Front Row

Rupert Everett discusses his life-long passion for Oscar Wilde as he directs, writes and stars in his film The Happy Prince. Framed around Wilde's short story of the same name, the bio-pic focuses on Wilde at the end of his life, from his release from prison to his death in poverty in Paris three years later. Abir Mukherjee's creation of detective Sam Wyndham, a British officer who finds himself in Calcutta in the 1920s, and his sidekick 'Surrender-Not' Bannerjee, won him a £10,000 publishing deal. He discusses the third book in the series, Smoke and Ashes, set against the backdrop of non-violent protest and increasing demands for Indian independence. Twenty years ago this week Sex and the City launched in America on the HBO channel. To mark the anniversary, TV critic Emma Bullimore pours herself a Cosmopolitan and looks back at her favourite show... Mary Wilson, who died yesterday at the age of 102, was in the public eye as the wife of the former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. She was lampooned in Mrs Wilson'

Front Row announces the winner of the £30,000 Women's Prize for Fiction, 2018, and talks to her about her winning novel. Sunderland indie rocker and songwriter Nadine Shah performs live in the studio and talks to John about the importance of musicians taking a political stance.Critic Rhianna Dhillon reviews the latest outing of the Jurassic Park franchise which sees the return of Chris Pratt and Dallas Bryce Howard.A forest has been planted in Norway with a specific purpose, to supply paper for a library of books to be printed in 100 years' time. One writer every year - starting in 2014 with Margaret Atwood - is contributing a text to be held in trust, unread until the year 2114, when the Future Library will be published. Elif Shafak has just submitted her piece, handing over her manuscript in a ceremony in the young forest. Katie Paterson, the artist whose idea this is, explains her vision. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition opens on 12th June. It has been held every year without interruption since 1769 providing a platform for emerging and established artists. This year it is co-ordinated by Grayson Perry with the theme "Art Made Now". Art historian Jacky Klein joins Stig to review the exhibition.Shebeen is a new play set amongst the Caribbean community in 1950s Nottingham. Inspired by the Windrush generation and written by local playwright Mufaro Makubika, the drama deals with an immigrant Jamaican couple and the forbidden parties they throw at their shebeen - an illegal bar set up in their home. Writer Mufaro Makubika and director Matthew Xia discuss its relevance now. The offbeat comedy Flowers, about the dysfunctional family of a children's writer, starring Olivia Coleman and Julian Barratt, returns to Channel 4 for a second season. The Anglo-Japanese writer Will Sharpe, who also directed and acts in it, is in the studio to discuss its dark humour.We review Vampyr, the action role-playing

Playwright David Edgar is 70 this year. He was 20 in 1968 coming of age, in Bob Dylan's words, when 'there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air'. In a revolutionary move for him David Edgar is taking to the stage himself in the latest of his many theatre pieces. In his one man show, Trying it On, Edgar reflects on the political eruptions of his lifetime and his engagement with them. Why did some revolutionaries embrace Thatcherism? What has his generation achieved? Viv Albertine, author of two bestselling autobiographies, and former member of The Slits, joins literary historian Rebecca Stott, whose ground breaking memoir The Days of Rain won the Costa Biography prize this year, to discuss women's non fiction writing. Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One at Tate Britain marks 100 years since the end of the war, and reflects on how artists responded to the physical and psychological effects of the fighting. Co-curators Emma Chambers and Rachel Smyth consider how art changed from the

Orlando Bloom swaps Middle-earth and the high seas for a Texas trailer park in his first West End production in over a decade, Killer Joe. He talks about playing Joe Cooper, a policeman turned assassin, employed by a family at their wits end to kill their mother for a cut of her life insurance money.Is death, the 'last taboo', finally being broken down by the arts? We consider the recent glut of writing and performance about grief with Cariad Lloyd, whose podcast Griefcast, in which she talks to fellow comedians about losing someone, swept the board at the recent British Podcast Awards. Stig is also joined by writer Kim Sherwood whose debut novel Testament is about family secrets and mourning the death of a grandfather. It has been a winning week for rap as Kenrick Lamar, Stormzy and Dave are all awarded prestigious song-writing prizes. We ask whether it's about the music, or the message, the poetry or the politics? In Antony Gormley's new exhibition, Subject, at the recently redesigned Kettle's Yard in Cambr

The £23m Weston Tower and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries at Westminster Abbey will be opening to the public next month. Architecture critic and historian Tom Dyckhoff gives his response to these two new additions to the abbey church, the site of all royal coronations since William the Conqueror in 1066.Why are so many British writers setting their stories in the countryside at the moment? From the second series of the BBC comedy drama This Country, to plays including Barney Norris's Nightfall, Joe White's Mayfly and Simon Longman's Gundog, and novels such as Jon McGregor's Reservoir 13 and Ali Smith's Autumn, writers are turning to a new vision of 'the pastoral' for inspiration. Writer Barney Norris joins novelist Sarah Hall - who was born and raised in the Lake District - to consider whether writing about the countryside has become part of the zeitgeist again and why.Gillian Allnutt's career as a poet stretches over four decades. In 2016 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. The poet disc

Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen star in the rom-com Book Club which makes its older cast the heart of the story. But does it make good use of such stellar talent? Angie Errigo reviews. Singer-song writer Angélique Kidjo performs live from her new album Remain In Light, which re-imagines track-by-track the original post-punk band Talking Heads' landmark album. She talks about making the album and why she wants to take Rock back to Africa.As Roseanne, the top rated American sitcom, is dramatically axed following offensive tweets sent by it's star Roseanne Barr, John discusses the fallout with Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever. Indian novelist Anuradha Roy discusses her new novel All the Lives We Never Lived, about one woman's escape from a stultifying marriage set against India's fight for independence and a world war. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

French director François Ozon discusses his latest film L'Amant Double, a psychological thriller in which a young woman falls in love with her secretive psychiatrist.Patrick Heron, the British artist and critic is celebrated in a new retrospective exhibition at Tate St Ives. Heron played a major role in the development of British post-war abstract art exploring the Cornish light and colour in the landscape surrounding his home. Curator Andrew Wilson and artist Susanna Heron, Patrick's daughter, join Samira. The acclaim for Rachel Kushner's novel The Flamethrowers brought her to a wide audience. Now she has written The Mars Room, the fictional account of a woman in a US prison with a double life sentence - plus 6 years. She describes getting access to the Californian prison system and the extraordinary stories she uncovered there.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Caroline Donne.

At the age of ninety jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine looks back at her extraordinary career. She talks to Stig Abell about her lasting musical and romantic partnership with saxophonist and composer Sir John Dankworth, her friendship with Ella Fitzgerald and collaboration with Ray Charles.Stig visits Cleo at her countryside home, where in 1970 she and husband John Dankworth created The Stables concert hall in their back garden and meets Cleo's daughter, the singer Jacqui Dankworth.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Iconic dancer and choreographer Akram Khan shows John around his studio at his home and discusses a life of dance, preparing for his final solo performance and what he plans to do now that he is retiring from the stage.The Austrian artist Egon Schiele features alongside a young American photographer Francesca Woodman in a new exhibition Life In Motion at Tate Liverpool. The artists used their own naked bodies as the focus for their work at different ends of the 20th century and both died prematurely in their 20s. Co-curator Tamar Hemmes discusses the unlikely pairing.The writer and former US soldier Kevin Powers gave the reader a visceral experience of the war in Iraq in his novel The Yellow Birds following his tour of duty there. Powers discusses his new novel A Shout in the Ruins, in which he gives us a similar experience, but this time focused on the American Civil War.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

Designer Orla Kiely is famous for her distinct Stem-patterned bags and a global brand that includes fashion, accessories and homeware. Now the first exhibition dedicated to her opens at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. She discusses the origins of her work at a kitchen table in Ireland and why she thinks that pattern can make you happy without even noticing. Crime novelist Belinda Bauer talks about her new novel Snap. Based loosely on the real-life murder of Marie Wilks in 1988, it begins with three children left at the side of the road in a broken-down car as their mother goes to find an emergency telephone. Twice winner of the Crime Novelist of the Year, Belinda considers the importance of childhood memory, landscape and the ordinary fears that haunt us in her writing. What is the identity of British South Asian theatre today? As the Royal Court Theatre holds a series of evenings celebrating the canon of British South Asian theatre going back 50 years, theatre directors Sudha Bhuchar and Prav MJ co

The American writer Philip Roth, whose death at the age of 85 was announced today, is remembered by Ian McEwan, his biographer Claudia Pierpont, and American novelist Amy Bloom. From Roth's first novel Goodbye Columbus in 1959 to Portnoy's Complaint, American Pastoral and The Plot Against America, he was writer who courted controversy and explored complex themes concerning sexuality, Jewish life and America.Presenter John Wilson Producer Hilary Dunn.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, writer and star of TV series Fleabag, discusses balancing performance and writing, and her latest role as L3, a female droid in the latest Star Wars episode, Solo. Andrew Sean Greer has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his comic novel Less, about a failed novelist who embarks on a trip round the world rather than attend his ex-lover's wedding. He discusses writing about gay marriage, ageing and why the win came as a surprise. Following the announcement that the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for UK Comic Fiction is being withheld for the first time in its history, journalist and critic Arifa Akbar joins Andrew Sean Greer to discuss the current climate for writing a laugh-out-loud novel. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Caroline Donne.

Ian McKellen looks back on his acting career and his work as a gay rights activist as a new documentary film comes out about his life.Critic Julia Raeside reviews season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale, which has just started on Channel 4. Bill Gold - the creator of some of the most memorable classic movie posters from the early 1940s until 2011, including Casablanca, Alien and Dirty Harry - died yesterday, aged 97. Publisher and vintage movie poster specialist Tony Nourmand remembers the man whose motto was 'Less is more'. Poet, writer, and dancer Tishani Doshi talks about her new poetry collection, The Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, which was inspired in part by the murder of a close friend. The poems consider how women's bodies are treated, and explore themes of anger, love and loss as well as ways to find hope and strength in the modern world.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.

