Front Row

Live from Dublin, Seamus Heaney's wife and daughter, Marie and Catherine Heaney, talk to the writer Sinéad Gleeson about 100 Poems, a selection of the poet's work chosen by his family. The book runs the gamut of Heaney's writing life, yet is a personal collection, with poems of love for his wife, children and grandchildren, his parents and relatives. A favourite of Seamus Heaney's poems is The Rain Stick which ends with the words, "Listen now again." That's the title of a new exhibition which draws on the huge archive which Heaney donated to the National Library of Ireland in 2011. Curator Geraldine Higgins leads Sinéad through the manuscripts, unpublished pieces, diary entries, notebooks and letters that trace the development of the Nobel Laureate's career. The permanent exhibition continues at the Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre on College Green, Dublin. Jesse Jones threw a spotlight on feminism and women's issues with her work Tremble Tremble when she represented Ireland at the 57th Venice Bie

Rob Brydon, Daniel Mays and Adeel Akhtar were among the actors spending long hours in swimming pools last summer rehearsing for, and shooting, the new British film Swimming With Men, based on a true story about a group of male synchronised swimmers competing in the world championships. Stig Abell reports from the set at Basildon swimming pool, which was masquerading as Milan, the venue for the finals.Laura Wade, the playwright behind Posh and the stage adaption of Tipping the Velvet, discusses Home, I'm Darling, her new a play about a modern couple trying emulate the happy domesticity of the 1950s. With the announcement of the winner of the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018 later this evening, we have our final report from the five finalists. So far we've heard from Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Glasgow Women's Library, The Postal Museum in London, and Tate St Ives. Tonight we visit Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, which was at the heart of Hull UK City of Culture last year.Filmmaker and writer Claude La

Actor Emily Mortimer on a new film adaption of Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop, about a widow who decides to open a bookshop selling subversive literature in a small seaside town in 1950s England. She also tells Samira about her role in the upcoming Mary Poppins sequel.The 50th year of the Man Booker Prize is celebrated this weekend with a festival at London's South Bank. Literary Director Gaby Wood joins novelist Linda Grant and publisher Arifa Akbar to discuss the history of and issues surrounding Britain's most prominent award for literature. Tomorrow evening the winner of the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018 will be announced. We report from each of the five shortlisted museums and galleries - today it's the Glasgow Women's Library, the only accredited museum in the UK dedicated to women's lives, histories and achievements.Presenter: Samira AhmedProducer: Timothy Prosser.Main picture: Emily Mortimer as Florence Green. Credit: Vertigo Releasing

When Haifaa Al Mansour released Wadja in 2012 she became Saudi Arabia's first female director of a feature film. She has now directed her first English-language film - a biopic about Mary Shelley. Al Mansour talks why she wanted to make a film set in 19th-century England about the teenage creator of Frankenstein and how much film-making has changed in Saudi Arabia since her debut film six years ago. Based on the debut novel of Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Sharp Objects is a new HBO drama series starring Oscar nominee Amy Adams as a crime reporter forced to confront her own demons, directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (Big Little Lies). Sophie Wilkinson reviews.Ahead of the announcement of the winner of the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year Prize 2018, we are reporting from each of the five shortlisted museums. Today we hear from Brooklands Museum in Surrey, home of the world's first motor racing circuit. The museum's new exhibition spaces - the Aircraft Factory and Flight Shed - highlight the crucial role Brooklands

Maxine Peake discusses her new stage play, Queens of the Coal Age, which dramatizes the incident in 1993 when, armed with wet wipes and nicotine gum, Anne Scargill led a group of women to occupy Parkside Colliery in protest against pit closures.The acclaimed dancer and choreographer, Gillian Lynne, has died aged 92. Best known for Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, she worked on more than 60 shows on Broadway and in the West End. Elaine Paige, Cameron Mackintosh and choreographer Arlene Phillips pay tribute.Kevin Macdonald's film Whitney is released this week, the second documentary in just over a year looking at the icon's life (and demise). While Macdonald's new film is officially supported by the late singer's estate, Nick Broomfield's 2017 Whitney: Can I Be Me?, was unauthorised. Critic Grace Barber-Plentie considers how access and the involvement of the family affected the feeling of the film, and whether the chorus of interviewed voices bought us any closer to understanding Whitney Houston.Presenter: St

Winner of five Tony Awards, Fun Home is a ground-breaking new musical about a lesbian girl coming out, based on Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic novel. Briony Hanson reviews the UK premiere at London's Young Vic theatre.Remarkably, Fun Home is the first Broadway musical with a lesbian protagonist. But are queer women underrepresented in drama in general? Briony is joined by theatre director Hannah Hauer-King to discuss the visibility and portrayal of lesbian characters in theatre, film and TV. The latest novel by the prolific Caryl Phillips, A View of the Empire at Sunset, is a fictional account of the life of Jean Rhys, author of The Wide Sargasso Sea, who came from the West Indies to London in 1906 at the age of sixteen. Caryl Phillips discusses his fascination with Rhys, and how writing her life in this way allows him to observe the decline of the Empire.Ahead of the announcement next week of the winner of the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018, we'll be reporting from each of the five shor

A Japanese-themed edition of Front Row as the Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose scores include Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Last Emperor, talks to Stig about being inspired by nature, and how he came back from treatment for throat cancer to write the music for The Revenant.The editor of The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, Jay Rubin, tells how he curated the selection and reflects on his career as one of Haruki Murakami's main translators. And Junko Takekawa, Senior Arts Programme Officer at the Japan Foundation and a guest curator at this year's Cheltenham Festival of Literature, selects some of her favourite Japanese novels. The architect Sou Fujimoto describes how the boundaries between nature and buildings, inside and outside, inspire his work - and reveals the artistic potential of a pile of crisps!Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Bartlett Sher's adaption of The King and I won four Tony Awards during its run on Broadway and is transferring to London this month. The American director was highly praised for his updating of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, which is set in 19th century Siam but has been criticised for sexism and orientalism. Bartlett Sher discusses taking on this classic musical for a modern-day audience.Writer and critic Olivia Laing, known for her non-fiction writing about art, sexuality and cities, discusses her debut novel. Crudo is a highly personal 'real time' account of the political and social upheavals taking place across the world during the summer of 2017, told from the dual perspectives of the writer herself and American experimental novelist Kathy Acker.Ahead of the announcement next week of the winner of the £100,000 Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018, we'll be reporting from each of the five shortlisted museums, starting today with The Postal Museum in London, and its famous subterranean Mail Rail, which o

Michael Jackson as a visual icon is the subject of a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which brings together artists inspired by the global star. Art critic Ekow Eshun joins Todd Gray - Michael Jackson's personal photographer at the time of Off The Wall and Thriller - to discuss the star's relationship with his own image.An American podcast, which explores the way humans use music, has investigated the use of pop music by so-called Islamic State to spread terror. John Wilson talks to Pitch producer Whitney Jones.Kynren is a theatrical spectacular - a pageant involving more than 1,000 people telling 2,000 years of English history on an acting area of more than 7 acres, which includes a lake, longboat and working railway. We go behind the scenes in Bishop Auckland to find out how the cast and crew - all local volunteers - manage this extravaganza.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Forty years after forming, two of the original members of the iconic New Romantic band Duran Duran, Roger and John Taylor, talk about their time in the music industry and reveal what inspires them to keep making music together. The annual Bradford Literature Festival is a relatively new addition to Britain's literary landscape, but its junior status hasn't stopped it getting coups such as this year enticing Kate Bush to pay tribute in a public art installation to Emily Brontë. Five years on from the launch of the festival, Syima Aslam, director and co-founder of the Bradford Literary Festival, and Bradford-born crime-fiction writer A.A. Dhand discuss its significance.The artist Brian Clarke has been pushing the boundaries of working with stained glass for the last five decades, commissioned by architects including Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid and Renzo Piano. In his studio he discusses the challenges of the art form, and his new exhibition Brian Clarke: The Art of Light at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in

Australian writer Tim Winton discusses The Shepherd's Hut, his first novel in five years. Set in the parched landscape of his native Western Australia, the young protagonist Jaxie attempts to flee from his abusive father on a journey that takes him to some dark and challenging places.England: Poems from a School is a anthology of poems that has just been published. They were written by school children aged between 11 and 18, most of whom come from migrant families who have settled in the UK. The children attend the comprehensive, Oxford Spires Academy, where the writer in residence is poet and writer Kate Clanchy - she runs workshops there and edited the anthology. Kate joins Sharmaine along with two of the young poets.As Norwich Castle reunites a 17th Century Dutch painting with the treasures and objects that feature in it, curator Francesca Vanke explores the mysteries behind the painting called The Paston Treasure.We return to Thamesmead to see the first performance of Fly by Night, a performance piece cre

James Corden, who is bringing his Late Late Show to London, talks to John Wilson about the challenges of presenting a live daily topical show, how he'd like to act again on stage, and what Alan Bennett thought of Gavin and Stacey. As part of Radio 4's Four Seasons, Raymond Antrobus reads his poem to mark the summer solstice and discusses his new collection inspired by his experience of living with deafness. Michael Ellis, Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism discusses the Government's new £20 million Cultural Development Fund which is launched today.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser.

The American photographer and former model Lee Miller had a leading role in championing Surrealism in Britain in the 1930s, which is the focus of a new exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield. The show's curator Lauren Barnes, and Lee Miller's son Antony Penrose, consider her fascination for Surrealism and the artists involved, including Man Ray, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí.Singer Kate Nash discusses dealing with fame after the success of her debut album Made of Bricks and the mega hit single Foundations. She explains how learning to wrestle for her role in Netflix comedy GLOW rebuilt her confidence and how her new album, Yesterday Was Forever, was inspired by her teenage diary. Pop-up restaurants, which appear in empty shops and car parks, have enlivened our food culture, and even had a rejuvenating impact on neighbourhoods. There are also pop-up galleries, music performance spaces and even, in York, a whole pop-up Shakespeare theatre and village. Cat Gardiner who has run pop-up galleries in Cardiff, the musici

Caitlin Moran talks about writing her second novel, a characteristically candid and comic account of a young woman's misadventures in 1990s London at the height of Britpop. How to Be Famous, the follow up to Moran's 2014 debut How to Build a Girl, centres around an instance of revenge porn and its protagonist Dolly's novel means of fighting back.Superstars Beyoncé and Jay-Z, now billed collectively as 'The Carters', unexpectedly released their first collaborative album Everything is Love over the weekend. Natty Kasambala, music contributor for gal-dem magazine reviews. As part of the Great Exhibition of the North, freehand spray painter Frank Styles has created a 150-metre-long mural that showcases the North's impact on modern Britain. Fifty Northern Icons is based on an eclectic range of images chosen by the public, from York Minster to Gregg's Steak Bakes.The National Youth Folk Ensemble is about to accept its third intake of musicians aged 14 to 18. We meet two young players who if accepted to the group wi

Snatches is a series of eight monologues celebrating the lives of women over the past 100 years, to be broadcast on BBC Four. The director, Vicky Featherstone, tells Kirsty Lang about her ambition for the project and we hear from writer Theresa Ikoko in whose episode a woman celebrates her 100th birthday as, outside her window, a revolution ignites.Stuart Robertson, Director of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, joins Kirsty from Glasgow with the latest on the consequences of the fire at the School of Art not just for the buildings but the 2,000 students and the city itself. The Carnegie Medal, awarded annually, is the most prestigious award for children's books. This year's winner was announced today and is Geraldine McCaughrean, who first won the award 30 years ago. She talks to Kirsty about her book, Where The World Ends, which is based on the true survival story of a group of Scottish boys marooned on an island.Videogames Editor at The Guardian, Keza MacDonald, brings all the news from the games indus

The V&A's latest exhibition includes 13 artworks by the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, but far more of her colourful skirts, blouses and pieces of jewellery because Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up concentrates on Kahlo's greatest creation - the artist herself. Design critic Corinne Julius considers what it reveals about the famous modern Latin American artist and our attitude to her.When we think of John Keats, we mostly think of Odes, Grecian Urns, Nightingales, and Autumn - we certainly don't think of cats. 200 years after Keats wrote his little-known comic gem To Mrs Reynolds's Cat, we consider the place of cats in literature - from Hemingway to Colette, and Stephen King to Tove Janssen. Cat-lover and writer Lynne Truss and literary historian John Bowen consider the relationship between writers and their feline 'mewses' and asks what makes a 'purr-fect' piece of cat prose? 1500 pigeons with small LED lights attached to their legs representing the messages they would once have carried over the battlefield

Ocean's 8 is the latest in the Ocean's heist movie franchise - but this time with an all-female gang starring Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. Does the twist work? Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews.As the World Cup kicks off the team strips are attracting as much attention as the scores: the new Nigeria home kit sold out minutes after its release. Simon Doonan, fashion commentator and soccer obsessive, talks about his favourite World Cup outfits and why some kits are such a hit.Pianist and composer Alexis Ffrench, fresh from his performance at the Classical Brit Awards, tells John what he thinks the sphere of classical music could learn from the very different world of hip-hop.A Slice through the World: Contemporary Artists' Drawings is a new exhibition in Oxford that celebrates the power of drawing in the digital age. Curator Stephanie Straine considers the state of drawing today with artists Olivia Kemp and Tacita Dean, whose work includes drawing, painting, photography and film, and whose new exhibition, Lands

After discovering that he was almost exactly 150 years younger than Charles Dickens, comedian Eddie Izzard set himself the task of reading all of Dickens' works aloud. The first to be turned into an audiobook is Great Expectations. The stand-up discusses his love of Dickens and the unique challenges that come with reading the author's work. Guitarist and singer Wilko Johnson is about to release Blow Your Mind, his first album of new material in 30 years, and the first since recovering from a mayor life-saving operation to remove a large cancerous tumour in 2014. Johnson looks back over the four years of his recovery, and performs some of his distinctive R&B.In A Weekend in New York, the latest novel by Benjamin Markovits, very little happens, but a great deal is revealed about the Essingers, a large close-knit family who are at their yearly get-together and the city of New York itself. Markovits discuses his motivation for the book and explains his desire to follow in the tradition of Philip Roth and Henr

Timothy Spall discusses his new film Stanley, A Man of Variety, in which he plays every character on screen. It follows Stanley, the only inmate in a failing insane asylum, as he wrestles with the voices in his head which take the form of classic comedy stars such as George Formby and Noël Coward.30 years ago today, a concert to celebrate the 70th birthday of Nelson Mandela was staged at London's Wembley Stadium and broadcast to an audience of 600 million around the world. It was at this event that Tracy Chapman, a 24-year-old singer-songwriter from Cleveland, Ohio, first came to worldwide attention as she stepped in last minute and played a selection of songs from her new album. The album, with its hit singles including Fast Car and Baby Can I Hold You Tonight, went on to sell over 20 million copies worldwide and propelled Tracy Chapman to global fame. Music critic Jacqueline Springer reminisces about that watershed moment in musical history.Writer Lissa Evans talks about her latest novel, Old Baggage, which

Pieter-Dirk Uys, a leading satirist in South Africa, has spent his career poking fun at politicians. In a new show, The Echo of a Noise, he looks back at his life. As audience members, how does our relationship with the arts change as we age and in what way is that represented by the industry? Journalist and presenter Joan Bakewell and former Chairman of the Arts Council Christopher Frayling discuss the different ways in which older people consume the arts and the issues that it raises.Gaël Faye grew up in Burundi, the son of a Rwandan mother and a French father, and witnessed the horrors of the Rwandan civil war and genocide. He has now reflected upon that in his debut novel, Small Country, told from the perspective of 10-year-old Gabriel who desperately tries to cling onto his childhood despite what's happening around him. Gaël tells John how his experiences have shaped his work as a writer and musician.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson.