Front Row

Sarah Moss, the celebrated author of Ghost Wall, discusses her new novel Ripeness, which oscillates between tension-filled contemporary Ireland and a heady summer in 1960s Italy.

Dylan Jones discusses his new book 1975: The Year The World Forgot and debates whether this was the best year for music with chief music critic of the Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick.

After reports of an emerging deal between the UK and Greece around the status of the Elgin Marbles, we talk to Geoffrey Robertson KC, campaigner for their return, about the legal ramifications.

A new statue of Stalin has appeared on the Moscow Underground at Taganskaya station. After de-Stalinisation in the 60s it seems that the Russian authorities are now reintroducing images of the former leader, showing him in a positive light and ignoring his reign of terror. Tom speaks with the BBC’s man in the Russian capital, Steve Rosenberg, about what this might mean.

And we finish the programme with a specially written poem from Fred D'Aguiar, Professor of English at the University of California, about the government response to the migrant deportation protests.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Ian Rankin pays tribute to the best-selling thriller author Frederick Forsyth, whose death was announced today.

Samira talks to Twin Peaks' co-creator Mark Frost and podcaster Mike Munser about the show's enduring legacy 35 years on, as Twin Peaks is re-released and celebrated at the BFI Film on Film Festival.

Playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti talks about her new play Marriage Material, which spans decades in the lives of a Sikh family running a corner shop in Wolverhampton.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Tom and guests review What it Feels Like for Girl, the BBC's coming-of-age drama based on the memoir of Paris Lees; Taylor Jenkins Reid's new novel, Atmosphere, set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program and new film, Lollipop, about a young woman released from prison battling to regain custody of her children, written and directed by Daisy-May Hudson. We also talk to former Vice President of Washington's Kennedy Center, Marc Bamuthi Joseph about being fired by President Trump and the administration's latest interventions in the arts world.

Guests: Scott Bryan, TV critic and broadcaster; Caroline O’Donoghue, author and podcaster; Marc Bamuthi Joseph, former Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington; Zachary Small, arts reporter, New York Times

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Daisy Goodwin discusses her debut play, By Royal Appointment, which stars Anne Reid as Queen Elizabeth and Caroline Quentin as her dresser, and which opens this week at Theatre Royal, Bath.

The life and legacy of Irish novelist playwright and poet Edna O'Brien is discussed by writer Jan Carson and the director of the documentary Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story, Sinead O’Shea.

And we hear from the curator of Design & Disability, an exhibition at the V&A in London which showcases the contributions of Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people to contemporary design and culture since the 1940s.

Plus Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst pays tribute to American writer Edmund White, whose death has just been announced.

Presenter: Kirsty Wark

Comedian Nick Mohammed on his stand-up show Mr Swallow, and Deep Cover, his action thriller about a group of comedy improvisers.

Kate Wasserberg, Artistic Director of Theatr Clywd on the theatre's £50 million redevelopment, and opening the new auditorium with a production of the musical Tick Tick... Boom!

Ulrich Birkmaier, senior conservator of paintings at the J Paul Getty Museum in LA on restoring a work by Artemisia Gentileschi damaged during the catastrophic Beirut explosion in 2020.

Theatre critic Michael Coveney pays tribute to pioneering stage designer William Dudley.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Samira discusses the Olivier award-winning production of Fiddler on the Roof with its star Adam Dannheisser and director Jordan Fein.

Sarah Dunant talks about the women in the Renaissance who became art patrons, as she publishes her novel The Marchesa, about Isabella d'Este of Mantua.

Screenwriter Frederic Raphael, whose films include Far From the Madding Crowd, Darling and Eyes Wide Shut, on the art of writing film scripts.

Producer: Harry Graham

Samira Ahmed and writers Dreda Mitchell and Mark Ravenhill review Imelda Staunton and her daughter, Bessie Carter, in Mrs Warren's Profession.

They consider, too, theatre director Marianne Elliott's first foray into film, The Salt Path, based on a Raynor Winn's bestselling memoir of how she and her husband, after they have lost their house and farm and he has been diagnosed with a rare terminal disease, walk the 600 miles of the South West Coast Path. It features Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs - with and the land and seascape of the end of England in a starring role.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has a collection of 4.5 million artefacts. Inevitably, many are stored away. But now the museum is inviting everyone backstage, to the V&A East Storehouse, where half a million objects are looked after. It is a wonderful gallimaufry, ancient ceramics next to plastic chairs from the sixties, a huge Picasso, a Frank Lloyd Wright office and a child's pedal car. Samira, Freda and Mark wander the gantries.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Paul Hartnoll of electronic music duo Orbital talks about the reissue of the band's Brown album which was originally released in 1993, with the addition of 23 extra tracks of rarities and previously unreleased material and about the intersection between dance music and politics.

Frances Wilson, who has previously published acclaimed biographies of D H Lawrence and Thomas De Quincy tells us about her latest book Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, about the great Scottish writer, poet and essayist.

And the creator of Netflix's new detective series Dept. Q, Scott Frank, who previously wrote and directed The Queen's Gambit and has written the scripts for Hollywood movies from Minority Report to Marley & Me, talks to us about adapting bestselling Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen's books for the screen and why he's transposed the setting for the series from Copenhagen to Edinburgh.

Presenter: Kate Molleson

Live from the Hay Festival, Alison Steadman talks to Samira about her career, from Abigail's Party to Gavin and Stacey.

Laura Bates and Gwyneth Lewis discuss Arthurian Legends and The Mabinogion.

Hisham Matar champions the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz.

And transatlantic husband and wife country duo Outpost Drive perform on stage.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Stereophonic is a play about the creative process, power dynamics and fraught personal relationships of a 1970s rock band. It won a Tony and many other awards on Broadway. Now Stereophonic has come to the West End. Playwright David Adjmi and Will Butler, sometime of Arcade Fire, who has written the music, discuss their own artistic process as they created it. Plus Skin from Skunk Anansie on their first LP in almost a decade, news of a new exhibition shedding light on painter Joseph Wright of Derby's artistic process and Alexander Larman joins Antony Gormley to pay tribute to Alan Yentob.

Presenter: Nick Ahad