Front Row

Lyricist Don Black looks back at his five decade career writing hit songs and musicals. The first British songwriter to win an Oscar, for Born Free in 1967, Don wrote many classic Bond Themes including Diamonds are Forever and Thunderball.

As he publishes his autobiography The Sanest Guy in the Room: A Life in Lyrics, Don talks about his close friendship and working partnership with composer John Barry, and his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, including Sunset Boulevard and Tell Me on a Sunday, Marvin Hamlisch, Quincy Jones, Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones.

Presenter: John Wilson

Lovecraft Country is a new 10-episode HBO series, based on the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, set in 1950s Jim Crow America. The story is about a young African American man whose search for his missing father begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and also terrifying monsters that could be pulled from the pages of horror fiction writer H.P Lovecraft’s weird tales. Writer and broadcaster Ekow Eshun reviews the series.

We continue our interviews with the writers shortlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. American author Jenny Offill discusses her acclaimed novel, Weather, about a female librarian struggling to cope with a domestic life haunted by the growing awareness of catastrophic climate change.

National Prison Radio is run by a British prison-based charity, broadcasting programmes made by and for prisoners in over 100 prisons in the UK, and is the world's first national radio station of its kind. Next week they broadcast an ambitious radio drama – a 29 minute sci–fi adventure called Project Zed, conceived and produced by artist Ruth Beale, working with prisoners at HMP Lincoln. It was commissioned by Mansions of the Future - an arts and cultural hub in Lincoln City Centre. Samira is joined by Ruth and facilitator Sonia Rossington, who worked together with the prisoners to put the drama together.

On Monday’s Front Row we heard from Natalia Kaliada, co-founder of the Belarus Free Theatre - the only company in Europe to be banned by their country’s government – who told us three of their members have been arrested in Minsk following the election. Their whereabouts and condition were unknown. Natalia returns to Front Row with an update.

Main image: Jonathan majors as Atticus Freeman in Sky Atlantic's series Lovecraft Country

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

From Wednesday, opera lovers will again be able to watch performances at Glyndebourne Opera in East Sussex, although this year the summer festival will look rather different to comply with Covid restrictions. A much-reduced audience will be able to enjoy opera in the open air setting of its sumptuous gardens starting with Offenbach’s French farce, Mesdames de la Halle, in a new translation entitled In the Market for Love. It's been re-imagined to take place in a society recovering from a pandemic, complete with an over-zealous police officer enforcing social distancing, and a huge tub of sanitiser centre stage.

Surgeon Declan Costello is leading the UK research assessing the dangers of singing and playing wind instruments in the spread of Covid-19. He discusses the trial and its impact on orchestras with Gavin Reid, Chief Exec of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chair of the Association of British Orchestras.

My Rembrandt is the name of a new film documentary by Dutch filmmaker Oeke Hoogendijk. It explores the world of art dealers and collectors and the sometimes intimate, sometimes fraught relationship they have with the works they own and sell. Anna Somers Cocks, founder editor of The Art Newspaper, reviews.

Presenter: John Wilson

Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2013. She talks about her latest book A Lover’s Discourse, which is a story of love and language – and the meaning of home set at the time of the European referendum. With a nod to Roland Barthes’ book of the same name, Guo’s novel is told through conversations between a Chinese woman newly arrived in the UK and her Anglo-German boyfriend.

It is 100 years since Bernard Leach, with his Japanese colleague Hamada Shojie, established his pottery in St Ives. Since then his influence as a studio potter, making vessels that are both beautiful and functional, by hand, has spread around the globe. Roelof Uys, the lead potter at the studio today, discusses Leach's ideas and work, and the projects marking the centenary.

Last night three members of the Belarus Free Theatre - Nadia Brodskaya, Sveta Sugako and Dasha Andreyanova - were arrested in Minsk, during protests against the results - widely believed to be fabricated - of the election there. Their colleagues in the company do not know where they are being held. We hear from Natalia Kaliada, one of the founding directors of the Belarus Free Theatre, the only theatre company in Europe banned by its government on political grounds.

London's Donmar Warehouse is re-opening temporarily from 3 to 22 August with a socially-distanced sound installation, Blindness, which is based on the dystopian novel by Nobel prize-winning José Saramago, adapted by Simon Stephens and starring the voice of Juliet Stevenson. Susannah Clapp reviews.

Main image above: Xiaolu Guo

Presenter Tom Sutcliffe

To mark the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki this week, the Imperial War Museum commissioned artist and stage designer Es Devlin and her Japanese collaborator Machiko Weston to make a short film in memory of those who died. They discuss their resulting artwork, I Saw the World End.

New Perspectives, the Midlands company that takes theatre to rural areas and usually performs in village halls, has come up with a novel idea. For its latest production created during lockdown it has embraced old technology: 'Love from Cleethorpes' is a drama told on postcards. Every few days a new postcard arrives at the homes of the audience and, over a couple of weeks, the story unfolds. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by New Perspectives artistic director Jack McNamara.

Literary critic Suzi Feay and arts journalist Kohinoor Sahota review Ali Smith's new novel Summer, the final instalment in her seasonal quartet of books, and discuss arts stories from the week including I'm a Celebrity moving from the Australian jungle to a British castle and Vogue theming their September issue on activism.

The final guest for the Front Row Lockdown Discoveries, where artists and creators select something cultural that has given them pleasure or inspiration in the dark months of isolation, is Alys Tomlinson, Photographer of the Year at the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards. She describes her discovery – zoom portraiture.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Arts organisations in the West Midlands say the region is one of the worst hit by the Coronavirus pandemic. In Birmingham, despite emergency relief funding from the Arts Council, the Town Hall and Symphony Hall face cutting half of their workforce, while both the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the Hippodrome have announced substantial job losses. What impact does it have on a city when its cultural centres are forced to close their doors?

Over 20 British playwrights and poets have been commissioned by Pitlochry Festival Theatre to write A Love Letter to Scotland, inspired by the River Tay. The works written as part of its three-year Shades of Tay project, will be shown online as audio dramas, podcasts and short films. Douglas Maxwell and Chinonyerem Odimba are two of the playwrights taking part in the project.

All this week on Front Row, individuals from the arts are choosing one Lockdown Discovery, a cultural find that has given them pleasure during the dark months of being stuck at home due to Covid-19. Today alto-saxophonist and MC Soweto Kinch explains how running and cycling along the canals of Birmingham has sparked a creative love affair with the canals and decaying backwaters of his home city.

The emergence of quarantine or quara-horror, with a frankly terrifying new film set on a Zoom call. Host was filmed over twelve weeks in quarantine entirely on Zoom.

Presenter: Katie Popperwell

Main image: The River Tay

Front Row is featuring interviews with all the shortlisted authors for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction. Tonight, Maggie O'Farrell, whose novel Hamnet is about the son of William Shakespeare who died aged 11, an event thought to be the inspiration for Hamlet. In her novel, Maggie O’Farrell imagines the family life and tragedy of one of our greatest playwrights, about whom so little is known.

Group singing has been severely affected by government advice on restricting the spread of Coronavirus as inhaling microscopic droplets expelled by fellow singers is a high risk activity. But choirs serve functions beyond singing together. We speak to Katherine Dienes Williams, Master of The Choristers at Guildford Cathedral and to Martin Trotman, director of The Wellbeing Choirs which aim to promote and maintain good mental and physical health through singing.

This week we’ve been hearing from artists and creators who’ve been telling us about their Lockdown Discoveries, a cultural find that has given them pleasure in the dark months of isolation. Today crime writer Mark Billingham reveals his unexpected rediscovery…jigsaws!

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker Sophia Al-Maria discusses her screenplay for the latest big release from Sky Atlantic. Inspired by Anaïs Nin’s collection of erotic stories, Little Birds is set in the famous 'international zone' of Tangier. New York heiress Lucy Savage (Juno Temple) is fresh off the transatlantic steamer and ready for love and marriage in exotic climes. But when her husband Hugo (Hugh Skinner) does not receive her in the way she expected, she spins off into a new surprising, diverse and sexually liberated world.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage responds to today's decision by Ofqual, the exams regulator, that students taking English Literature GCSE next year will not be required to study any poetry. They will be assessed on a Shakespeare play, but have the option to cover a 19th century novel or a post-1914 work of British fiction or drama, or poetry.

This summer, many of us are holidaying at home so rather than recommending books to take on holiday, tonight we're recommending books about holidays or set in holiday locations. Clare Allfree, books editor at The Metro Newspaper, guides us through her selection of vacation-themed literature.

All this week on Front Row, creative individuals from the arts are choosing one Lockdown Discovery, a cultural find that gave them pleasure in the dark months being stuck at home. Today it’s the turn of the architect Tara Gbolade, whose lockdown was significantly improved by accidentally stumbling upon a book which captured her architectural imagination: Vernacular Architecture of West Africa: A World in Dwelling.

Presenter Tom Sutcliffe

Barbara Kingsolver talks about her new book, How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) which is only her second collection of poetry. As well as offering practical advice (on knitting, getting divorced, doing nothing) the poems are about family, and making peace with life and death. Barbara also reflects on the redemptive power of art and poetry itself and celebrates the natural world whilst mourning its desecration.

All this week on Front Row, creative individuals from the arts are choosing one Lockdown Discovery, a cultural find that has given them pleasure in the dark months of Covid-19. We start today with production designer Es Devlin, who tells us about her discovery - The Tempest by Creation Theatre.

Sculptor Thomas J Price will unveil his statue Reaching Out this Wednesday. Depicting an anonymous everywoman absorbed in silent communication, the statue stands at 9 feet tall and will be one of only three public sculptures of Black women in the whole of the UK.

Norman Lebrecht discusses the extraordinary career of the American concert pianist Leon Fleisher, who has just died at the age of 92. Fleisher lost the use of his right hand and performed left-handed for several decades, before regaining the ability to play with both hands later in life.

Presenter : Kirsty Lang

Main image: Barbara Kingsolver

Film director Alan Parker is remembered by Dick Clements and Ian La Frenais, who wrote The Commitments.

Disney Producer Don Hahn (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) joins Samira Ahmed to discuss his new documentary about the legendary lyricist Howard Ashman, who wrote Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and part of Aladdin, before dying of Aids in 1991 at the age of forty, before Beauty and the Beast was released.

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, writers of comedy classics such as The Likely Lads and Porridge pay tribute to their colleague, the Bafta-winning director and producer Sydney Lotterby, who has died aged 93. In a long career, which he put down to luck, Lotterby made Porridge, Last Of The Summer Wine, Yes Minister, Butterflies, May To December and Open All Hours.

The producer and founder of Black Ticket Project Tobi Kyeremateng and award winning crime writer Denise Mina join Samira Ahmed to review some of the week's most striking works - Prodigal Son starring Michael Sheen in a Silence of the Lambs style television drama series and Beyonce’s visual ablum Black is King, released today. Denise, Tobi and Samira also give choices of their own.

Natasha Trethewey has twice been the US poet laureate. She talks to Samira Ahmed about her new book Memorial Drive, a prose memoir about growing up the daughter of a white father and a black mother. That marriage, when she was born in 1966, was illegal in Mississippi. It foundered and Natasha moved away with her mother who married a black Vietnam veteran. He battered her mother and, when Natasha was 19 and away at college, shot her dead.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed