Front Row

The Artist's Way is a creative self-help book that has sold over 4 million copies and garnered dedicated fans around the world. As part of Front Row's Inspire season we speak to its author Julia Cameron who explains the philosophy behind her 12 week programme and answers listener's questions. Stephen Mangan stars as an online therapist in new Channel 4 comedy Hang Ups, loosely based on US series Web Therapy starring Lisa Kudrow. Mangan, co-wrote and produced the series, which also features Katherine Parkinson, David Tennant, Charles Dance and Celia Imrie. Critic Emma Bullimore reviews. As part of the 2018 BBC Proms, yesterday saw Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos - each with their own different and distinctive orchestration - performed alongside six newly commissioned companion works. Music journalist and critic Alexandra Coghlan has the Front Row verdict. To mark Jamaican Independence Day, award-winning poet Kei Miller chooses his favourite piece by poets from his home country.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer:

Yesterday we launched our new season Inspire. Today we ask the key question: what is inspiration? The poet Kei Miller, the composer Philip Venables, the novelist Stella Duffy, the artist Aowen Jin and the philosopher Julian Baggini join Front Row to share their thoughts on the line between a magical moment and hard graft.On Monday Aurora Orchestra return to the BBC Proms to perform Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony entirely from memory. We're joined in the studio by the orchestra's principle cellist Torun Stavseng and concert pianist and music writer Susan Tomes to explore the opportunities and limitations of performing classical music without a score.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hilary Dunn.

We explore the natural landscape as artistic inspiration from three locations around the country. Writer Tracy Chevalier and artist Gayle Chong Kwan join John Wilson in Epping Forest to discuss why forests and trees have sparked ideas for them, composer Brian Irvine and broadcaster Marie-Louise Muir consider the art made about the sea and coastline from Helen's Bay, County Down and poet Kenneth Steven and critic Hannah McGill explore lochs, mountains and islands as a theme from the shore of Loch Lomond.Tonight's programme is the launch of Front Row's Inspire season. We'll be finding out what artistic inspiration is - how do you define that moment when an idea strikes, and where artists find it - the natural world, their dreams, their muse, their Gods. But most importantly, we want to inspire you at home, by speaking to creativity experts and finding out the best tips and tricks to spark your own ideas. The season runs throughout the summer and concludes in September.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Ro

Melvin Burgess, who's been dubbed the Godfather of Young Adult fiction, talks about his new book The Lost Witch about a teenage girl who discovers she has magical powers.A record-breaking 3.6 million people watched this year's Love Island final. That's more viewers than were watching BBC One, BBC Two or ITV in the same time slot. Journalist and critic Alix O'Neill discusses the show's cultural impact. In Thursday's Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall Milŏs Karadaglíc will give the world premiere of Ink Dark Moon, a guitar concerto written for him by Joby Talbot. Milŏs plays live in the Front Row studio, and the pair discuss the relationship between musician and composer. They consider, too, the range of a modern musician's work: Milŏs has recorded classics beyond the classical repertoire - an album of tunes by The Beatles - and Joby writes ballet music, has composed an opera and arranged music for Tom Jones and The Divine Comedy.Brian Friel's Translations is enjoying a sell-out run at the National Theatre;

Chris Dunkley, for many years television critic of the Financial Times, discusses the impact and ongoing popularity of Dad's Army, which was first broadcast fifty years ago this week.Music streaming platforms have reported a rise people aged under 30 listening to jazz, with the genre's new sound also being produced by musicians in that age group. Music journalist Teju Adeleye and jazz musician Emma-Jean Thackray discuss why young people are responding to jazz now more than ever, if jazz was less accessible in the past and how has the sound evolved. The Marvellous Mechanical Museum, a new exhibition at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, looks back to the historical automata (or animated mechanical objects) museums of the 18th centuries and re-imagines them for the modern day. The exhibition includes 57 works, historical pieces dating back to 1625 and new commissions by contemporary artists, all of which explore the themes of life, creation, imitation, and our fraught relationship with technology.After WOMAD festi

New film Iceman was inspired by Ötzi, the prehistoric man who was found perfectly preserved in the ice in the Ötztal Alps in 1991. Dubbed "The European Revenant" the characters speak in an extinct language which isn't subtitled. We review with film critic Hannah McGill and survival enthusiast and Costa Children's Book Award winner Katherine Rundell.A recent Parliamentary meeting addressed the issue of mental health and the performing arts as statistics show that there is a higher than average risk of suicide in those professions. How should employers respond? MP Luciana Berger who chaired the meeting and Louise Grainger of Equity talk to Front Row.Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings is one of the world's most loved pieces of classical music, but Barber also wrote many other works, including the opera Vanessa, which is being revived at Glyndebourne sixty years after it was hailed as the first great American opera. Kirsty speaks to director Keith Warner.Main image: Juergen Vogel in Iceman. Copyright: Martin Ratt

Fran Ross was a gifted African-American author who died in 1985. Her novel Oreo, written at the height of the Black Power movement, tells the rollercoaster story of a black-Jewish girl's quest for her white father using Greek myth, slang, Yiddish, puns, made-up words and Ross' own extraordinary imagination. The novel sank without much trace but Man Booker-Prizewinning author Marlon James, who's written the introduction to a new edition, claims its time is now. As the Mercury Prize shortlist is revealed, music journalist Laura Snapes discusses what surprised and delighted her, and what disappointed.Museums and galleries are under increasing pressure to rethink their displays and collections acquired under colonial rule. What does change look like for these institutions and how will it affect the visitor experience? University College London curator Subhadra Das, anthropologist Dr Charlotte Joy and art historian and independent tour guide Alice Procter discuss what exactly decolonising a museum means and what t

Andre Holland is perhaps best known for his role as Kevin, the chef (and love interest) in the Oscar winning film Moonlight. Now he is in Britain playing Othello at Shakespeare's Globe in a production also featuring Mark Rylance as Iago. He tells Kirsty Lang how, unlikely as it might seem, his southern American accent fits the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare's lines perfectly. The arrival of artists in rundown areas invariably signals that gentrification is on its way with those very same artists, as well as other locals, eventually getting priced out. London is where this process seems to happen fastest but it's also in London that new housing models for artists are being explored. Hadrian Garrad, director of Create London, and Marcel Baettig, artist, founder and chief executive officer of Bow Arts, discuss the work involved in providing affordable homes for artists.Women Invent the Future is a new anthology of science fiction short stories by and about women. One of the authors, Molly Flatt, discusses re-i

Playwright Patrick Marber and actress Indira Varma on Exit the King, Marber's adaptation for the National Theatre of the Romanian absurdist drama by Eugène Ionesco, in which Varma stars as Queen Marguerite alongside Rhys Ifans' King, about to make his final exit. John talks to Nick Drnaso, the first graphic novelist to be longlisted for the Man Booker prize, and critics Arifa Akbar and Toby Lichtig comment on the longlist as a whole. For the full list see below. Poet Tony Walsh, whose poem This is the Place poignantly captured the feelings of the public following last year's Manchester Arena bomb, has written a new poem for the Imperial War Museum North in Salford, part of a season marking the centenary of the final year of the First World War.The 2018 Man Booker LonglistBelinda Bauer (UK) Snap (Bantam Press) Anna Burns (UK) Milkman (Faber & Faber) Nick Drnaso (USA) Sabrina (Granta Books) Esi Edugyan (Canada) Washington Black (Serpent's Tail) Guy Gunaratne (UK) In Our Mad And Furious City (Tinder Press) D

John Hurt as Artist is a new exhibition in Norfolk which reveals a less well-known side of the actor who died last year. Sir John Hurt's widow Anwen discusses the mainly figurative paintings and drawings which mostly relate to the actor's off-screen life, but also include self-portraits of him in prosthetic make-up for his role as John Merrick in The Elephant Man from 1980. Ian McKellen is playing King Lear in the West End and recently Anthony Hopkins played him on television. Accompanying Lear on his bleak and tragic journey is his Fool. Karl Johnson, Fool to Anthony Hopkins' Lear, and Lloyd Hutchinson, McKellen's Fool, discuss the way they approach this enigmatic figure.Recently we've been offering inspiration on holiday reading to help you choose which books to cram into your suitcase. Today New Statesman book critic Sarah Ditum concludes the series with a set of recommendations for people holidaying closer to home, in the UK and Ireland. Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald.Main image: Sir Joh

