Front Row

David Bowie, Laura Mvula, Radiohead, and grime stars Kano and Skepta, are among the nominees for this year's Mercury Prize for best album, it was announced today. Music journalist Ruth Barnes rates this year's diverse shortlist. Colin Spencer's Spitting Image - first staged in 1968 when it became the UK's first ever openly gay play - is being revived as part of the King's Head Theatre's Queer Season in London. Meanwhile, Jon Brittain's play about a lesbian couple, Rotterdam, is back in the West End at Trafalgar Studios. Kirsty Lang talks to both writers about writing gay characters but 50 years apart. Continuing her series of interviews with Brazilian artists in the build-up to the Olympics, Kirsty visits sound artist Vivian Caccuri at her studio in an old biscuit factory.Sara Taylor won rave reviews for her debut novel The Shore and she's back on winning form with her second novel The Lauras. It tells the story of a mother running away from an unhappy marriage with her 13 year old child Alex, and how the pai