Front Row

As France vows to restore Notre-Dame de Paris after last night's devastating fire, we discuss the artistic, musical and cultural significance of this great Cathedral. With music historian Mark Everist, art critic Waldemar Januszczak and French literature academic Eve Morisi.

Roger McGough, one of Britain’s most widely read poets, talks about his latest anthology, joinedupwriting, in which he explores themes of childhood, ageing and politics. He reflects on the appeal of different forms of verse and how the critical reaction to his work sits with its popular appeal.

Lucy Kirkwood's hit 2013 play Chimerica comes to Channel 4 as a new TV drama series, updated to the Trump era. Sarah Crompton reviews.

Presenter: Stig Abell

Andrew Scott, who played the priest in the recent run of the TV comedy drama Fleabag, talks about the sexual chemistry between him and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, how he approached “that wedding speech” in the series finale and his new film Steel Country, in which Scott plays a garbage collector in Pennsylvania who believes a boy has been murdered.

Dame Maggie Smith returns to the stage after 12 years to deliver a one hour forty minute monologue as Joseph Goebbels' secretary Brunhilde Pomsel, her words based on an interview the 103 year old former Nazi gave recently to filmmakers. Adapted by Christopher Hampton, A German Life is at London’s Bridge Theatre. Susannah Clapp reviews.

Pioneering colour photographer William Eggleston is about to celebrate his 80th birthday, and a new exhibition of some of his groundbreaking work has just opened in London. A series of images of rusted cars, industrial decline and the mundane details of everyday life in 1970s California are typical of his work, featuring the vivid saturated colours he’s most associated with, often bathed in the glow of the early evening sun. In a rare interview, the influential photographer reflects on a life behind the lens.

Presenter : John Wilson

Seamus Heaney died in 2013. Had he lived tomorrow would have been his 80th birthday. Heaney was a rare writer - a poet both beloved and respected. He was an eloquent advocate for the place and craft of poetry. Who would have thought Beowulf could be a modern day bestseller? Seamus Heaney's translation was. He made a profound social impact, too, and at the time of the Good Friday Agreement President Clinton memorably quoted

Front Row this evening is devoted to Heaney's work, life and continuing inspiration. Kirsty Lang talks to Leontia Flynn, one of the leading younger writers of the North of Ireland; to his friend the poet Bernard O'Donoghue, who is working on a new edition of Heaney's Collected Poems with Rosie Lavan - from whom we hear, too.

The composer Mohammed Fairouz explains how he set some of the poems in his piece for choir and viola, 'In a New Light', which will have its European premier performance tomorrow in Bellaghy, where Heaney was born, and is buried.

And, from the BBC's archive, there is the wonderful voice of the poet himself, introducing and reading his work.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

British painter Jenny Saville, the most expensive living female artist in the world, discusses her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt's masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.

Cellist Laura van der Heijden, who won the BBC Young Musician competition when she was 15, plays live and discusses her debut album of Russian music called 1948, which last night won the BBC Music Magazine's Newcomer of the Year Award.

Plus the art of working to a deadline, with authors Robert McCrum and Sophie Heawood and Teresa Amabile from Harvard Business School.

Presenter Stig Abell

The contemporary classical composer Gavin Bryars talks about the latest incarnation of his acclaimed 1971 work, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – a 12-hour overnight rendition at Tate Modern in London. The piece is based on a fragment of tape of a homeless man singing, and this performance combines the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bryars’s own ensemble, the Southbank Sinfonia, and the participation of several homeless people.

Gavin Bryars also contributes his thoughts to the question: can opera singers sing pop and vice versa? What are the main differences between a trained bel canto voice and what some would call the more natural approach taken by folk, jazz or rock singers? Music critic Anna Picard and Christopher Purves, opera singer and former member of jazz vocal group Harvey and the Wallbangers, discuss.

Hailed by Zadie Smith as 'uncommonly poised and truly beautiful', the debut novelist Isabella Hammad discusses her 500-page epic The Parisian, set around the Palestinian struggle for independence in the early twentieth century.

