Front Row begins a series of unique book groups with each of the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019. Today novelist Lucy Ellmann, whose epic 1000 page novel Ducks, Newburyport is told in a stream of consciousness. Ellmann is joined by a group of Front Row listeners who get to quiz her on her book.

Waldemar Januszczak discusses the work of painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose oil portraits depicting black figures are on show at the Corvi-Mora gallery in London and who will be the subject of a major retrospective at Tate Britain next year.

Derek Paravicini, a blind autistic savant pianist with an extraordinary ability to play by ear and improvise, performs for us ahead of his concert at the Tetbury Music Festival in Gloucestershire. We also hear from his teacher Adam Ockelford.

Presenter: John Wilson