Front Row

Fred D'Aguiar discusses the life and poetry of Benjamin Zephaniah, whose death was announced today.Tom Sutcliffe reviews Wim Wenders' film about the artist Anselm Kiefer and the BBC's adaptation of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five, with film critic Leila Latif and children's author Candy Gourlay. Which is the standout Christmas TV advert this year? Tom discusses the art of selling Christmas with Matt Gay, creative director of several high-profile John Lewis ads and media journalist Liz Gorny.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

Paddington director Paul King returns with Wonka starring Timothée Chalamet in the title role. He talks with Samira about exploring the backstory of Willy Wonka and Roald Dahl’s surprising vision for fiction’s greatest confectioner.Front Row rounds up the best non-fiction books of 2023 with Caroline Sanderson - non-fiction books editor for The Bookseller and chair of judges for the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2022, Stephanie Merritt - critic and novelist, and John Mitchinson - cofounder of Unbound, the independent crowdfunding publisher and co-presenter of literary podcast, Backlisted.The extraordinary work of the artist Pauline Boty (1938 – 1966) is explored by the curator of a new exhibition, Mila Askarova, and the art historian Lynda Nead.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer: Paula McGrathFront Row non-fiction recommendations for 2023Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Patterson published by Faber and Faber Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art, Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming published by Chatto & Windus How To Say Ba

Shane Meadows talks about his unconventional journey into the British film industry and his vision for more diversity in film, as he prepares to give the David Lean lecture at BAFTA.The founders of independent publishers Oneworld, Juliet Mabey and Novin Doostdar, discuss their Booker Prize hat trick as Paul Lynch becomes the third of their authors to win the prestigious literary prize.Which books will be a hit with the children in your life this Christmas? Children’s broadcaster Bex Lindsay has a run down of the outstanding titles she’d recommend. And Front Row goes live to the Turner Prize ceremony at the Towner Eastbourne to find out who has won this year’s prestigious prize. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Olivia SkinnerBex Lindsay's recommendations:The Ice Children by MG Leonard Foxlight by Katya Balen Sunshine Simpson Cooks Up a Storm by GM Linton The Football Encyclopaedia by Alex Bellos and Ben Lyttleton Luna Loves Christmas by Joseph Coelho Geoffrey Gets the Jitters by Nadia Shireen The Wonder

Julia Roberts, and the director of her latest project, Sam Esmail, discuss their new film, Leave The World Behind - a psychological thriller which explores what happens when all the things that make modern life possible stop working.With their last film, the much-garlanded ‘Loving Vincent’, an exploration of the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh, the co-directors and co-writers Dorota and Hugh Welchman created what has been described as the world’s first oil-painted feature film. Hugh joins Front Row to discuss how they’ve used their ground-breaking technique for their new film, The Peasants, a tale of 19th century life in rural Poland.Guitarist MILOŠ has been in the forefront of the classical guitar revival. He talks to Nick about feeling like a time traveller with his new album, Baroque, where he explores music of the baroque period.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Eliane Glaser

Front Row reviews the week’s cultural highlights. Samira Ahmed is joined by critics Sarah Crompton and Isabel Stevens to discuss William Oldroyd’s new film Eileen and a production of The House of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre. The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan, who is often described as one of the 20th Century’s greatest song-writers, has died age 65. Irish broadcaster John Kelly remembers him.Ian Youngs reports from Bristol’s new music venue Bristol Beacon, formerly Colston Hall, which is re-opening after a five year refurbishment and a name change. It’s now a state of the art concert venue, but the work has proved controversial due to escalating costs. And Barbara Walker, who is shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize, talks about how her portraits capture people affected by the Windrush scandal. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Eliane Glaser

Since 1994 Sir Richard Mantle has been General Director of Opera North. He's led the company through the creation of a new home in Leeds; the establishment of the Howard Assembly Room - a performance space for all kinds of music; and many award-winning opera productions. As he leaves the company, at a time when cuts to opera funding have been making headlines, he joins Front Row to discuss why he thinks opera has much to contribute to culture in the UK.Singer-songwriter Billie Marten, from Ripon in Yorkshire, performs tracks from her fourth album, Drop Cherries, ahead of her UK tour, which starts this Saturday in Liverpool. As his new public sculpture, Hibiscus Rising, is unveiled in Leeds, artist Yinka Shonibare talks to Nick about creating a work that marks a dark episode in the city's history and provides a place to come together for all the communities in the city today.Presenter Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Michael Connelly is one of several authors suing the tech company OpenAI for "theft" of his work. Nicola Solomon, outgoing Society of Authors CEO, and Sean Michaels, one of the first novelists to use AI, discuss the challenges and opportunities facing writers on the cusp of a new technological era.What makes a great piece of terrible album artwork? The Williamson Gallery & Museum in Birkenhead is currently displaying nearly 500 albums which have been collected over a seven year period by Steve Goldman from record fairs and online market places as part of their ‘Worst Record Covers’ exhibition. Samira is joined by the exhibition curator Niall Hodson and the writer, journalist and author of “The Sound of Being Human” Jude Rogers.The most famous event in Los Angeles in 1852 was a horse race. Fortunes were won and lost on Pio Pico's horse Sarco and Jose Sepulveda's Black Swan. Widespread press reports included the horses’ names and the names of their owners - but not the name of the black jockey who won. Apar

For what would have been the 100th birthday of soprano Maria Callas, Front Row brought together singer Dame Sarah Connolly and music critic Fiona Maddocks to reassess her achievements and influence in the world of opera.After successfully teaming up during the pandemic to create the album, Lost in the Cedar Wood, musician and actor Johnny Flynn and nature writer and poet Robert Macfarlane talk to Tom about their second collaboration – The Moon Also Rises, and Johnny performs live in the Front Row studio.Rory Pilgrim is one of the artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize. He discusses his work which combines song writing, composition, films, texts, drawings, paintings and live performances.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

A special edition of Front Row, live from the Booker Prize for Fiction. Samira Ahmed is joined on stage by Booker Prize judges actor Adjoa Andoh and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro to discuss this year’s shortlist, before the chair of judges, novelist Esi Edugyan, announces the winner live on air. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who spent six years in detention in Iran, gives the keynote speech about the power of literature to take us to another world. Front Row will also hear from all this year’s shortlisted authors, whose novels cover climate change, a democracy sliding into extremism, prejudice, grief and the complexities of race in America. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose has attracted a lot of media attention for Maestro, his portrayal of the composer Leonard Bernstein. Tom Sutcliffe asks music critic Nicholas Kenyon and writer and cultural commentator Zoe Williams what they thought of Cooper’s directorial debut – which he spent years preparing for, studying his speech patterns and copying how he conducted Mahler symphonies. They also review Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge – a new reality TV spin-off of the hit Korean drama. Love it or hate it, Brutalism is an architectural form which could get its own museum – in a school assembly hall in north London. Architectural designer Ben Pentreath who works in traditional and classical styles and Catherine Croft, Director of the Twentieth Century Society assess its impact.

In her acclaimed films Joanna Hogg blurs the lines between her art and her life. As she releases her first ghost story film, The Eternal Daughter - an exploration of a mother and daughter relationship with Tilda Swinton playing both roles, she talks to Antonia Quirke about the craft involved in making art inspired by her life.Satellite imagery might make maps today more accurate, but we haven’t stopped wanting to see creative, imaginative maps that are also about story telling, from illustrations in books to mapping out fantasy worlds. Antonia meets two contemporary map makers: Jamie Whyte who creates illustrative maps and Luke Casper Pearson who maps the virtual worlds in computer games. Artist Ghislaine Leung who’s been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize uses a “score” – similar to musical scores – to create a relationship with those who help to construct her work in galleries. Re-using discarded objects and highlighting her conflicting demands as both artist and mother are central to her work. H

Tom Sutcliffe talks to director Ridley Scott about his new film Napoleon - a subject that takes him back to an actor who’s played an emperor for him before – Joaquin Phoenix was Commodus in Gladiator – and back to the period in which his very first film. The Duellists was set. A fifth of the seats at the Royal Albert Hall are owned by just over 300 people - who can choose to enjoy performances or sell the tickets on at a profit. We hear from Richard Lyttelton, a former President of the Royal Albert Hall who believes that making money out of the seats doesn't really align with the original vision of the venue. A Gloucester Old Spot pig has been named The Satsuma Complex - in honour of comedian Bob Mortimer's first book, which has won this year's Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for the best comic novel. He's joined by fellow comedian and member of the judging panel Pippa Evans to explore what makes fiction funny.

Thomas Guthrie and “The Alehouse Boys” bring the music of Schubert to pubs with their new album Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin. Their arrangements of Schubert’s song cycle intend to break free from the formality of established lieder recitals, returning to its original improvisational form. In the last of our Booker shortlist series this week, Samira interviews Canadian 2023 Giller Prize-winning novelist Sarah Bernstein. Her second novel, Study for Obedience, explores the inner thoughts of its unnamed protagonist who moves to a new area to stay with her brother and quickly becomes a feared stranger. And the critic Boyd Tonkin discusses the remarkable literary output of the author, critic and poet AS Byatt who has died aged 87.

Annette Bening and Jodie Foster star in a new sports biopic Nyad, the eponymous story of Diana Nyad who attempted to swim between Cuba and Florida in her 60s. In an exclusive interview for Front Row, Tom Sutcliffe talks to them about meeting their real-life counterparts, the importance of on screen friendship and getting time to train in the ocean.Briony Hanson, British Council’s Director of Film and Kevin Le Gendre, author and journalist, review Rustin, a film about Bayard Rustin, the influential gay Black Civil Rights leader responsible for the 1963 March on Washington, and the book Amazing Grace: A Cultural History of the Beloved Hymn by James Walvin. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Corinna Jones

Ian McMillan explains the challenge of translating Rossini's comedy opera, The Barber of Seville, into Yorkshire dialect and singers Oscar Castellino and Felicity Buckland along with pianist Pete Durant perform two of the Yorkshire-ised arias from this new production live in the Front Row studio.Our relationships with art objects is a subject that many visual artists are currently exploring. Two such artists are Johanna Billing and Stuart Semple who joined Nick in the Front Row studio to discuss why they think art as an object is getting in the way of appreciating art as an experience.Jesse Darling is the first in Front Row' series of interviews with the artists who are nominated for this year's Turner Prize. He uses sculpture, installation, text and sound in his work to react to the world around him, for instance contorting roller coaster tracks in an expression of life's messiness. The exhibition continues at the Towner Eastbourne, and the winner of the prize will be announced in December. The Royal Soci

Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to her award-winning film Promising Young Woman aims to have cinema-goers squirming in their seats. The mystery drama Saltburn explores class, as an awkward outsider spends the summer at a large country house. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt Hon Lucy Frazer KC MP discusses her plans to reach the targets set out in the Government’s Creative Industries Sector Vision. In this week’s interview with a Booker shortlisted author, Tom speaks to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Paul Harding. His third novel, This Other Eden, uses the historical story of an island in Maine harmoniously inhabited by a mixed-race community in the 19th century as a point of poetic departure, until the unsettling arrival of missionaries.

The UK’s first art, film and photography galleries dedicated to war and conflict have just opened at the Imperial War Museum. Al Murray, who has made several documentaries about Britain’s wars, and Rachel Newell, Head of Art at the Imperial War Museum, join Samira Ahmed to discuss the new galleries. Director Todd Haynes talks about his new film May December which stars Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. The black comedy drama follows an actress who travels to Georgia to meet a controversial woman she is set to portray in a film. And musician and producer Trevor Horn, known for creating the sound of the 1980s, talks about his new album Echoes – Ancient and Modern. It reimagining songs from 1982 to 2012 and includes performances from Iggy Pop, Tory Amos and Marc Almond.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

Tonight on Front Row - reviews of something old and something new. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, Anatomy of a Fall, a whodunnit fused with a portrait of a marriage and wrapped up in courtroom drama, won the Palme d'Or, and thirty years ago today, hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan released their seminal debut album, Enter The Wu-Tang Clan (36 Chambers). Musician and writer Bob Stanley, and music journalist Vie Marshall have been watching and listening and share their thoughtsOn the side of a pub in Sheffield "The Snog" - a mural of a middle-aged couple in a tight-embrace - by the artist Pete McKee has become a much-loved work of public art. Now McKee has expanded the story of the couple, Frank & Joy, into an immersive installation - the creation of fictional pub The Buffer's Rest - at Trafalgar Warehouse. He talks to Nick about creating Frank & Joy - A Love Story.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

To mark 400 hundred years to the day since the First Folio of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies was published according to the True Original Copies, the BBC is celebrating this with a season of Shakespeare programmes. Front Row is looking aslant at the other artistic, literary and cultural events of 1623.Tom Sutcliffe hears from artist historian Karen Hearn about the impact of the first Palladian building in England and what was being painted. Lucy Munro traces the influence of The Spanish Match (which didn’t happen) on drama. The conductor Jeremy Summerly tells Tom about the music being played and sung that year. Folklorist Steve Roud reveals how the news was delivered in broadside ballads, which found their way into Shakespeare’s plays, and singer Lisa Knapp sings one. This was the year when John Donne wrote ‘no man is an island’. The big draw, apart from Donne’s preaching, was the elephant sent by the King of Spain.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Singer, songwriter and activist Billy Bragg joins Samira Ahmed to perform live in the Front Row studio and discuss The Roaring Forty, a box set and nationwide tour to mark his forty years in the music industry.Women in Revolt, a new exhibition of Feminist art of the 70s and 80s, opens this week at the Tate Britain in London. Musician and punk artist Helen McCookerybook and art historian Catherine McCormack discuss the impact of the era. In the latest in Front Row’s series of interviews with the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Paul Murray discusses The Bee Sting. A family saga set in contemporary Ireland, it examines our capacity for denial in the face of disaster. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Ciaran Bermingham