Front Row

Ahead of the announcement of the 2019 Booker Prize winner tonight, it's the final Front Row Booker Prize Book Group with shortlisted author Margaret Atwood, in which she meets a group of readers to discuss The Testaments, her long awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.

Last year, Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford sold a single work for $12m, the highest-ever auction price achieved by a living African-American artist. He represented the United States at the Venice Biennale two years ago, and now has a new exhibition of his large works in London. In front of his 14-metre-long canvas Cerebus, the artist discusses his art, which addresses issues of institutionalised racism, marginalised communities, police violence and inequality.

A new film opening this weekend, The Peanut Butter Falcon, has been a bit of a sleeper hit in the USA. It stars Shia LeBeouf and Zack Gottsagen - an actor with Down Syndrome - and reinterprets Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn story for today.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Sienna Miller discusses her latest role as a mother whose daughter goes missing, in her new film American Woman, directed by Jake Scott.

Our latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group puts its questions to shortlisted author Elif Shafak about her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World which tells the story of Leila, a woman whose body has died, but whose mind has a precious ten minutes to reflect on the joy, pain and injustice of her life as a prostitute in Istanbul.

Giri/Haji, which translates as Duty/Shame in English, is a new drama produced by the BBC and Netflix, about a Tokyo detective who travels to London in search of his presumed deceased brother. The script for the series is written in both Japanese and English. Kate Taylor-Jones reviews.

Presenter Kirsty Lang

Mary Beard meets the acclaimed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood. As her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – The Testaments – is published, in a wide-ranging encounter Mary talks to her about how Gilead has changed almost 35 years on from the original book; how the cloak which features in the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has become a symbol of protest around the world; about her responses to the current political climate; about the accusation that she is a ‘bad feminist’; and about the hype surrounding the release of this new book.

The Swedish Academy today announced the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Winners, not winner, because, embroiled in a scandal over allegations of sexual assault by the husband of one of its members, the Academy delayed last year’s prize until today. The 2019 winner is Austrian writer Peter Handke, a controversial figure, one of whose early plays was called Offending the Audience, and 2018's winner Olga Tokarczuk is a leading Polish novelist who won the Man Booker International Prize last year for her book Flights. Front Row has the only UK interview with Olga Tokarczuk today and the critic Arifa Akbar considers the work of the winners and the implications of these awards.

Goldie, real name Clifford Price, is a musician, actor and artist whose career lifted off with the '90s Drum and Bass boom. The frenetic, high-tempo sound which has played a key role in the evolution of dance music is celebrated on a new 60-track collection compiled by Goldie – a former graffiti artist who became the celebrity poster boy of ‘DnB’ at the height of its popularity and was awarded an MBE in 2016. He talks to Front Row about the revolutionary but often misunderstood genre.

Es Devlin has created ambitious sets and sculptures for theatre, opera and large-scale rock concerts, from U2 to Beyoncé. Her latest commission is Memory Palace, an 18-metre-wide white chronological sloping landscape of buildings and places, in which she charts pivotal shifts in human perspectives over 70,000 years. The artist and designer discusses her work which is at Sir John Soane’s former country home, Pitzhanger Manor.

Presenter John Wilson

The latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group features Salman Rushdie answering listeners’ questions about his shortlisted novel Quichotte, a satire on current politics, the opioid crisis and the influence of popular culture that’s also been praised for its touching study of family relationships.

Playwright Katori Hall, whose previous plays include Tina: The Tina Turner Musical and The Mountaintop, on a new production of her 2010 play Our Lady of Kibeho at Theatre Royal Stratford East. In 1981 at Kibeho College in Rwanda, a young girl claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary who warned her of the unimaginable: Rwanda becoming hell on Earth. She was ignored by her friends and scolded by her school but then another student saw the vision, and another, and the impossible appeared to be true. Hailed as one of 'the 50 best theatre shows of the 21st century' (The Guardian) and 'the most important play of the year' (The Wall Street Journal, 2014), this vibrantly theatrical meditation on faith, doubt and miracles is inspired by the extraordinary events in Rwanda that captured the world’s attention.