Shakespeare's Globe found itself in a storm of controversy when Artistic Director Emma Rice left the theatre amid objections to her use of modern lighting and amplification. In her stead the actor Michelle Terry was appointed and her first two productions, As You Like It and Hamlet, have just opened. Terry takes the title role in Hamlet but the approach is a resolutely ensemble one, with casting across gender, disability and ethnicity. Are these productions a radical new approach or are they back-to-basics Shakespeare? Critics Kate Maltby and Susannah Clapp give their verdicts. The marginalia in the philosopher John Stewart Mill's 1700 volume library is being digitised, revealing an unknown side of this reticent man. We look at the history of marginalia, and consider what our own attitudes to writing on books reveal about their changing significance. Biographer Kathryn Hughes and Bill Sherman, a historian of reading, discuss writing in the margins - and confess to their own guilty scribblings. And...a few wee

As he celebrates his 80th birthday, photographer Joel Meyerowitz looks back at his career which is the focus of his new book of photos, Where I Find Myself. It features his early work as a street photographer in New York in the '60s, his images of Ground Zero immediately after the 9/11 attacks, and his most recent still lifes in Tuscany. In a unique commission to open the 2018 Charleston Festival, novelist Ali Smith will be performing a piece of creative prose inspired by the Famous Women Dinner Service, a work of 50 ceramic plates featuring the portraits of historical female figures, produced by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant in 1932. Kirsty discusses the significance and the artistry of the dinner service with Ali Smith, Darren Clarke, curator at Charleston, and art dealer Robert Travers.The Girl on the Train, the psychological thriller by Paula Hawkins, became an overnight bestseller and was later adapted into a film starring Emily Blunt as the troubled Rachel who wakes up with a hangover and an uneasy feel

Film critic Jason Solomons reports from Cannes on the big films, rising stars and talking points at this year's festival.In 1970 Lou Reed not only left The Velvet Underground but he decided poetry was his vocation. In 1971 he gave a reading at St Mark's church in New York which was recorded. 'Do Angels Need Haircuts?' is a slim volume of Reed's early poems that draws on this recording and other archive material. The artist Laurie Anderson, who was married to Reed and is curating his legacy, talks to John Wilson about Reed's writing life.As the three-week Brighton Festival reaches its half-way point, John visits the coast to try his hand at life drawing in Guest Director David Shrigley's project Life Model II. He meets the members of Three Score Dance who are performing work by Pina Bausch on the seafront and travels to the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft to meet artist Morag Myerscough and discover the art of former Los Angeles nun and activist Corita Kent.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Caroline Donne.

The American writer Tom Wolfe has died aged 88. His style of reportage in the late 60s became known as the New Journalism, and his best known books were the Right Stuff about the first NASA astronauts, as well as his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities which epitomised the excesses of Wall Street in the 80s. Writer and critic Diane Roberts pays tribute.Director Richard Eyre talks about his new film of King Lear which is a co-production between BBC Two and Amazon. The stellar cast includes Anthony Hopkins as Lear alongside Emma Thompson and Emily Watson as his scheming daughters. Deadpool 2 is the follow-up to the hugely successful Marvel Comics' Deadpool, whose eponymous anti-hero is a wisecracking mercenary played by Ryan Reynolds. The latest film sees him assembling a team of superheroes to rescue a young mutant. Rhianna Dhillon reviews. As the Royal Academy of Arts celebrates its 250th anniversary, what does it mean to be a Royal Academician? Samira talks to its President, Christopher Le Brun and Keeper of t

As the Royal Ballet stages their new production of Swan Lake this week, we go behind the scenes during rehearsals to meet some of the cast and crew, including choreographer Liam Scarlett, designer John Macfarlane and principal dancer Marianela Nuñez.This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights. An intense tale of passionate relationships, it is considered one of the most powerful and enigmatic works in English literature. As Wuthering Heights is dramatised on Radio 4, we speak to Christine Alexander, author of the Oxford Companion to the Brontës and Professor John Mullan about the short life of Emily Brontë and the impact of her only novel. As Kaffe Fassett's vibrant needlepoints and quilts are celebrated in a new exhibition in Bath, the 80 year-old textile designer talks about his love of bright colours. Presenter: Viv Groskop Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Writer David Nicholls, best known for One Day, talks about bringing sex, drugs and a silver spoon to life in his television adaptation of Edward St Aubyn's acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Gaz Coombes, former frontman of alternative rock band Supergrass, performs a track from his new album, World's Strongest Man, live in the studio and discusses its eclectic influences including the artist Grayson Perry.Kayo Chingonyi is a 31-year-old Zambian-born British poet whose collection Kumukanda was last night announced as the winner of the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize - at £30,000, the biggest prize open to young writers. He'll be reading live in the studio and talking to John about what his win means.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson.