Front Row

British composer Errollyn Wallen has been putting the finishing touches to her new arrangement of the Hubert Parry hymn Jerusalem, to be performed as part of a very different Last Night of the Proms. After a public row about whether to drop the traditional favourites that make up the concert's programme, the Proms announced new versions for a smaller, socially-distanced orchestra with no choir. Errollyn joins Samira to discuss the work of arranging well-loved music, her relationship with Jerusalem, and the Proms.

As Eastenders returns to our screens, after an unprecedented 3 month hiatus, we speak to the show’s Executive Producer Jon Sen to find out how they’ve been filming with social distancing and how coronavirus has affected the storylines we’ll be seeing on screen.

Ryan Gilbey reviews new Netflix psychological horror film I’m Thinking of Ending Things, based on Iain Reid’s book and adapted into a screenplay by director Charlie Kaufman.

As Katy Perry makes headlines for her new album Smile and the birth of her first child, Scarlett Russell, Entertainment Editor of The Sunday Times Style, pays tribute to the pop sensation.

Producer: Simon Richardson

Main image above: Errollyn Wallen

Natalie Haynes on A Thousand Ships - shortlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize For Fiction. As Front Row continues our interviews with authors on the shortlist, Natalie Haynes talks to us about her novel which tells the stories of The Trojan War from the perspective of the female characters.

Literary critic Alex Clark reviews the winner of the International Booker Prize 2020, which was announced this evening.

And Agatha Christie’s lost play, The Lie – a very personal 1920s domestic drama which lay unread until discovered by drama director Julius Green, and which he has turned into a radio play for Radio 4 this weekend. Julius Green joins Tom Sutcliffe to tell us about The Lie and how it came to be abandoned and then rediscovered.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

As her new drama I Hate Suzie launches, dramatist Lucy Prebble talks to Tom Sutcliffe about her writing career.

Prebble is Co-Executive Producer and writer on the BAFTA, Golden Globe and EMMY award winning HBO drama Succession. She was the creator of the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl. She wrote the political thriller A Very Expensive Poison (Old Vic), and before that The Effect (National Theatre), which is a study of love and neuroscience, as well as the hugely successful drama Enron, about corporate fraud, which transferred to the West End and Broadway after sell-out runs at both the Royal Court and Chichester Festival Theatre.

Prebble's latest TV show, I Hate Suzie, sees Billie Piper star as a celebrity who has her life upended when her phone is hacked and pictures of her emerge in an extremely compromising position. I Hate Suzie begins on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV on Thursday at 9pm.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Main image: Lucy Prebble

Following the outcry at shool exam results downgraded by an algorithm and then revised to take into account human teachers expectations instead, we consider how algorithms perform versus humans in creativity in the arts – do they deserve an A* or a fail? What are algorithms used for in the arts? Can they be creative and make good work, or do we need the human touch? We're joined by Marcus Du Sautoy, mathematician and author of The Creativity Code, and artist Anna Ridler, who uses data sets and algorithms in her work.

This Friday the 2020 Proms season begins. Despite being held behind closed doors for the first time in its history, the Proms 2020 promises an eclectic programme of live performances. The very first composition will be a specially commissioned piece by the British composer Hannah Kendall titled “Tuxedo: Vasco de Gama”, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. She joins us to discuss the piece and what it's like to write it knowing there'll be a socially distanced orchestra and no live audience.

A new film coming soon to Netflix has caused controversy - it's about an 11 year old Senegalese Muslim girl who moves to France and decides to join a dance group, in the face of parental disapproval.

The poet Daljit Nagra, who curates the poetry programming on Radio 4 Extra, introduces three recently-published poetry books. Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions; Pascale Petit’s mid-career book Tiger Girl , inspired by her grandmother’s life in India; and the Selected Poems 1965 – 2018 of Jeremy Hooker, who in his eightieth year, is still writing as beautifully and prolifically as ever.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Next week finally sees the release of Tenet, the latest big-budget film by Christopher Nolan. For our Friday Review, film critic Ryan Gilbey and novelist and short story writer Irenosen Okojie give their response to the film, and consider the future of cinema in light of the pandemic. And they’ll be discussing their cultural picks – the TV series Broad City and Lovecraft Country.

Algorithm-downgraded A level student Jessica Johnson on her strangely prescient Orwell Youth Prize winning short story about an algorithm that decides school grades according to social class.

The British Museum is the UK’s most-visited tourist attraction but during lockdown it’s had no visitors. Now they’re getting ready to reopen with limited numbers.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s voyage. While the story of the “Pilgrim Fathers” is well known, the history of the Wampanoag people they met is less so. Wampum: Stories from the Shells of Native America is a touring exhibition which hopes to change this. This new exhibition is presented by The Box, Plymouth and grew out of a partnership with Wampanoag Advisory Committee to Plymouth 400 and the Wampanoag cultural advisors SmokeSygnals. The wampum belt is a tapestry of tribal history made from thousands of handcrafted beads. Paula Peters, founder of SmokeSygnals and a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Nation, explains.

Shedinburgh is an online festival attempting to capture the spirit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by live streaming performances from sheds around the country. Theatre producer, Francesca Moody, who also made Fleabag explains the endeavour.

Presenter: John Wilson

The One and Only Ivan is a new Disney film about a 400-pound silverback gorilla called Ivan. He lives in a suburban shopping mall with other animals where they perform in a circus owned by Mack, played by Bryan Cranston. The film is a hybrid of live action and CGI and features the voices of Sam Rockwell, Angelina Jolie, Danny DeVito, Helen Mirren and Chaka Khan. We speak to the film's director Thea Sharrock.

40 years since Willy Russell wrote Educating Rita Stephen Tompkinson stars in an open air production at the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. Novelist Patrick Gale reviews.

How dangerous is singing at a time of Covid-19? Declan Costello, Consultant Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon and an accomplished tenor, has been leading UK research to assess the risks. He joins Front Row to share the results.

David Mitchell said of his recent novel Utopia Avenue – about a band - that writing about music is impossible. Former concert violinist now poet Fiona Sampson, novelist and one time cellist Patrick Gale and writer and teacher Jeffrey Boakye, whose book Hold Tight explored grime’s cultural impact, reflect on the premise that writing about music is – as the saying goes - like dancing about architecture. What made them take up the challenge in their different writing forms?

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

The Wives of Stanley Spencer are the subject of a new exhibition Love, Art, Loss at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire. Artist and illustrator Siân Pattenden reviews.

The explosion in Beirut two weeks destroyed thousands of buildings in the Lebanese city, including many of the art galleries and museums. Sursock Museum Director Zeina Arida and gallery owner Saleh Barakat consider the damage done to the city's culture as well as its infrastructure.

Continuing Front Row's interviews with all the authors shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction,Angie Cruz discusses her novel Dominicana. Ana is a schoolgirl muddling through adolescence on a small farm in the Dominican Republic, but her mother marries her off to a man twice her age, whom she sees as the ticket to America for the whole family. Ana, fifteen, with no English, no money and no autonomy, arrives on a false passport to begin a new life in cold, grey New York.

Presenter Samira Ahmed

Image above: Portrait of Patricia Preece, 1933 by Stanley Spencer

(C) Estate Stanley Spencer & Bridgeman Images, London

As novelist John Connolly publishes a prequel to his hugely successful Charlie Parker thriller series, he and critic Suzi Feay discuss the art of creating a prequel, both in books and on screen, from Endeavour to Hannibal Rising to The Wide Sargasso Sea.

From the Minack Theatre, nestled in the cliffs of west Cornwall, to Cirencester’s Barnfest, and Brighton Open Air Theatre, many theatre-goers have turned to the great outdoors as indoor theatres remain shuttered due to Covid-19 restrictions. The Maltings Theatre in St Albans has just kicked off its 6th annual outdoor festival, set in a Roman Theatre built in 140AD, with a programme that includes The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V and HMS Pinafore. Its Artistic Director, Adam Nichols, joins John Wilson to discuss the joys, challenges and opportunities of outdoor theatre.

Around the UK, the pandemic has caused arts venues, organisations and establishments to have to make dramatic cuts to their output and costs just to stay afloat. With no definite end in sight when they can start generating income again, redundancies seem inevitable.

Plus Suzi Feay comments on the publication of 25 books by female authors who will be known, for the first time, by their real names. All of them are women who wrote under male pen-names - including George Eliot, whose Middlemarch will now be republished with the name Mary Anne Evans on the cover.

Presenter: John Wilson

Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in Jamiaca 68 years ago, moving to London to join his mother aged 11 and has created a unique career as a performance poet. Signed by Richard Branson to Virgin Records in 1978 he went on to record a series of acclaimed albums which combined his powerful verse with reggae rhythms.

Main image: Linton Kwesi Johnson

The Miami singer Gloria Estefan discusses her Cuban roots and the musical and cultural links the country shares with Brazil, as she releases her new album Brazil305. The singer also remembers the sadness she faced as a child when her father returned from Vietnam, contracting multiple sclerosis as a result of the military’s use of Agent Orange.

A new film version of Pinocchio has just been released. And if you’re hoping for a wholesome remake of the 1940 Disney film, you’ll be in for quite a surprise. 80 years on from the all-singing version telling the story of a loveable boy puppet who wants to become a REAL boy, this latest Italian language version takes a less sentimental approach. It’s a story which has been translated into over 300 languages, which apparently makes it the most translated non-religious book in the world and one of the best-selling books ever published, To review this and to take a look at other cultural highlights of their weeks, I’m joined down the line from Edinburgh by the poet Don Paterson and by the theatre critic for The Scotsman newspaper Joyce McMillan

When Shane McCrae was three he was taken from his black father and brought up by his grandmother as a white supremacist so, in effect, to hate himself. Today McCrae is an acclaimed American poet, a finalist for the National Book Award and author of seven collections. His poems are this month being published in the UK for the first time , with two books, Sometimes I Never Suffered and The Gilded Auction Block, coming out simultaneously. His poetry is totally engaged with the present, with references to Donald Trump, yet is deeply informed by the forms and prosody of the canon of English poetry, in which he is steeped. In his first UK interview he talks to Kirsty Lang about his life, and reads his powerful work.

Classical guitarist Sean Shibe discusses the impact of Julian Bream, the British guitarist and lutenist who has died aged 87.