Last year computer games accounted for more than half of the UK’s entertainment market for the first time, with sales approaching £4 billion, more than music and films combined. However a recent investigation has shown that despite massive growth, several multinational companies have been avoiding millions of pounds in UK corporation tax through an initiative intended to support the sector in the UK, with some critics fearing that it is being exploited. Gaming journalist Jordan Erica Webber discusses this and other gaming industry news.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

The dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo grew up dancing to Michael Jackson songs on the streets of Soweto. She later trained as a ballerina and contemporary dancer. Now she creates very modern takes on classical ballets. Her reworking of Swan Lake tackled homophobia and AIDS in South Africa. Her Giselle, traditionally the tragic story of a girl who dies after being betrayed by a man, has been seen as a feminist tale of revenge for the #MeToo generation. As she begins a UK tour, Dada Masilo tells Front Row about street dance, growing up in Soweto and shaking up classical dance.

Extinction Rebellion protestors - described by the Prime Minister as ‘Crusties’ living in ‘hemp-smelling bivouacs’ – have included different types of performance as they blockade areas of central London, from dancing and chanting to yoga sessions, drumming and mime. Is this ‘open-air theatre’ as Charles Moore describes it in The Telegraph, providing an easy target for its critics? Musician Sam Lee, who led a folk dance on London Bridge yesterday, gives his view.

A new film from Netflix - The King - combines Shakespeare's plays Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 and Henry V into a single storyline, starring Timothee Chalamet. Some film reviewers have been extremely scathing about the project. Historian Sarah Gristwood gives us her opinion .

Theatre critic Michael Billington recently ruffled feathers when he said that the standard of Shakespeare productions was in decline... Creative and novel approaches to Shakespeare abound: are we living through a golden age of innovation or have directors and producers become too fearful of trusting Shakespeare’s text? Michael Billington and critic Sarah Crompton discuss.

Presenter: Stig Abell

Following a Best Director win at Sundance, Joe Talbot discusses his film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, along with its star Jimmie Fails. Based on Jimmie Fail's own life, it's about his attempt to reclaim the house his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco.

At the busiest time in the publishing calendar with Frankfurt Book Fair just around the corner, agent Clare Alexander and Unbound publisher John Mitchinson discuss the economics of the publishing industry, from huge advances to the impact of Amazon.

Oxford Professor Alain Goriely thinks that the repetitive rhythm in Ravel's Bolero might have been influenced by the composer's early dementia. He talks to Kirsty ahead of his lecture at King's Place in London, in conjunction with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Our latest Front Row Booker Prize Book Group puts its questions to shortlisted author Chigozie Obioma about his book An Orchestra of Minorities, the story of chicken farmer Chinonso whose aspirations lead him to leave Nigeria for Cyprus – a decision that brings momentous consequences.

Drag star Ginger Johnson reviews RuPaul's Drag Race UK on BBC Three. With contestants such as Baga Chipz and Sum Ting Wong, how does the drag reality competition compare to the multi-Emmy-award-winning US version?

Kurt Weill's The Silver Lake is about to tour the UK for the first time. English Touring Opera’s director James Conway discusses the satirical opera which was banned by the Nazis weeks after its first performance in 1933.

Presenter: John Wilson

Debbie Harry is one of the defining musical artists of her age, known of course for her work with Blondie crafting and performing hits such as Heart of Glass, Dreaming and One Way or Another. As her memoir Face It is published, she talks to Front Row about the highs and lows of her professional and personal life, from writing her most successful lyrics to the double-edged sword of her looks, and her experience of drugs and sexual violence.

The first-ever exhibition devoted to the portraits of Paul Gauguin opens at the National Gallery this week. Waldemar Januszczak reviews the show, which focuses on how the artist used portraiture primarily to express himself and his ideas about art, from the years he spent in Brittany and then French Polynesia towards the end of his life.

And at a time when, despite the gravity of the situation, politics in the UK and the US has become more entertaining than ever, Caroline Crampton recommends some of the best political podcasts offering alternative takes on the news.

Director Rupert Goold discusses his new film Judy. Starring Renée Zellweger as legendary singer Judy Garland, the movie examines the final year of the star's life when, despite struggling with ill health, she was forced to take a demanding five week gig at a London nightclub in order to pay her debts.

Kara Walker’s 13 metre high statue is unveiled in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall today. Critic Asana Greenstreet reviews Fons Americanus which comments on British responsibility for slavery.

Bernardine Evaristo is the latest of our listener book groups where readers meet each of the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2019. Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other is told in a poetic form with little punctuation and follows 12 characters, most of them black British women.

Presenter: Stig Abell