Front Row

As news breaks of a new all-female film version of William Golding's classic Lord of the Flies, the novelist Joanne Harris and film critic Karen Krizanovich join Andrea Catherwood to discuss whether it's a good idea. Patti Cake$ stars Danielle Macdonald as an unlikely rapper with talent but little opportunity. It's the first film for writer-director Geremy Jasper and won a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival. Critic Mark Eccleston reviews.The American writer Nicole Krauss' books include The History of Love, which became an international bestseller, and Great House - both were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Ten years ago she was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. Now her first book for 7 years, Forest Dark, is published: a contemplation of identity and shaking off the stories we tell about ourselves. She talks about the novel's characters including 68-year-old former New York lawyer Epstein... and a novelist called Nicole. The Market Theatre is bringing its award-winning produ

Following speculation as to who might play Nigel Farage in a forthcoming film about Brexit, actor Brian Cox, who recently played Winston Churchill, and casting director Leo Davis, who cast Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, discuss the challenges for actors in playing non-fictional characters; what sort of preparation is required, how important are physical characteristics and what advice would they offer to actors on portraying "a real life" character?The fantasy series Game of Thrones has been of the most successful TV shows worldwide in the last decade. But it hasn't just caused a stir on our screens; it's also transformed the film industry in Northern Ireland where much of the mega series is filmed. Richard Williams, Chief Executive of Northern Ireland Screen, explains whether the burgeoning business can be sustained after GoT airs its next and final season.English-Egyptian writer Omar Robert Hamilton's debut novel, The City Always Wins, has been released to acclaim by writers including Philip Pullman and JM Co

Twelve year-old composer, pianist and violinist Alma Deutscher tells Kirsty Lang about her new piano concerto and her opera Cinderella, which was performed in Vienna to rave reviews. Critics Stephen Armstrong and Lucy Mangan discuss the return of The Great British Bake off, now on Channel 4.Games critic Jordan Erica Webber reviews Last Day of June, a new videogame in which players time travel to try and avoid the tragic death of the protagonist's wife. Following on from the controversy surrounding the removal of Confederate statues in the US, what is the role of the artist in commemorating our past? Afua Hirsch and Griselda Pollack debate the ethics of celebrating historical figures in stone. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Best known for his series of crime novels starring private detective Charlie Parker, John Connolly's new novel, He, is a fictional reimagining of the life of one of the greatest screen comedians the world has ever known, Stan Laurel, and his enduring partnership with Oliver Hardy, the man he knew as Babe.Actor Ed Skrein has stepped own from the role of Major Ben Daimo in the film Hellboy because he is British and the character Japanese American. Samira Ahmed probes the significance of this, the first time an actor has made such a move, with Rebecca Ford, an Asian American journalist who has been covering the story in Los Angeles for The Hollywood Reporter. Tanika Gupta talks to Samira about her new play Lions and Tigers, which opens tonight at Shakespeare's Globe. The play is based on Tanika Gupta's great-uncle Dinesh Gupta, and his violent resistance against British Rule in 1930s Calcutta. The playwright explains how family recollections of Dinesh and his letters from prison helped inspire the drama.Based on

More often associated with comic films, actor Bill Nighy turns his hand to gothic horror in his latest movie The Limehouse Golem. Based on the Peter Ackroyd novel, Nighy plays Inspector Kildare, a compassionate detective, drafted in to investigate a series of grisly murders in Victorian London. He talks to Samira about the safety of comedy and how he hates a challenge.As Londoners were treated to three different productions of Hamlet this summer, we explore why audiences can never seem to get enough of The Prince of Denmark. Samira is joined by Dame Janet Suzman, who has both acted in and directed the play; Kosha Engler who is currently playing Gertrude and Ophelia in a 3 person abridged version with her husband Benet and her father-in-law Gyles Brandreth; and psychotherapist Mark Vernon.American photographer Steve McCurry's most famous image is Afghan Girl, a photo taken in 1984 for the cover of National Geographic Magazine. The multi award-winning photographer has been travelling regularly in Afghanistan si

Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood discusses his passion for painting, drawing and sculpture. In the year that marks his seventieth birthday, he tells Stig Abell how his relationship with art began.Veteran director James Ivory claimed this week he was struggling to get investors for his film Richard II, because financiers feared that no money could be made from films based on Shakespeare's plays. We ask film-maker Anne Beresford and Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance literature, if there is a problem adapting the Bard for the big screen. After a social-media purge and a lot of speculation, Taylor Swift has released the first single from her new album, Reputation. Kate Mossman gives her verdict on What You Made Me Do, a song that credits Right Said Fred for an interpolation of the melody from their 1991 hit I'm Too Sexy. Danish writer Peter Hoeg found fame with his second novel, Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow. He talks about his new novel, The Susan Effect, which, like his most famous book, focuses on a

Making TV comedy about of illness, with Peep Show writer Sam Bain, whose new series Ill Behaviour features a cancer sufferer refusing conventional treatment, and Alison Vernon Smith, producer of Bad Salsa, Radio 4's comedy drama about women who take up salsa dancing after their cancer treatment. Thomas Meehan was behind successful musicals including Annie, The Producers, and Hairspray but he's not the name you're likely to know because he wrote the book: the narrative glue that holds a musical together. Theatre critic Matt Wolf assesses his legacy and discusses his partnership with Mel Brooks. Ned Beauman on his latest novel Madness Is Better Than Defeat. Beauman is the author of four novels including Boxer, Beetle. He has been longlisted for the Man Booker prize, won a Somerset Maugham award, and in 2013 was named one of Granta's best British novelists under 40. This latest novel is inspired by the making of the films Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo, though its setting is the earlier Hollywood golden age of

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's new film is set during the five days of unrest that took place in Detroit in 1967. The drama is based on first hand recollections, police records and eye-witness accounts of the race-riots. Bigelow talks to Front Row about why these 50-year-old events feel as contemporary and urgent as ever. 75 years ago the English painter, war artist, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver Eric William Ravilious was killed aged 39 when the aircraft he was in was lost off the coast of Iceland. Many of his works are seen as capturing a sense of Englishness that existed between the wars. He also designed many popular pieces for Wedgwood including a commemorative mug for the abortive Coronation of Edward VIII and the Alphabet Mug of 1937. Art critic Richard Cork explains the significance of his work and the artist design movement he was part of.Famous for the wrong book. It's 170 years since Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was published, 160 years since Flaubert published Madam Bovary

Peter Kosminsky talks to Stig about his new drama The State, which follows four British men and women who travel to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State. Kosminsky made his reputation with difficult drama documentaries and the storylines in The State are all based on documented events. As writer and director, he discusses the challenges of humanising these characters, and the decision to focus on portraying life inside IS.Did Vermeer really use a camera obscura to help him paint? Artist Jane Jelley explains how she recreated 17th century painting techniques to find out the truth behind the Dutch Master's luminous paintings.And in his new stage role Ben Whishaw plays Luke, your average Silicon Valley aerospace billionaire...until God tells him to 'go where there is violence', and he sets out to change the world. With Ben Whishaw and the director Ian Rickson, Stig delves into the ideas and issues in their new play, Against.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Ella-mai Robey.

In front of a live audience in the BBC's Big Blue Tent at the Edinburgh Festival, comedian Lucy Porter and comedy tutor Jojo Sutherland give John Wilson a lesson in stand-up - but can you really teach people to be funny?A one-woman show with 10 characters - Nilija Sun discusses her play Pike St, about the residents in the Lower East Side of Manhattan as they prepare for an imminent hurricane.Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed explains what his show Words and Music is really about - plus a performance from Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

Val McDermid presents a special edition from the Edinburgh International Books Festival.American author Paul Auster talks about his Man Booker longlisted novel 4 3 2 1, which offers four different versions of the central character's life. Denise Mina on her first true crime novel, The Long Drop, about one of Scotland's most notorious criminals, Peter Manuel. Glasgow Student Slam Poetry Champion Catherine Wilson performs a poem written specially for Front Row. Mike Heron from The Incredible String Band discusses the joint memoir he's written with the Scottish novelist Andrew Greig, You Know What You Could Be. Folk singer Sam Lee performs The Incredible String Band song, The Circle is Unbroken. Presenter: Val McDermid Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who has devoted much of his long and distinguished career to the revival of early music, discusses his latest project Monteverdi 450, an international tour of Claudio Monteverdi's three surviving operas in celebration of his 450th anniversary.Apphia Campbell's one-woman show, Woke, interweaves the story of two women, 42 years apart, who become involved in the struggle for civil rights. One, notorious Black Panther Assata Shakur, the other Ambrosia, a present day university student caught up in Black Lives Matter in Ferguson. Two critics - Gayle Anderson, comedy reviewer for the Herald, and Chiara Margiotta, deputy editor of Ed Fest Magazine - discuss their experiences of this year's Edinburgh Festivals.Inspired by recent neurobiological research and interviews with people living with dementia, Theatre Re's The Nature of Forgetting is a part-mime, part-theatre show which focuses on Tom, a 55-year-old man, embroiled in the tangled threads of his disappearing memories. Guillaume Pigé, ar

Shappi Khorsandi is the first guest in a week of programmes from the Edinburgh Festival. On stage in front of a live audience in the BBC's Big Blue Tent, she discusses her new show Mistress and Misfit, about Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton.In Nassim, Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour sets out to teach the audience his native language Farsi in a show which features a different performer from the Festival each day. So how does he prepare when the deal is that performers have not even seen the script before stepping out in front of an audience?The former National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke, discusses her new poetry collection Zoology. As the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe celebrate their 70th birthday this year, the International Festival's director Fergus Lenehan is joined by 90-year-old Dr Pamela Epps, who has attended every festival in the city since 1947.Presenter John Wilson Producer Jerome Weatherald.

A special edition exploring the life and legacy of the playwright Joe OrtonLeonie Orton, Joe Orton's youngest sister, has written a memoir of her life, I Had It In Me, in which she describes the childhood in Leicester she shared with Joe Orton and how his death led her to question and change her life. She meets Samira at the Pork Pie Library which she and Joe used to regularly visit. Dr Emma Parker has co-curated two exhibitions inspired by Joe Orton: What the Artist Saw: Art Inspired by the Life and Work of Joe Orton, is on at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester until 22 October and Crimes of Passion: The Story of Joe Orton is on at the National Justice Museum in Nottingham until 1 OctoberSally Norman, co-founder and co-director of Soft Touch Arts in Leicester, and her assistant Jenna Forbes, discuss their new community arts exhibition Breaking Boundaries: Joe Orton and Me which is on at Soft Touch Arts until 8 September.Theatre critic John Lahr, author of the acclaimed Joe Orton biography, Pric

Actor Henry Goodman talks about his latest stage role as the celebrated portrait painter Lucian Freud in Looking at Lucian, a new play by Alan Franks.The number of published British black and minority ethnic authors writing for young adults is lamentably low. A new collection of short stories and poetry, A Change is Gonna Come, is setting out to change that - the collection includes work by established YA writers like Tanya Byrne and Patrice Lawrence but also introduces four new unpublished BAME writers. The writer Nikesh Shukla and The Bookseller's Online Editor Sarah Shaffi discuss who are the rising stars in diversity in British YA fiction and look at the publishing industry's attempts to improve their representation.British-born, Bangkok-based best-selling author Lawrence Osborne's novels often focus on travellers coming unstuck in foreign lands, and his new book Beautiful Animals, is no exception. A thriller set amongst the tourists and wealthy expats on a Greek Island, it explores what happens when two

An international figure in architecture Daniel Libeskind is renowned for his ability to evoke cultural memory in buildings.Born in Poland in 1946, Libeskind emigrated to the United States as a teenager and performed as a musical virtuoso, before eventually leaving music to study architecture. He began his career as an architectural theorist and professor, holding positions at various institutions around the world. In 1989, he won the international competition to build the Jewish Museum in Berlin. A series of influential museum commissions followed, including Imperial War Museum North, Manchester; Denver Art Museum; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Royal Ontario Museum; and the Military History Museum, Dresden. In 2003, Studio Libeskind won another historic competition-to create a master plan for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.In this extended interview, Daniel Libeskind gives John Wilson insights into his design process and the sometimes surprising artistic inspirations

Philippa Gregory talks about her new novel The Last Tudor - the 15th book in her Tudor/Plantagenet series in as many years. In the Last Tudor, Gregory tells the stories of the Grey sisters, starting with Lady Jane Grey who was queen of England for just nine days. The classically-trained singer-songwriter Regina Spektor defies categorisation but wins admiration and a loyal following for her distinctive pop drawing on influences from Boris Pasternak to the Beatles. She joins Kirsty in the studio to perform live from her current album, Remember Us To Life.For Front Row's Queer Icons series, the actor Rebecca Root talks about the Mary Oliver poem Wild Geese which helped her through her transition.This week Channel 4 airs the reality TV series Eden: Paradise Lost - the reality show set on a Scottish island which was cancelled after just four episodes last year. Elizabeth Day gives her verdict.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Dymphna Flynn.

Highlights from Front Row's Queer Icons project, presented by Alan Carr.With guests including Mary Portas, Olly Alexander, Christine and the Queens, Paris Lees, Maggi Hambling, Rebecca Root, A.Dot, Stella Duffy and the Oscar-winning writer of Moonlight, Tarell Alvin McCraney.Celebrating LGBTQ culture from the poetry of Sappho to the songs of Frank Ocean, we've asked guests to champion a piece of LGBTQ artwork that is special to them - one that has significance in their lives.Will Young picks the Joan Armatrading song that inspired him to come out; Christine and the Queens talks about Jean Genet's Our Lady Of The Flowers; and Sir Antony Sher reveals his regrets about not being out publicly when he starred in Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy.For the full interviews head to Front Row's Queer Icons website, where you can hear Queer Icons from Neil MacGregor, Asifa Lahore, Colm Toibin, Tony Kushner, Emma Donoghue, Nicholas Hytner and many more.Presenter: Alan Carr Readers: Lorelei King and Simon Russell Beale

When a renowned writer or artist dies, those left behind can find themselves in an ethical quandary - should work that is unfinished or incomplete be kept private or is there a public interest in revealing it to the world? Hunter Davies's wife, the author Margaret Forster, passed away last year, and left behind a substantial amount of unpublished writing. Hunter shares his story with us in the studio, and Virginia Woolf's great-niece and advisor to the Woolf estate, Virginia Nicholson, also joins us to discuss the issue.TV writer and part-time emergency room doctor Dan Sefton talks about his latest TV drama Trust Me, starring the future Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker. A psychological thriller about a nurse who takes drastic measures after losing her job, the four-part BBC series examines the many facets and layers of telling lies.The new Charlize Theron action spy thriller Atomic Blonde is not for the faint-hearted. Set in Berlin in the final days of the Cold War, the film features numerous very physical fight s

Irvine Welsh discusses Performers, a new one-act play he has co-written with Dean Cavanagh about the '60s cult film Performance. Directed by Donald Cammell and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, it starred James Fox and Mick Jagger. Welsh's play dramatises the casting process in which East End criminals were sought for the villain roles.When James Daunt became Managing Director of the bookshop chain Waterstones in 2011, the company was receiving £27m per year selling its window space and high-profile in-store locations to publishers who wanted greater visibility for their books. He immediately stopped the practice, but what were the repercussions? James Daunt and Will Atkinson, Managing Director of Atlantic Books, discuss bookshop economics and the role of the 'recommendation'.Morrissey's early years get the rock-star biopic treatment in the film England Is Mine. Anita Sethi reviews.For Front Row's Queer Icons series, singer-songwriter and LGBTI rights activist CN Lester chooses Leslie Feinberg's semi-autobiograph