Front Row

Front Row visits Truro to report on the re-opening of the Hall for Cornwall after a 3 year, £26million refurbishment. The new 1300 auditorium complements the granite of the old building, and the Cornish landscape. And the opening show – the world premiere of the Fisherman’s Friends musical, of course.

We hear from Matt Hemley, News Editor for The Stage, about the ongoing affect of Covid on theatre audiences.

Paul McCartney tell us how he wrote Eleanor Rigby.

And Nadifa Mohamed joins a group of Front Row listeners for our latest Booker Prize Book Group, discussing her novel The Fortune Men, about a racist miscarriage of justice in Cardiff's Tiger Bay in the 1950s.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Patricia Lockwood is the latest author to join our Booker Prize Book Groups. Three listeners will ask her about No One Is Talking About This, a novel that’s been described as “ferociously original”, exploring a relationship with the online world and how it changes when an incredibly moving event happens in real life.

The Science Museum has come in for criticism after choosing Adani Group, a company involved with fossil fuels, to sponsor their new energy galleries. Sir Ian Blatchford, Director and Chief Executive of the Science Museum Group explains the thinking behind the partnership.

As COP approaches, what is the art world doing to become more sustainable? Chris Garrard from Culture Unstained explains why they feel oil and fossil fuel sponsorship of the arts is a problem and Kate McGarry from the Galleries Climate Coalition discusses what they’re doing to try to fix the biggest problems.

And we continue our new series, Inside the Songs, in which Paul McCartney talks about his life and song-writing through the prism of ten key lyrics. Today he offers an analysis of the song, Yesterday.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

In the first instalment of our new series, Inside the Songs, Paul McCartney talks about his life and song-writing through the prism of ten key lyrics, beginning with The Beatles’ classic All My Loving.

Poet Paul Muldoon discusses working with Paul McCartney on his intimate and revealing new book, The Lyrics, and explains why he sees McCartney as a great literary figure.

In the latest of our Booker Prize Book Groups, a panel of our listeners talk to the author Damon Galgut about his shortlisted novel The Promise, the story of a white South African family and a promise made to Salome, the black woman who works for them.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Photo: Paul McCartney photographed by daughter Mary McCartney Photo credit: Mary McCartney

Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

Producer-director Sarah Smith made her animation debut with the festive favourite, Arthur Christmas. Ten years on she’s back with Ron’s Gone Wrong, a warm-hearted romp with a robot and a critique of social media’s impact on young minds.

For this week’s audio postcard, presenter and local boy Nick Ahad is in Bradford. He dons his hard hat to check out what’s happening at the famous art deco building, known as the Bradford Odeon, as it’s turned into a new cultural centre for live music. He also visits Kala Sangam, an intercultural arts centre established by two consultant doctors that provides a place for locals to try new arts and crafts and which supports local artists and arts organisations. And he meets one of those emerging local artists, playwright and actor Kamal Kaan.

And how can theatre respond to a seismic event like the coronavirus pandemic, or the murder of George Floyd? Erica Whyman, Acting Artistic Director of The RSC and Roy Alexander Weise, joint Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, discuss the experience of returning to their respective productions of The Winter’s Tale and The Mountaintop with fresh eyes and renewed urgency.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Photo: Nick Ahad at The Bradford Odeon building site

We announce the winners of the BBC National Short Story Award 2021 and the BBC Young Writers' Award 2021. Kirsty Lang is joined for the show by National Short Story Award judges James Runcie and Fiona Mozley and Young Writers' Award judges Katie Thistleton and Louise O'Neill.

The BBC National Short Story Award is one of the most prestigious for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and four further shortlisted authors £600 each. This year's shortlisted stories are ‘All the People Were Mean and Bad’ by Lucy Caldwell, ‘The Body Audit’ by Rory Gleeson, ‘Night Train’ by Georgina Harding, ‘Toadstone’ by Danny Rhodes and ‘Maykopsky District, Adyghe Oblast’ by Richard Smyth.

Now in its seventh year, The BBC Young Writers’ Award with Cambridge University 2021 is open to all writers between the ages of 14 –18 years and was created to discover and inspire the next generation of writers. It is a cross-network collaboration between BBC Radio 4 and Radio 1. The 2021 BBC Young Writers’ Award shortlisted stories are ‘Fatigued’ by Luca Anderson-Muller, 18, from Belfast, ‘Another Boring Friday Night’ by Isabella Yeo Frank, 18, from London, ‘Super-Powder by Tabitha Rubens, 19, from London, ‘Blood and Water’ by Eleanor Ware, 17, from Bedfordshire and ‘Pomodoro (and Nasturtium Seeds) by Madeleine Whitmore, 16, from Bath.

Kirsty also speaks to Denis Villeneuve about directing the movie remake of Dune, with a screenplay by Jon Spaihts, Villeneuve, and Eric Roth. It is the first of a planned two-part adaptation of the 1965 novel of the same name by Frank Herbert,

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Arinzé Kene talks to Samira Ahmed about playing Bob Marley in the new musical Get Up, StandUp!

Singer Clare Norburn is live in the studio to perform a piece by 16th Century composer John Dowland and discuss her new play about Dowland, I, Spie.

We discuss the inaugural Working Class Writers Festival taking place in Bristol this weekend with organiser Natasha Carthew and publisher Sarah Fortune.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Front Row goes live to Coventry to announce the winner of the 2021 Riba Stirling Prize and discuss the shortlist with BBC Arts and Media correspondent David Sillito and architecture critic for the Guardian, Oliver Wainwright.

Author Charlotte Philby and arts and books editor for Prospect Magazine Sameer Rahim join Tom Sutcliffe to review the new series of Succession and Silverview, John le Carré’s last novel.

Film critic Hanna Flint fills us in on the highlights of this year’s London Film Festival.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Photo: Brian Cox as Logan Roy in Succession Photo Credit: Sky Atlantic

Theatre director Emma Jordan discusses The Border Game, a new play to mark 100 years of the Irish border.

We hear from Omagh in County Tyrone as reporter Freya McClement explores a moving new installation by artist Paula Stokes at the Ulster American Folk Park.

And director Ridley Scott talks to Samira about his new film The Last Duel starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama on her play White Noise, which has its the UK premier tonight. Life is not so bad for four liberal friends, two couples, black with a white partner, until Leo has a run in with the cops and it all begins to unravel.

The poet, playwright, and novelist, Owen Sheers, has written a new BBC One drama, The Trick. He talks to Samira about exploring what became known in 2009 as Climategate, when the emails of Professor Philip Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, were hacked and doubt cast on the research into climate change.

For Front Row’s regular Tuesday Arts Audit today we’re exploring ongoing debates around the questionable provenance of artefacts housed in some of the world’s most famous museums with Malia Politzer from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Alexander Herman, Assistant Director of the Institute of Art and Law.

How can broadening the representation of scientists on the page, screen and stage drive diversity among scientists and increase public trust in science itself? Andrea Sella, broadcaster and professor of chemistry at University College London and award-winning debut novelist Temi Oh join Samira live in the studio on Radio 4’s Day of the Scientist.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed