Front Row

Literary critics Arifa Akbar and Toby Lichtig dissect the longlist of the 2019 Booker Prize longlist. For the full list see below.

Tea is the most widely-consumed drink after water. Julie Finch, director the Compton Verney gallery, guides Julian May through their new exhibition A Tea Journey: From the Mountains to the Table. The show navigates the cultural history of the cuppa from the delicate bowls of Tang dynasty China to the British builder’s mug as well as new work made by artists in response to this history.

Why have Fleabag’s black jumpsuit, the yellow coat from Keeping Faith and Villanelle’s pink dress all become firm favourites on the high street? Fashion historian Amber Butchart examines the long links between fashion houses, TV and Hollywood.

Margaret Atwood (Canada) - The Testaments

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon star in The Current War, as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. It's the electrifying story about the race to supply people with electricity and power. The film has had a turbulent production, plagued with unfavourable reviews at 2017 Toronto Film festival premier and then caught up in the scandal surrounding the Harvey Weinstein allegations. Film Critic Tim Robey discusses the changes made to the film since its initial release and the impact of events behind the scenes.

Love Island 2019 is in its final week, so we wondered whether or not we can make assessments about the state of modern relationships by how they are presented on the screen? Cultural commentator Louis Wise and YouTube relationship expert Hannah Witton discuss this and ponder which programmes best hold up a mirror to reality, or actually start to shape it?

Lucy Ellmann’s new novel Ducks, Newburyport has been attracting headlines and admiration; but not just for its literary qualities. It's 1,000 pages long, most of which is one sentence. And there are other contemporary authors also playing with conventional storytelling form at the moment, including Bernardine Evaristo, Ali Smith, Nicola Barker, Eimear McBride and Mike McCormack. McCormack’s novel Solar Bones, also a single sentence, won the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize, and Evaristo’s latest novel Girl, Woman, Other plays with voice, grammar and text on the page. They talk to Front Row about the freedom of not following the rules.

And Cool Culture: as the temperature in much of the UK look set to soar, we wonder about the best places to enjoy culture without melting

Presenter: Stig Abell. Producer: Oliver Jones

To mark the 20th anniversary of her best-selling debut album, Macy Gray performs her smash hit I Try, and talks frankly to Kirsty about the challenges she faced after achieving fame and success. She also sings from her latest album, Ruby.

Tomorrow hundreds of Morris dancers will gather outside the Houses of Parliament to protest against the cancellation of next year's early May bank holiday. Gordon Newton, director of the Rochester Sweeps Festival, explains why this decision has so upset traditional dancers, and the impact it will have on events such as the Jack-in-the-Green in Hastings and others, all over the country.

After months of protests Essex county council has dropped plans to close 25 libraries. Instead, the council will now invest £3million into the service to make it “fit for the 21st century”. However plans remain in place to hand some branches over to community groups and the results of a public consultation will be made public tomorrow. To discuss what does make a library fit for the 21st century Kirsty is joined by Liz Miles; writer and Save Our Essex Library campaigner, Tim Coates; Former head of Waterstones bookshops and Councillor Susan Barker, Cabinet Member for Customer, Corporate, Culture and Communities.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Hip hop pioneer and art lover Fred Brathwaite, aka Fab 5 Freddy, hunts for the hidden black figures of Italian Renaissance art in a new BBC2 documentary, A Fresh Guide To Florence. He reveals some of the ground-breaking images he discovered of a multi-racial and multi-ethnic society that have slipped through the cracks of art history.

Artist Laurie Anderson discusses her new VR artwork To the Moon, currently at the Manchester International Festival.

The author of the bestselling Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams, makes her pick of paperbacks to take on holiday as great summer reads.

With the release of the trailers for Cats and the new Top Gun film attracting so much attention on social media, Katie Popperwell considers the importance of the film trailer, and what makes a good one.

Presenter John Wilson

Illuminated River is a major new art project on the River Thames claiming to be the world’s longest artwork. 15 bridges across the river will be lit up by a series of LED displays for the next 10 years. Kirsty talks to director Sarah Gaventa and light artist Leo Villareal.

Twenty-five years since Disney’s animated film The Lion King broke records and won Oscars, a new live action version is roaring onto the big screen. Director Jon Favreau talks about what he learned from rebooting The Jungle Book and how he used virtual reality headsets to shoot the film.

The shortlist for the 2019 RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK's best new building has been announced today. It includes a whisky distillery, a railway station, an opera house, a social housing terrace, a new gallery and an experimental house made of cork. Architectural critic Oliver Wainwright reports.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Karina Canellakis will be launching this year's BBC Proms on Friday, conducting Janáček's monumental Glagolitic Mass. She talks to John Wilson about her approach to this daunting task, why she loves the spiritual drama of the piece and how since early childhood her head has been filled with music.

Vicky McClure, Gemma Chan and Samantha Morton star in a series of stand alone television dramas focusing on women under pressure. Created with Dominic Savage, each episode of I am... has been improvised with the themes chosen by the lead actors. These include being in a coercive relationship, a single woman in her thirties facing with pressure to have a child and a single mother struggling to provide for her family. Alison Graham from the Radio Times reviews.

In the week that the England men’s cricket team won the World Cup, film director Barney Douglas discusses his new documentary The Edge, about the rise in the rankings for the England team from 2009 to 2013, and the psychological and emotional effect the game had on its players, including Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott and Andrew Strauss.

Presenter: John Wilson

American composer Philip Glass is often cited as one of the most influential composers alive, combining minimalist, spare music with the harmonic tradition of Bach, Schubert and Mozart. Now, for the Manchester International Festival, he's teamed up with British performer and director Phelim McDermott to produce a very personal work with ten new pieces of music and ten meditations on life, death and Taoist wisdom.

In the month that Ravelry, a community site for knitters with over 6 million members, bans patterns that support US President Donald Trump, we consider the power of knitting as a political tool with Geraldine Warner, author of Protest Knits and crafter and haberdashery owner Rosie Fletcher.

How far has the representation of black women on stage changed in recent years? Martina Laird shares her experiences as an actor and tutor ahead of her talk, Standing on Shoulders, at the National Theatre.

A colossal statue of Ed Sheeran, relaxing on a green plinth in tight red shorts and shades, has been unveiled in Moscow’s Gorky Park ahead of his concert there this week. Travel writer Simon Calder reports on examples of statues of performers worldwide.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Dominic Dromgoole, used to run Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, he tried take a production of Hamlet to every country in the world (and very nearly succeeded), and he brought a year-long season of Oscar Wilde’s work to the West End. and now he's directed is debut feature film, Making Noise Quietly. It began life as stageplay, a triptych of stories, each involving the meeting of strangers and exploring the impact of war on them.

Times, we’re told, are tough for the arts, theatre especially. And yet there will soon be at least ten new theatres in London alone. Theatres around the country are being refurbished: the Everyman in Liverpool, Bristol Old Vic, Theatr Clwyd. Why, how, and who's paying for all this? We hear from Tristan Baker of Troubabour Theatres - which is opening two huge new spaces in London this week, Julien Boast - CEO of the Hall for Cornwall in Truro, where a three-tier, 1,300-seat auditorium is under construction, and Dominic Dromgoole.

After a momentous weekend in sport with the Cricket World Cup final and the Wimbledon finals, sports writer Simon Inglis reflects on the aesthetics of the trophy cup.. Why are some of them so ghastly?

Karina Ramage arrived for her job restocking the biscuit aisle at Waitrose and carrying her guitar, when a customer asked her to sing him a song. She obliged with one of her own numbers and he offered her a management deal on the spot. He was Daniel Glatman, a music executive with a proven track record as the man behind chart-topping boyband Blue. 'That sounds like the sort of song the world needs to be hearing right now'. Her busking and biscuit days may soon be over. She'll be performing live in the studio

Presenter: Kirsty Lang, Producer: Oliver Jones

Novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach whose eighteen novels include Heartbreak Hotel, Tulip Fever and These Foolish Things - made into the hit film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - talks to Stig Abell about her new novel The Carer, a poignant story about age, sibling rivalry and having to grow up – at last.

Stig is joined by Jordan Erica Webber to play a new computer game based on the world of Hamlet. In Elsinore, released later this month, the player takes on the role of Ophelia and quests to save the lives of the characters and change the course of the story. We ask if an attempt to tell the story of the play in an interactive way bears fruit.

The acclaimed Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove talks about staging Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead at Manchester International Festival. The adaptation, like the book, tells the story of Howard Roark, an architect who refuses to compromise on his “perfect” designs. US president Donald Trump is a fan of The Fountainhead and the home secretary Sajid Javid revealed during the Conservative leadership debates that he re-reads it once a year. We’ll ask what this production has to tell us about liberalism, politics and individualism today.

Following reports that while watching The Voice Kids a woman’s window shattered when a competitor sang a high note, Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford, tells Front Row whether the human voice really can break glass.

Presenter: Stig Abell

Oscar winning director Ron Howard has made an in-depth look at the life and career of singer Luciano Pavarotti, featuring interviews with his family and other stars such as Placido Domingo and Angela Gheorghiu. Classical music critic Fiona Maddocks reviews.

The latest British Attitudes Survey is published today, but how are attitudes reflected and influenced by the culture we consume? Research Director from the National Centre for Social Research, Miranda Philips, and cultural historian Matthew Sweet discuss.

The organisers of Port Eliot Festival have released a statement saying that this year’s festival will be the last for the foreseeable future. In an age when the festival scene - literary or musical - seems to be thriving, what has gone wrong for them? Colin Midson, the Creative Director, explains.

Wendell Berry is a farmer and activist, and the great chronicler of rural America with over fifty books. His latest, Stand By Me, is a collection of short stories chronicling the lives of the small farmers of Port William, Kentucky, their relationships with each other and the place: the fields and woods, animals and birds, and the soil itself. He talks to Samira Ahmed about how the stories connect and span a century.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed