Monday sees the performance of a ‘Relaxed Prom’ at the Royal Albert Hall, offering an informal environment for children, young people and adults with autism, sensory and communication impairments, learning disabilities and other challenges. The Prom will feature the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and its ensemble BSO Resound, comprising six disabled musicians led by conductor James Rose who has cerebral palsy. James Rose and violin and viola player Siobhan Clough discuss the practicalities of conducting and performing ahead of their first major UK performance.

The shortlist for this year’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards has been announced. Journalist Stephen Armstrong is the chair of the judging panel and joins Kirsty to discuss the selection and the main themes explored by comedians at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. The winner will be announced on Saturday 25 August.

What happens in the brain when we are inspired? Professor of Neuroscience Paul Howard–Jones explains, as part of our Inspire season.

Novelist and nature writer Melissa Harrison talks about her latest book, All Among the Barley, a story of an adolescent farmer’s daughter in 1930s Britain. In the course of a long hot summer a sophisticated stranger arrives in the village but she is not what she seems and her presence has a shattering effect on the lives of the girl and her family.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang

Jed Mercurio's new drama Bodyguard follows Richard Madden as a troubled war veteran assigned as protection officer to the Home Secretary played by Keeley Hawes. TV critic Alison Graham reviews this latest offering from the writer of police thriller Line of Duty.

As a One Direction themed fanfiction is now being turned into a feature film; we ask if fanfiction has finally gone mainstream with books journalist Sarah Shaffi and fanfiction writer and novelist RJ Anderson.

The Lovely Bones is a bestselling novel by Alice Sebold about a young girl who is brutally murdered and looks down on her grieving family from heaven. Playwright Bryony Lavery discusses turning this well loved book into a theatre piece.

For our Inspire season we commissioned three artists to make a piece of work. Tonight we catch up with crime novelist Vaseem Khan to see how he's getting on.

Presenter: Sharmaine Lovegrove

Spike Lee's new film BlacKkKlansman is based on a true story from the 1970s. John David Washington plays Ron Stallworth the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Determined to make a name for himself he sets out on a dangerous mission to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. Natty Kasambala reviews.

Canadian author Esi Edugyan on her Man Booker Prize long-listed novel, Washington Black. A historical adventure, set in the early 19th century, it's the story of a young slave who flees Barbados with an abolitionist inventor.

Poet Alison Brackenbury tells us how she is getting on with her commission to write a poem for our Inspire season.

Comedian Helen Lederer returns to stand-up comedy and launches Comedy Women in Print, a competition to encourage funny female fiction.

Presenter: John Wilson

This year Sir Lenny Henry marks his 60th birthday with a special television programme with Sir Trevor McDonald. As well as performing some new sketches, he talks about bunking off school to appear in the TV talent show New Faces and how he fell in love with Shakespeare. He joins Stig to discuss a career that has spanned over four decades.

In the US TV drama series Instinct, Alan Cumming stars as Dr Dylan Reinhart, writer, academic and former CIA operative, drawn into a murder investigation when a serial killer copies one of his books. We review the show, which is based on the novel Murder Games by James Patterson, claiming the first gay male lead in a police procedural television show.

For centuries in the western world, religion was the great driving force for artists, musicians and writers. Janina Ramirez, Laura-Jane Foley and A N Wilson discuss the nature of divine inspiration and whether it still holds sway in an increasingly secular society.

Presenter Stig Abell

How people with dwarfism have been represented in art and culture, from Ancient Egypt to Velasquez to Game of Thrones. Kirsty is joined by Tom Shakespeare, Professor of Disability Research at East Anglia University and Richard Butchins, who has made the BBC Four film Dwarfs in Art: A New Perspective.

Scottish artist Barbara Rae has travelled to the Arctic in the footsteps of the Victorian explorer John Rae. She discusses the resulting artworks currently on show in Edinburgh and the challenges of working in the extreme cold.

As another film about Winnie-the-Pooh is released, this time starring Ewan McGregor as Christopher Robin, film critic Kate Muir and children's author Meg Rosoff discuss our fascination with the world of A.A Milne.

Producer: Timothy Prosser

Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul" known for hits like Respect, Natural Woman and Say a Little Prayer, has died in Detroit at the age of 76. Broadcaster Paul Gambaccini and music critic Kevin Le Gendre assess her life and work.

Actor David Suchet, discusses taking on the role of a 90 year-old furniture dealer in a revival of Arthur Miller's The Price at the Theatre Royal, Bath. It's 50 years since Miller's play was first staged in Broadway, but it also almost 50 years since David Suchet began his career on the British stage. The actor, who became a household name for his role as Hercule Poirot, explains why he starts with his character's voice and why he often plays outsiders.

Singer and composer Laura Mvula talks about her new choral work, Love Like a Lion, commissioned for the BBC proms and performed by the BBC Singers, on which she has collaborated with the novelist and poet Ben Okri. Laura and Ben talk about their working relationship and Laura explains what it is like straddling the worlds of soul, pop, and classical music.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Queen guitarist Brian May fell in love with 3D photography as a child and has since gone on to establish his own publishing company devoted to sharing stereoscopic work from the Victorian era to the present day. May's latest publication is a book by Professor Roger Taylor about the Scottish photography pioneer George Washington Wilson. May and Taylor discuss why Wilson's 3D photographs of Scottish landscapes and street scenes remain as captivating today as they were during the 3D boom of the 1850s and 60s.

As the NHS celebrates its 70th anniversary, three doctors are performing their own stand up shows on the Festival fringe. Adam Kay, Dr Kevin Jones and Kwame Asante talk to Kirsty about using their working lives as material.

Star of The Mash Report and Austentatious, Rachel Parris tells us what makes a winning comedy song.

And Scottish musician Mairi Campbell shares a lesser-known version of Auld Lang Syne.

Presenter : Kirsty Lang

The drag girl band Denim was Cambridge University's first drag troupe when they formed in 2010. Now, they're back in Edinburgh and for Front Row perform a song from their Reunion Tour and discuss how their drag comes with a political and uplifting message.

Author Maggie O'Farrell talks about the art of writing life stories as her own memoir I Am, I Am, I Am tops the bestseller charts, structured around 17 moments in her life when death came terrifyingly close.

Two new plays, Angry Alan and User Not Found, focus on online identities - with Angry Alan already winning a Fringe First prize. Writer Penelope Skinner and creator Terry O'Donovan talk to Kirsty about dramatizing online experiences and legacies.

Presenter : Kirsty Lang

Rosie Jones, a stand-up comedian whose material plays on her experience of living with Cerebral Palsy, discusses defying expectations - both onstage and off. Her one woman show is Fifteen Minutes.

Janeane Garofalo is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She began her career as a stand-up comedian and became a cast member on The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and Saturday Night Live, and has appeared in more than 50 films. She discusses her Edinburgh show, Put A Pin in That.

Jenni Fagan reads from her latest collection of poetry, There's a Witch in the Word Machine ahead of her appearance at the Edinburgh International Books Festival.

Plus, we get under the skin of the Festival Fringe with two talent scouts, asking is Edinburgh still the place to make your name as a comedian?

Presenter : Viv Groskop

The identity of the 'dark lady' of the Shakespeare's sonnets has mystified academics for years. As the Globe stage a new play about Emilia Bassano, one of the main candidates, Shakespearean academics Germaine Greer and Will Tosh consider how likely it is that Emilia is the dark lady and what we know about the real Emilia Bassano- a writer herself.

Denzel Washington discusses starring in his first ever sequel, The Equalizer 2. He returns as the mysterious and elusive Robert McCall, who delivers vigilante style justice for those people who can't do so for themselves, using any means necessary.

As part of our Inspire season, poet Imtiaz Dharker explains why walking through the city streets in the early hours gives her inspiration.

Presenter: John Wilson