Front Row: Archive 2013

With Kirsty Lang.

The artist Alfred Munnings is best remembered as a painter of English rural scenes and horses. An ill- judged speech to the Royal Academy in 1949, in which he attacked Picasso, Henry Moore and modern art in general, led him to be seen as a reactionary and conservative figure.

But a new film about his early life, Summer in February, reveals another side to Munnings. Set in an artists' colony in Cornwall, the film explores the bohemian existence and love affairs of painters including Sir Alfred Munnings and Dame Laura Knight before they became established.

Kirsty Lang discovers the love triangle that tore young Munnings's life apart and asks whether his outspoken views and traditional approach to art in later life has led him to be overlooked as a painter.

Producer Olivia Skinner.

John Wilson charts the progress of artist Jeremy Deller, as he creates a range of new work for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The journey begins in Jeremy's flat, and includes visits to a recording studio and a record pressing plant, before the final unveiling of the works in Venice.

Producer Ekene Akalawu.

With Mark Lawson.

Award-winning documentary maker Norma Percy's latest series, The Iraq War, investigates the events that led Britain and America to go to war with Iraq, with testimony from major players including Tony Blair, Jack Straw and key figures in the Iraqi government. Chris Mullin and Richard Ottaway MP discuss whether the series give us a new insight into how the war came about.

To celebrate the centenary of Stravinsky's controversial ballet The Rite of Spring, dancer and choreographer Akram Khan has created a new interpretation of the piece with an original score by Nitin Sawnhey, Jocelyn Pook and Ben Frost. Akram Khan discusses his new work ITMOi (In the Mind of Igor) and explains how he went about following in Stravinsky's footsteps.

In Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds share a cultural passion, historian Antonia Fraser champions J M W Turner's painting The Fighting Temeraire.

Producer Olivia Skinner.

With Mark Lawson.

Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace) and Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) play mother and daughter in Neil Jordan's vampire film Byzantium. After setting up home in a run-down seaside guest house, schoolgirl Eleanor (Ronan) confides to a friend that she survives on human blood. Natalie Haynes reviews.

Lucy Kirkwood's new play Chimerica opens in Beijing in 1989. As the tanks roll into Tiananmen Square, an American photographer captures a piece of history - which comes back to haunt him as he works on the U S presidential elections in New York 2012. Lucy Kirkwood and director Lyndsey Turner talk to Mark about working together on the play.

Novelist Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote the best-seller The Time Traveller's Wife, has now collaborated with the Royal Ballet on Raven Girl. Based on a fairy tale written by Niffenegger, Raven Girl tells the story of a girl who wants to fly. Audrey Niffenegger reflects on how the creative partnership worked.

For the Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds share a cultural passion, Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, nominates Mozart's opera, The Marriage of Figaro.

Producer Nicki Paxman.

With Mark Lawson.

TV and film producer Tony Garnett's work includes Cathy Come Home, Kes, Cardiac Arrest and This Life. The British Film Institute is now marking his 50 year career with a retrospective season. In this conversation, he explains why he has generally refused to do interviews, and how personal tragedies have been reflected in films such as Up the Junction.

Although he started his career as an actor, appearing in Dixon of Dock Green, Garnett discusses the appeal of being a producer and the resultant battles to make hard-hitting films tackling difficult or controversial issues - including back-street abortions and the welfare state.

Producer Claire Bartleet.

With John Wilson.

Writer and critic Paul Morley discusses his new book The North: (And Almost Everything In It). The book is part memoir and part history, exploring what it means to be northern and the contribution the area has made to English cultural and political life.

In Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds reflect on a favourite cultural experience, soprano Angela Gheorghiu nominates fellow Romanian Virginia Zeani singing Bellini's I Puritani.

Critic Jason Solomons considers the runners and riders for this year's Palme D'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Coen Brothers new offering Inside Llewyn Davis and Blue Is The Warmest Colour, a love story that has already made history for containing the most explicit lesbian sex scenes in a mainstream movie.

Singer-songwriter John Grant has revealed his anguish after his laptop, containing music and notes for lyrics, was stolen after a recent gig in Brighton. Jazz musician Soweto Kinch was also the victim of theft, but is now reunited with his beloved saxophone, and Beth Orton recovered a lost guitar after help from footballer Joey Barton. All three musicians reflect on their losses - and Soweto Kinch plays his returned saxophone in the Front Row studio.

Producer Ellie Bury.

With John Wilson.

Berlin-born photographer Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) was one of the most internationally sought-after portrait and fashion photographers in the 1940s and 1950s. America's leading magazines, including Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, hired him for his imaginative and highly individual shots. Erwin's grandson Remy and critic Joanna Pitman assess his legacy as a new exhibition Blumenfeld Studio: New York, 1941-1960 opens.

Lydia Davis won The Man Booker International Prize last night for a career which includes a novel, translations of Proust and Flaubert and a large repertoire of very short stories, some only one sentence long. She explains how momentary observations inspire her work, including something she spotted on the London Underground yesterday.

For Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds reflect on a favourite cultural experience,

John Constable's renowned landscape painting Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows has been bought for the nation at a price of £23.1m - a record figure for a work by Constable. Art reviewer William Feaver reflects on the painting's worth, and looks back at how it was received when first exhibited in 1831.

Producer Jerome Weatherald.

With Mark Lawson.

Khaled Hosseini's debut novel The Kite Runner was an international best-seller. As he publishes a new novel, And the Mountains Echoed, Hosseini reflects on being a writer in exile, his creative process, and censorship in his native Afghanistan.

Saints Alive is the new project from the artist Michael Landy, who once destroyed all his possessions for a work called Break Down. Images of saints from the National Gallery's collection have been cast in three dimensions and assembled using materials he sourced from car boot sales and flea markets. He shows Mark around the exhibition.

Novelist A S Byatt reveals her choice for Front Row's Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds nominate a favourite artwork.

DJ and film critic Andrew Collins presents his top 10 of disc jockeys in film, as The King Of Marvin Gardens is re-released, starring Jack Nicholson as a late-night talk show host.

Producer Stephen Hughes.

With Mark Lawson.

The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown discusses his latest novel about code-breaking called Inferno, a Dante inspired crime thriller set in the streets, museums and ancient buildings of Florence.

Richard Wagner is loved and loathed in almost equal measure. The composer of the musically ground-breaking Ring Cycle, Tristan and Isolde and Meistersingers is also known for his extreme political views, including anti-Semitism. Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of his birth. Former England cricketer and Wagner fan Ed Smith debates if it's possible to look beyond Wagner's politics and celebrate his music.

Comedy writer Eddie Braben, best known for his work with Morecambe and Wise, has died aged 82. The radio critic Gillian Reynolds, who was a lifelong friend of Braben, reflects on his career and legacy.

In Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds reflect on a favourite cultural experience, Mary Beard chooses Laocoön and His Sons, a sculpture from Ancient Greece which depicts a key scene from the Trojan War.

Producer Ellie Bury.

With Mark Lawson

Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton star in The Big Wedding, playing an ex-married couple who must pretend to be together for their adopted son's wedding. The starry cast also includes Susan Sarandon, Amanda Seyfried and Robin Williams as the priest. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh delivers her verdict.

A new series on the Tudors begins on BBC TV this week - so why is this historical period so popular with TV executives, and which other parts of British history deserve the TV treatment? Historians Henrietta Leyser and Don Spaeth pitch their alternatives.

Veteran American writer James Salter has just published his first novel in 34 years. All That Is comes garlanded with praise from writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and draws together many of the themes of Salter's lifetime's work: war, love, sex and marriage. Often considered the great overlooked writer, 87 year old Salter discusses the novel's long gestation, and his trademark economy of prose.

In Cultural Exchange, in which leading creative minds reflect on a favourite cultural experience, David Walliams discusses the work of Harold Pinter, and recalls the guidance Pinter gave him when he performed in No Man's Land.

Producer Penny Murphy.