American footballer-turned-opera star Morris Robinson is returning to the Proms this weekend to perform as the bass soloist in Mahler's epic Symphony of a Thousand. He sings live and discusses his extraordinary move from the football stadium to the opera house. Sitting around of an evening with friends, a bottle of wine, discussing a good book - that's the cosy image of the Book Club. But the Richard and Judy Book Club is now exclusive to WH Smith, Fern Britten's is partnered with Tesco and Harper Collins, and there's even one called the Specsavers Zoe Ball Book Club. Amanda Ross, the television producer who invented the Richard and Judy Book Club, Guardian books correspondent Danuta Kean and journalist and book editor Sarah Shaffi discuss whether the cosy is turning commercial.Mission Impossible returns to our screens next week with a sixth instalment of the classic franchise. For 22 years the series has captivated audiences with its winning combination of spy games, double - and triple - crosses, hair-raisi

The Lehman Trilogy at the National Theatre is an epic new play directed by Sam Mendes, which tells the story of the American banking dynasty from its humble beginnings in Alabama to its bankruptcy in the 2008 crash. John talks to Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles, who play the founding Lehman brothers and many other characters too. As the 100th Now That's What I Call Music album is released, John discusses the extraordinary success of the hits compilation series and examines its cultural impact with Now curator Pete Duckworth and music critic Katie Puckrik. Poet Zaffar Kunial's father is Kashmiri, his mother's ancestors lived in Orkney, and he was born in Birmingham, and, as he tells John Wilson, his poetry bridges these worlds and their languages. Zaffar's debut collection Us is published by Faber & Faber, which he describes as like being signed by Manchester United. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy ProsserMain image - (L-R) Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in The Lehm

Alan Bennett's new play Allelujah! is set in the geriatric ward of a Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure. It follows a singing, dancing choir of quick-witted elderly patients whose problem is not that they are ill so much as they have nowhere to go. Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner discuss working together and how Alan manages to take on big themes - English identity, education and now the NHS - without being, he says, a "political" writer. Blenheim Palace is housing a major exhibition of the work of the radical French artist Yves Klein, famous for his ultramarine blue paintings and sculptures. Louisa Buck reviews. A new survey into ethnic diversity in children's literature has found that only 4% of all the children's books published in the UK last year featured a black, Asian or minority ethnic character. Farrah Serroukh, who led the Reflecting Realities survey, and writer Patrice Lawrence discuss the findings.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hannah Robins.

Sacha Baron Cohen's return to TV is Who Is America?, a new series in which he dupes figures such as Sarah Palin and Bernie Sanders into giving interviews to him, heavily disguised with prosthetics. TV critic Boyd Hilton reviews.As the decision is taken to rebuild the Glasgow School of Art after its second devastating fire, Sally Stewart, Head of Architecture at the school, discusses the latest plans for the celebrated Charles Rennie Mackintosh masterpiece.Photographer Anita Corbin discusses her latest project, First Women, a series of portraits of 100 women who have broken barriers in areas including sport, law, and the military, to become the first of their gender to achieve their positions. After he was stopped from photographing a work by Rembrandt this afternoon at Scotland's National Galleries - a painting on loan from a museum that allows the public to take photographs of the painting freely - art historian Bendor Grosvenor discusses the ethics of taking photographs in art exhibitions.The Chinese fantas

Pierce Brosnan discusses his long and varied career which began as an artist, as he reprises the role of Sam Carmichael in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again - with less singing this time.The Irish government has recently announced a new arts strategy and funding of Euro 2.billion Euros in a programme called "Investing in Our Culture, Language and Heritage. Journalist and Art Historian Robert O' Byrne, Dr. Annie Doona, Chair of Screen Ireland, and Catherine Heaney, Chair of the National Museum of Ireland Board discuss how the plan will affect Ireland's cultural landscape.As MPs begin to debate the government's White Paper on Brexit, John Kampfner from the Creative Industries Federation explains their reaction to proposals for the arts and creative sector.Need inspiration for holiday reading? Writer Stephanie Merritt recommends books to travellers destined for Malta, Spain and Greece as part of our Summer Reads series.Presenter : Kirsty Lang Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Grime has been on an epic journey from subculture to explosive phenomenon. John speaks to presenter DJ Target, writer of Grime Kids, and to music journalist Dan Hancox, writer of Inner City Pressure. They discuss Grime as music of protest and how it evolves in a rapidly shifting landscape.Agnès Varda on her life as a legendary film-maker of the Nouvelle Vague, and her work as an artist as her first commission in the UK for the Liverpool Biennial goes on show.It's Friday the 13th so what better day to take a look at the rich history and strange persistence of artistic superstitions? John is joined by writer Ellen Weinstein and actor Michael Simkins.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson.Main image: John Wilson and Agnès Varda. Credit: Ben Mitchell

Torchwood and Broadchurch star Eve Myles returns to our screens in the Welsh-noir series Keeping Faith. The drama centres around a working mother, Faith Howells, as she deals with the personal and professional fallout of her husband's mysterious disappearance. Originally broadcast in Welsh on S4C, an English language version is now being shown on BBC One after breaking viewing records on BBC Wales and the BBC iPlayer.Lyricist Bernie Taupin talks about his extraordinary partnership with Elton John that created dozens of hits such as Rocket Man and Sacrifice. To celebrate 50 years of writing together they've asked famous country music stars - from Dolly Parton to Willie Nelson - to reimagine their songs for a new album, Restoration.This Class Works is an exhibition in Sheffield showcasing Northern working class artists. We speak to the curator Pete McKee and Ella Murtha, daughter of photographer Tish Murtha, whose work depicting of youth unemployment during Thatcher's Britain is included in the show. Presenter:

Theatre criticism has been in the dock recently after a reviewer was publicly reproached for mentioning an actor's weight. Critics Sarah Crompton and Quentin Letts debate whether reviewers should feel free to assess an actor's body as well as their performance.Olly Alexander from Years and Years discusses the band's new album, Palo Santo, which combines a sci-fi setting with a visceral account of his life as a gay man. And he performs a song from the new release. Veteran American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman delves into the world of the New York Public Library in his 42nd documentary, EX LIBRIS. The honorary Oscar winner tells Stig Abell about film-making at 88 years of age, and why he chooses to do all of the research, shooting and editing himself. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian MayMain Image: Olly Alexander. Credit: Years and Years.

Holly Hunter talks about her four-decade career in Hollywood, including her Oscar winning performance in The Piano, her role as a TV journalist in Broadcast News, and returning to voice Elastigirl in the blockbuster animation, Incredibles 2. The National Theatre of Wales is marking the 70th anniversary of the NHS with a season of new plays performed across Wales. Samira talks to Peter Cox, writer of the The Stick-Maker Tales, about a shepherd in the Elan Valley, and Kully Thiarai, Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Wales. Need inspiration for holiday reading? Writer and translator Daniel Hahn recommends books to travellers destined for Russia, Sri Lanka and the Czech Republic, as part of our Summer Reads series. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser.

The acclaimed composer and conductor, Oliver Knussen, has died aged 66. He began composing at just six years-old and as well as continuing to write music, went on to conduct around the world and in 1994 he was made a CBE. He was perhaps best known for the operatic adaptation of the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are. Mark Anthony Turnage and Roger Wright pay tribute.A reimagining of the iconic Australian novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, begins on BBC2 this week. The six episodes explore the mysterious disappearances of three schoolgirls and their governess on Valentine's Day in 1900. Natalie Dormer speaks to John about her starring role in the drama, and about her other roles portraying strong women in The Tudors and Game of Thrones. What's it like being a life model and what makes drawing from life a unique and important discipline for artists? We speak to professional life model Rachel Welch, artist Jonathan Yeo and tutor Charlotte Mann, as Quentin Crisp's autobiography The Naked Civil Servant which