Front Row

Hanif Kureishi has joined forces with Emma Rice to adapt his 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia into an RSC production that’s just opened at the Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. Kureishi discusses what it feels like to see himself and his fictionalised family onstage, why his first novel remains painfully relevant and how he has been able to continue writing despite the December 2022 accident that left him tetraplegic.

Recently on Front Row we heard from some leaders of classical music organisations including the Wigmore Hall and LSO saying that Arts Council England, the body responsible for distributing funding, was putting inclusion before excellence. Today we hear from the Arts Council’s CEO, Darren Henley about Let’s Create, the ten year strategy behind the recent funding decisions.

Ingrid Persaud discusses the real man behind her new novel The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, an outlaw figure who looms large in the cultural memory of Trinidad and Tobago - an island nation with a wealth of contemporary novelists, including Persaud herself.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

The Pet Shop Boys are the most successful duo in UK music history. Forty years after their first hit West End Girls they are about to release their new album Nonetheless. Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant join Samira Ahmed to talk about making sense of life through culture, their music being used in hit films like Saltburn and All of Us Strangers and their gay icon status.

Also joining Samira in the studio are art critic Catherine McCormack and writer Jenny McCartney to review the new tennis film Challengers - which stars Zendaya and Josh O'Connor and Tate Modern's new exhibition Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

The Legend of Ned Ludd - writer Joe Ward Munrow and director Jude Christian discuss their new play at the Liverpool Everyman theatre which explores the changing nature of work over the centuries and around the world in the the face of automation.

The shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction was announced today - journalist Jamie Klingler assesses the selection.

As the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool prepares to show off its latest acquisitions, curator Kate O'Donoghue explains what the their new Degas and Monet works will bring to their collection.

Artist Mohammad Barrangi discusses his new installation - One Night, One Dream, Life in the Lighthoue - at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery in Leeds University, inspired by his residency at the university's Special Collections.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

The British Library isn’t all books; it has a huge sound archive, one of the largest in the world. It has drawn on this for Beyond the Bassline, the first major exhibition to documenting Black British music. Curators Aleema Gray and Mykaell Riley guide Shahidha Bari through the 500-year musical journey of African and Caribbean people in Britain.

Emily Henry is a giant of the Beach Read: indeed one of her best selling novels is literally called that. With her forthcoming Funny Book, she is joined by author of The Garnett Girls Georgina Moore to discuss what goes into an ideal summer book.

And on Shakespeare's birthday, we discuss the women who made him as well as his female contemporaries with Charlotte Scott, from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Rami Targoff author of Shakespeare's Sisters: Four Women Who Wrote the Renaissance

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Taylor Swift returns with The Tortured Poets Department, a surprise double album that features 31 tracks that fans are saying is her most intimate and lyrically revealing yet. Joining Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the work are Times music writer Lisa Vericco and Satu Hameenho-Fox, whose new book Into The Taylor-Verse is out next month.

The Intercity 125 train, the Kenwood mixer, the Morphy Richards iron, the Wilkinson triple razor, bus shelters, the black cab, and the Parker 25 pen all have one thing in common – they were designed by Sir Kenneth Grange. As a new book about his life and work comes out, we went to his house to meet him.

Hettie Judah joins us fresh from the famous international cultural exhibition, the Venice Biennale, now in it’s 60th year. She’ll be reviewing the highs and lows.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Knife is Salman Rushdie’s memoir about surviving a near-fatal knife attack in August 2022 and the long, painful period of recovery that followed.

Ben Power’s adaption of the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend – London Tide – which features songs that he co-wrote with PJ Harvey, has just opened at the National Theatre in London.

Baby Reindeer is a new Netflix drama written by and starring Richard Gadd who drew directly on his own shocking experience of being stalked.

All three are reviewed by Tahmima Anam and John Mullan.

We also hear from tenor Ian Bostridge on mobile phone use in concert halls and why he stopped a performance of Britten's Les Illuminations with the CBSO last night.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Lionel Shriver on her latest novel Mania, in which she creates an alternative USA where the Mental Parity Movement insists that everyone is equally clever. Can a friendship between two women survive when they hold polarised views on this particular “culture war”?

Why are universities all over the country closing arts courses and cutting jobs? Front Row investigates and considers the consequences.

Playwright Tyrell Williams talks about his acclaimed play Red Pitch, about three young lads dreaming of football stardom. But what happens when their local football pitch is under threat, as a result of gentrification?

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Lord Byron died 200 years ago on Friday. Lady Caroline Lamb described him as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. Fiona Stafford has edited Byron's Travels, a new selection of his poems, letters and journals. He was only 36 when he died, but had written seven volumes of verse, thirteen volumes of journal and thousands of letters. The poet A. E. Stallings, who lives in Greece, where Byron died while supporting the Greek struggle for independence - and Fiona Stafford, join Tom Sutcliffe to celebrate this great, scandalous and very funny Romantic poet.

We talk about the sped-up music phenomenon, and what it tells us about the constantly evolving relationship between the music industry and music fans. Music business writer Eamonn Forde and singer-songwriter Fiona Bevan are in the Front Row studio.

And artist Sir John Akomfrah joins us from the British Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale where he is representing the UK, with his exhibition, Listening All Night To The Rain.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

British director Jeymes Samuel discusses his new film The Book of Clarence, a Biblical comedy about a down-on-his-luck young man who tries to escape from a debt by pretending to be a messiah like Christ.

Sonali Bhattacharyya on her new play Liberation Square, which just opened at the Nottingham Playhouse and explores the lives of three young Muslim women who find themselves caught up in the state surveillance ‘Prevent’ programme.

With the hit Belfast-set drama Blue Lights returning to BBC One for its second season tonight, Kathy Clugston reports on Northern Ireland booming film industry.

Presenter: Nick Ahad

Back to Black is the Amy Winehouse biopic out this week and directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe