Front Row

As Alison Steadman wins the Richard Harris Award for Outstanding Contribution to Film at the British Independent Film Awards, and the BFI announces a season dedicated to her TV work in the New Year, we speak to the actress about her career.What links baroque bad-boy painter Caravaggio and a present-day retired docker from Merseyside? Compassion, according to Anders Lustgarten's new play The Seven Acts of Mercy. Kirsty talks to the playwright and political activist about his latest work for the Royal Shakespeare Company.After news in October that AQA, the last exam board in England offering History of Art A-level, was dropping the subject from 2018, the schools standards minister, Nick Gibb, has announced that a new A-level in art history is being developed by the Pearson exam board for teaching from September 2017. Artist Cornelia Parker and Griselda Pollock, Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory & History at Leeds University, give their reaction. The Top 40 Singles chart this week includes