singing, and this performance combines the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bryars’s own ensemble, the Southbank Sinfonia, and the participation of several homeless people.Gavin Bryars also contributes his thoughts to the question: can opera singers sing pop and vice versa? What are the main differences between a trained bel canto voice and what some would call the more natural approach taken by folk, jazz or rock singers? Music critic Anna Picard and Christopher Purves, opera singer and former member of jazz vocal group Harvey and the Wallbangers, discuss.Hailed by Zadie Smith as 'uncommonly poised and truly beautiful', the debut novelist Isabella Hammad discusses her 500-page epic The Parisian, set around the Palestinian struggle for independence

Alistair Hudson, Director of the Whitworth in Manchester and Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven have been awarded a Transformative Grant to rethink their respective art institutions. They join Front Row to discuss how the concept of useful art has the power to remake museums and galleries fit for the 21st century. England has one, Scotland has one, Wales has two, but Northern Ireland has none – we’re talking National Theatres. Nóirín McKinney, Director of Arts Development at Arts Council of Northern Ireland, reflects on the desire for a National Theatre of Northern Ireland, and why it has yet to be fulfilled.The bicentenary of the birth of celebrated art critic John Ruskin is being marked by events and exhibitions across the country, but one art historian has gone further than most in bringing Ruskin’s work to life for a modern audience. Dr Paul O’Keefe has been performing Ruskin’s lectures in character for two decades. He explains why a bad wig turned out to be the perfect prop fo

The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is best known for The Scream, and a rare lithograph of the picture is at the heart of a major new exhibition of Munch’s work which opens at the British Museum this week. Critic Jacky Klein gives her response to Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, which focuses on the artist’s experimental prints, almost 50 of which are on loan from Norway’s Munch Museum. There's just one week to go until the final season of Game of Thrones. It is the most expensive and most pirated TV series of all time, but what will its legacy be; artistically for long-form TV and economically for Northern Ireland where much of it was filmed? Critic Boyd Hilton and presenter Marie-Louise Muir discuss. Director Neil Jordan on his new film, Greta – a horror thriller starring Isabelle Huppert and Chloe Grace Moretz. It begins as a friendship between an older and a younger woman and then gets darker - turning to stalking, horror, and suspense, and exploring ideas of modern urban loneliness What makes a great ending

Carlos Acosta went from an impoverished upbringing in Havana, Cuba to a world-renowned ballet dancer and the first black Principal of The Royal Ballet. He tells John Wilson about his new film Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story, and his plans for Birmingham Royal Ballet; he starts his role as its director in January 2020.Composer Iain Bell on the world premiere of his new opera Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel, which tells the stories of the women living in the doss houses of Victorian London’s East End and the five whose lives were tragically stolen.Plus Jordan Erica Webber with news of the BAFTA Games Awards. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Jack Soper

Tomorrow sees the opening of an ambitious new multi-purpose arts venue, The Shed, in New York. This £360m building, featuring a vast telescoping outer shell which travels on rails, is at the heart of Hudson Yards, a major new £20bn property development in Manhattan, and sits alongside a new, copper-coloured ‘vertical park’ designed by the Thomas Heatherwick studio. Critic Sarah Crompton gives her response to the new structure. Last night saw the inaugural Premier League match at Tottenham Hotspur’s new £750m football stadium. The acoustic designer Christopher Lee, who’s designed more than 30 stadia on five different continents, discusses how he worked to create the best audio experience for the fans. American bestselling author Jonathan Lethem discusses his new novel, The Feral Detective, his first detective novel in two decades. Within it he explores the impact of Trump’s America, written from a female perspective.Music journalist Kevin LeGendre reviews Marvin Gaye’s never-released 1972 album ‘You’re The Man

Sir David Attenborough discusses Our Planet, his new eight-part series and Netflix debut, which explores the unique wonders of the natural world, from the Arctic wilderness to the diverse jungles of South America. In partnership with World Wildlife Fund, the series continues the conservation campaign raised by Attenborough's earlier series Blue Planet II. Lee Ridley, aka The Lost Voice Guy, is the stand-up comedian who made his name when he won Britain’s Got Talent in 2018. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at a young age, the condition has left him unable to speak, and so he uses a machine to project his material. Last year, he co-wrote and starred in the Radio 4 sitcom Ability, playing a disabled man who moves out from his parents’ home and in with his friend. Lee discusses bringing Ability back for a second series and finding humour in his disability.The Sisters Brothers is a new Western from Jacques Audiard, his first foray into the genre and the English language, starring John C Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jak

Toby Jones tells us about turning his hand to writing for the new six part BBC2 TV series, Don’t Forget The Driver. It's a dark and poignant comedy about Brexit Britain, set in a coach company in Bognor Regis. The latest DC comics film Shazam! flies into cinemas this week. Originally published as a comic strip in 1939, it's the story of Billy Batson, a normal 14-year-old who is given the ability to transform into an adult superhero just by uttering the magic word “Shazam!”. Film critic Larushka Ivan Zadeh will tell us whether or not it's any good.At Easter, choirs across the country prepare to perform Bach’s St John and St Matthew Passions. We explore the significance of these intense and monumental works. Kirsty is joined by director Peter Sellars, who is staging the St John Passion at London’s Royal Festival Hall conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, and music historian Hannah French. 6 April Tewkesbury Abbey – St John Passion – City of Birmingham Choir 7 April Royal Festival Hall – St Matthew Passion – Bach

Suzi Quatro was the first female bass player to become a rock star in the 1970s, with hits like Devil Gate Drive and Can the Can. Fifty-five years after her first performance, Suzi talks about her new album No Control which she wrote with her son. Playwright and actor John Kani and director Janice Honeyman discuss John's new play for the RSC – Kunene and the King - which reflects on South Africa's post-apartheid history through the relationship of a dying white actor and his black nurse.Britain's museums and galleries show an increase of nearly 9% in visitor numbers in the last year, with Tate Modern leap-frogging the British Museum for the top spot. Nicholas Cullinan of the National Portrait Gallery in London, and Gordon Rintoul of National Museums Scotland debate the importance of visitor numbers as they plan their future programmes. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser