Front Row

Anthony Joseph – poet, musician, and academic – joins us to talk about his new poetry collection, Sonnets for Albert, which considers the personal impact of his absent father, and performs a selection of pieces.

Tracey Emin talks to Natasha Raskin Sharp at Jupiter Artland sculpture park near Edinburgh, where her new exhibition includes a giant bronze female figure lying down in the woods, paintings of beds, and other work reflecting on the possibility of love after hardship.

Director of Film at the British Council Briony Hanson reviews Bergman Island a new film from director Mia Hansen-Løve about a film making couple who visit the home of Ingmar Bergman to find inspiration.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Main image: I Lay Here For You by Tracey Emin

Actor Rory Kinnear plays ten characters- all the male roles but one- in the new psychological horror film from Alex Garland, Men. He joins Samira Ahmed to discuss how he approached playing multiple roles in this exploration of fear and loathing in the English countryside.

The UK’s new City of Culture 2025 is announced. The Minister of Arts, Lord Parkinson reveals which bid from the shortlist of Bradford, County Durham, Southampton and Wrexham County Borough has been successful and what the title will mean in terms of investment and attracting visitors to the area.

Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall is involved with the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Prize as vice patron of the Royal Commonwealth Society. She spoke to Tina Daheley about how the world’s oldest international writing competition for schools promotes literacy and empowers young people.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Photo: Actor Rory Kinnear in the film Men Credit: Entertainment Film Distributors

Immersive digital art in Coventry, the British Art Show, & music from Jasdeep Singh Degun.

Meg Mason is the latest in our series of interviews with authors shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her novel Sorrow and Bliss is narrated by Martha, a woman whose path in life is shaped by her mental health.

Katie Puckrick and Diran Adebayo join us to review the screen adaptation of John Wyndham's fable, The Midwich Cuckoos, the Edvard Munch Masterpieces from Bergen exhibition at The Courtauld Institute and Pistol, Danny Boyle's new drama about the Sex Pistols.

Radical Horizons: The Art of Burning Man is an outdoor exhibition on the Chatsworth House estate - a series of monumental sculptures from the festival in the Nevada Desert. Geeta Pendse speaks to Chatsworth’s Senior Curator, Dr Alex Hodby, and to Burning Man artist Dana Albany from San Francisco, who has come to Chatsworth to make a Burning Man sculpture with local material and the help of local children.

Sanctuary is another Burning Man inspired structure that can be seen at the Miners’ Welfare Park in Bedworth - a public memorial for the losses experienced in the Covid pandemic. Geeta meets the woman who commissioned the memorial, Helen Marriage - the artistic director of Artichoke; David Best - the artist who designed the work; plus some of those visiting the memorial.

Plus, Geeta Pendse speaks to writer Frances Poet about her play exploring dementia, Maggie May – now moving from the Leeds Playhouse, to the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch and on to Leicester’s Curve, on a dementia friendly tour.

And the Palm Dog – the Cannes award for dogs on the big screen. Judges Anna Smith and Tim Robey discuss the dogs in the running.

Presenter: Geeta Pendse

48 years after the British jury gave them nul points at the Eurovision song contest, ABBA the avatars begin a long term arena residency in London. Samira talks to the director Baillie Walsh and the choreographer Wayne McGregor about creating the show.

Terence Davies, director of some of the finest films ever made in the UK, such as Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, talks to Samira Ahmed about his new film Benediction. It’s based on the life of Siegfried Sassoon, one of the great poets of the Great War. As well as writing about its horrors and having fought with great courage, he declared his refusal to take any further part in it because he saw that the people in power, who could bring the suffering to an end, were prolonging the slaughter. The film chronicles his troubled life as a gay man after the war.

It is two years tomorrow since George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. To mark this sad anniversary, we asked the poet Zaffar Kunial, whose first collection Us was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, to reflect on this and see if he could write a poem. He did, and reads Watershed, for the first time.

Jason Solomons reports live from the Cannes Film Festival, with news of the surprise hits of this year's festival and who's in contention for the big prizes.

The playwright John Godber on updating Teechers, a play that he wrote in the 1980s about his experiences as a drama teacher, for 2022.

The British and Greek governments are due to meet this week to discuss the Parthenon Marbles. Francesca Peacock discusses the latest development in the debate over the contested sculptures.

And we announce the winner of this year's British Book Awards, live on Front Row.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Melly Still on directing ‘The Wreckers’, by Ethel Smyth, the first ever opera by a woman composer to be performed at the Glyndebourne Festival.

Morgan Quaintance and Hettie Judah join us to review Emergency, the new film directed by Carey Williams and the Cornelia Parker exhibition at The Tate.

Ivor Novello Awards: Sam Fender’s track Seventeen Going Under, taken from his album of the same name, was today awarded the accolade of Best Song Musically and Lyrically at this year’s Ivor Novello Awards. We step inside the anatomy of the song with singer, musician, composer and lyricist Joe Stilgoe as he talks us through its prize-winning qualities.

Bafta-winning actress Joanna Scanlan on learning Welsh and acting in the language for the very first time in Y Golau - a new crime drama for S4C and BBC iPlayer, set in rural Carmarthenshire and simultaneously filmed in Welsh and English.

Indu Rubasingham on directing The Father and The Assassin - a new play by long-time collaborator Anu Chandrasekhar about the death of Ghandi, which opens at the National Theatre in London.

Plus, the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. One of the oldest in the world, it began in 1772 to help raise money for healthcare, and is celebrating its 250th anniversary - running for 17 days with a wide variety of cultural events. Andrew Turner from Radio Norfolk talks to the director, Daniel Brine, and some of the artists, programmers, and spectators involved.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Television screenwriter Kay Mellor, the woman behind popular series like Band of Gold, Fat Friends and The Syndicate, is remembered by fellow dramatist Sally Wainwright, Kat Rose Martin holder of the Kay Mellor Fellowship and television critic Julia Raeside.

The idea of a minimum wage for artists is discussed by Aisa Villarosa Director of External Relations at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Dr Joe Chrisp of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath and Angela Dorgan, Chair of the National Campaign for The Arts, in Dublin

Nick talks to Chloe Moss writer of a new play, Corinna Corinna, at the Liverpool Everyman about the only woman on board a ship bound for Singapore.

Presenter : Nick Ahad