Presenter Janina Ramirez

Alistair Hudson, Director of the Whitworth in Manchester and Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven have been awarded a Transformative Grant to rethink their respective art institutions. They join Front Row to discuss how the concept of useful art has the power to remake museums and galleries fit for the 21st century.

England has one, Scotland has one, Wales has two, but Northern Ireland has none – we’re talking National Theatres. Nóirín McKinney, Director of Arts Development at Arts Council of Northern Ireland, reflects on the desire for a National Theatre of Northern Ireland, and why it has yet to be fulfilled.

The bicentenary of the birth of celebrated art critic John Ruskin is being marked by events and exhibitions across the country, but one art historian has gone further than most in bringing Ruskin’s work to life for a modern audience. Dr Paul O’Keefe has been performing Ruskin’s lectures in character for two decades. He explains why a bad wig turned out to be the perfect prop for his transformation and what he’s learnt from portraying Ruskin as he gives his lectures.

After winning the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Room, and before starring in the recent superhero adventure Captain Marvel, Brie Larson decided to make her directorial debut with the film Unicorn Store about a failed arts student who while struggling to make her way in the corporate world receives a curious invitation to a Unicorn store. Annabel Grundy, Major Programmes Manager at the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham reviews.

Presenter: John Wilson

The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is best known for The Scream, and a rare lithograph of the picture is at the heart of a major new exhibition of Munch’s work which opens at the British Museum this week. Critic Jacky Klein gives her response to Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, which focuses on the artist’s experimental prints, almost 50 of which are on loan from Norway’s Munch Museum.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Carlos Acosta went from an impoverished upbringing in Havana, Cuba to a world-renowned ballet dancer and the first black Principal of The Royal Ballet. He tells John Wilson about his new film Yuli: The Carlos Acosta Story, and his plans for Birmingham Royal Ballet; he starts his role as its director in January 2020.

Composer Iain Bell on the world premiere of his new opera Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel, which tells the stories of the women living in the doss houses of Victorian London’s East End and the five whose lives were tragically stolen.

Plus Jordan Erica Webber with news of the BAFTA Games Awards.

Presenter: John Wilson

Tomorrow sees the opening of an ambitious new multi-purpose arts venue, The Shed, in New York. This £360m building, featuring a vast telescoping outer shell which travels on rails, is at the heart of Hudson Yards, a major new £20bn property development in Manhattan, and sits alongside a new, copper-coloured ‘vertical park’ designed by the Thomas Heatherwick studio. Critic Sarah Crompton gives her response to the new structure.

Last night saw the inaugural Premier League match at Tottenham Hotspur’s new £750m football stadium. The acoustic designer Christopher Lee, who’s designed more than 30 stadia on five different continents, discusses how he worked to create the best audio experience for the fans.

American bestselling author Jonathan Lethem discusses his new novel, The Feral Detective, his first detective novel in two decades. Within it he explores the impact of Trump’s America, written from a female perspective.

Music journalist Kevin LeGendre reviews Marvin Gaye’s never-released 1972 album ‘You’re The Man’, which coincides with the celebration of what would’ve been Gaye’s 80th birthday this week.

Presenter: Janina Ramirez

Sir David Attenborough discusses Our Planet, his new eight-part series and Netflix debut, which explores the unique wonders of the natural world, from the Arctic wilderness to the diverse jungles of South America. In partnership with World Wildlife Fund, the series continues the conservation campaign raised by Attenborough's earlier series Blue Planet II.

Lee Ridley, aka The Lost Voice Guy, is the stand-up comedian who made his name when he won Britain’s Got Talent in 2018. Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at a young age, the condition has left him unable to speak, and so he uses a machine to project his material. Last year, he co-wrote and starred in the Radio 4 sitcom Ability, playing a disabled man who moves out from his parents’ home and in with his friend. Lee discusses bringing Ability back for a second series and finding humour in his disability.

The Sisters Brothers is a new Western from Jacques Audiard, his first foray into the genre and the English language, starring John C Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed. Briony Hanson reviews the film.

Presenter Stig Abell