Front Row

In 1912, 24 scouts from the slums of South East London set sail from Waterloo Bridge, but in a tragic accident eight drowned. Stella Duffy discusses her new novel, London Lies Beneath, in which she recreates that area of London and imagines the lives of the families involved in the months leading up to the tragedy and beyond.With news that the £21m New Art Gallery Walsall is being threatened with closure just 16 years after it opened, Bob and Roberta Smith, former artist-in-residence, gives his response.At the age of 19, Yves Klein identified the blue sky in Nice as his first artwork. It marked the beginning of an artistic career which ended with his heart attack at the age of 34. Art critic Richard Cork reviews a new exhibition of Klein's work at Tate Liverpool.Barrie Kosky's directorial debut at the Royal Opera House is Shostakovich's The Nose, based on a satirical story by Gogol, with a huge cast of singers and even more noses, all inspired, he says, by a very famous one - Barbara Streisand's.Presenter Sam