Front Row

The Holberg Prize is awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. This year the 6 million Norwegian kroner prize (approximately £500,000) has been awarded to the British-Canadian art historian Professor Griselda Pollock who the judges described as “the foremost feminist art historian working in the world today”.In the month when she would have travelled to Norway to receive the prize, she joins Front Row to discuss why art history is too important a subject to be left to art historians.Presenter: Katie Popperwell Producer: Ekene Akalawu Studio Managers: Phil Booth and Mike Smith

The arts world is facing a “cultural catastrophe” with the impact of Covid-19 leading to the loss of an annual revenue of £74 billion according to one report along with warnings of 400,000 jobs lost. But does this terrible crisis also provide an opportunity to rethink the arts world? Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern, Amanda Parker, Editor of Arts Professional and Director of Inc Arts, David Jubb, theatre producer and former Director of Battersea Arts Centre, and Music Writer Alexandra Coughlan share their ideas for positive change. Radio 4's Rethink week is exploring ways in which the world should be rethought after the pandemic. Main Image: Luke Jerram's coronavirus - Covid 19 - glass sculpturePresenter: John Wilson Producer: Ekene Akalawu Producer: Tim Prosser Studio Manager: Duncan Hannant

Alan Bennett's Talking Heads have been remade for television decades after the original series. Alongside two brand new monologues, ten episodes have been re-created with actors including Jodie Comer, Sarah Lancashire and Lucian Msamati. Theatre critic Sam Marlowe reviews these socially distanced dramas, and actor Lisa Dwan joins her to discuss the art of the monologue.The pandemic has changed all of our lives, but could there be a way to change society for the better as we re-build after coronavirus. As part of BBC Radio's Re-think season, musician and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker makes the case for creating space for nature.Thomas Clay discusses his new film Fanny Lye Deliver’d, which he wrote, directed and composed the music for, and which he describes as a ‘Puritan western’. Maxine Peak and Charles Dance star as a married couple on a remote Shropshire farm in the wake of the English Civil War, whose lives change forever following the unexpected arrival of a young couple in need.Main image above: Tamsin Greig in BBC One's Talking Heads Image credit: BBC/London Theatre Company Productions/Zac NicholsonPresenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Hannah Robins

Rebel Wilson discusses her new TV series Last One Laughing, where ten comedians are locked in room and if they laugh they get kicked out. The last one standing wins a big cash prize. The death was announced today of the actor Sir Ian Holm. Theatre critic Michael Billington pays tribute.Bob Dylan has just released a new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. For our Friday Review, music journalist Laura Barton and commentator Michael Carlson give their verdict on whether this is vintage Dylan. And they discuss The Luminaries, a new BBC drama based on the Booker-winning novel by Eleanor Catton set during New Zealand’s Gold Rush in 1866. Unemployed theatre professionals in Minneapolis have been putting their skills to good use, protecting businesses during recent Black Lives Matter protests in the city where George Floyd lived and was killed. As the protests subside, Daisuke Kawachi discusses the University Rebuild project that she's been working on.Alison Brackenbury has been Front Row’s poet-in-residence this week, reading one of her Museums Unlocked poems every evening. Alison travels about the country to give poetry readings. She makes a point, wherever she goes, of visiting the museum or art gallery. With most now closed, Alison has written new poems about some of the museums she has visited. Her final poem is inspired by a letter she came across in Charles Dickens’ house.During the lockdown author Rebecca Stott has re-read Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, a fictional account of the bubonic epidemic of 1665; Rebecca tells Kirsty Lang how the book resonates during Covid-19.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Sarah Johnson Studio Manager Matilda Macari

We mark the passing of Dame Vera Lynn, the Forces' Sweetheart, whose songs helped raise morale in World War Two. After Dame Vera's death, aged 103, was announced today, composer and author Neil Brand explores her unique musical gifts. Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe's critically acclaimed work brings a new approach to the classical guitar by experimenting with instruments and repertoire. His new album Bach: Pour La Luth Ò Cembal, featuring works written for the lute but played on guitar, is number one in the Official Specialist Classical Chart. PlacePrints is a series of audio plays by David Rudkin invoking the hidden stories imprinted on ten different locations around the UK, and spanning time from the Stone Age to the present day. Jack McNamara, director of theatre company New Perspectives, has been recording these vignettes over four years with actors including Josie Lawrence, Toby Jones, Stephen Rea, Juliet Stevenson and Michael Pennington. Theatre critic Susannah Clapp reviews this ambitious endeavour. Alison Brackenbury is Front Row’s poet-in-residence this week taking inspiration from her travels around the country. Wherever she goes Alison visits museums and galleries. Their current closure this has inspired her to write new poems about some of the museums she has visited, and so, imaginatively, open them up. Today she takes us back to the 16th century and to Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Here Mary, Queen of Scots, witnessed her husband murder her secretary, and confronted John Knox who objected to rule by ‘the monstrous regiment of women’.Presenter: John Wilson Studio Manager: Matilda Macari Producer: Simon RichardsonMain image: Dame Vera Lynn

Judd Apatow - famous for film comedies like Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and Trainwreck - on his new film The King Of Staten Island, which he co-wrote with Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson. Pete plays a young man trying to get his life together after the death of his fire-fighter father. Today the damage to UK theatre caused by the Coronavirus has really begun to show: major producer Cameron Mackintosh has announced redundancy consultations for staff on blockbuster shows, including Hamilton and Phantom Of The Opera. Additionally, a hundred leading creative figures have signed a letter calling for government action to save the sector. We talk to Matthew Hemley, News Editor of theatre magazine The Stage, about the crisis faced by UK theatre.We announce the 2020 winners of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for writing for children and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration for children, and speak to the winners about their work.Plus Alison Brackenbury, Front Row’s virtual poet-in-residence for the week. She's been inspired by the museums and galleries she visited before lockdown and is sharing a poem a day from her Museums Unlocked series. Today’s is about buried treasure and takes us to Birmingham Museums’ Staffordshire Hoard exhibition, and back to the age of the Anglo-Saxons.Main image: Pete Davidson in The King of Staten Island Image credit: (C) 2020 Universal StudiosPresenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Emma Wallace

In 1923, African American author Jean Toomer published the novel Cane. It wasn’t a best seller at the time but is now held as a modernist classic and a central work of The Harlem Renaissance. A new radio adaptation is to be broadcast on Radio 4. We speak to playwright Janice Okoh and score composer, soul singer Carleen Anderson. Today is Bloomsday, when Dubliners celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses, the novel about Irish newspaper advertising salesman Leopold Bloom wandering round the city. As Ireland is emerging from lockdown events are moving online and for Zoomsday actor Seán Doyle is MC-ing a Joycean Punk Cabaret with an alternative presentation of extracts, songs, poems as well as Joyce’s saucier love letters. Seán joins us from Dublin just before the event begins. Lockdown came quickly and affected arts organisations around the country with barely any warning. Venues closed their doors and hung up the “closed until further notice” signs. But what’s happening behind the closed doors? We speak to Joanna Meacock from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow and Anna Renton from Penlee House in Penzance.For one week only Alison Brackenbury is Front Row’s poet in residence. The colsure of museums during Coronavirus has inspired Alison to write new poems about some of those she has visited. Every day this week we will be hearing one of her Museums Unlocked poems. In today’s Alison takes us to Aghanistan via a painting in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton Castle. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: John Boland

Tracey Emin discusses the creative burst she has experienced during lockdown, resulting in a series of new paintings created for an online exhibition called I Thrive on Solitude, the first time White Cube gallery has mounted an online exhibition. Alison Brackenbury is Front Row's new Lockdown Poet in Residence. She's written a series of poems inspired by the museums throughout the country which have been shut for months. From Taunton to Edinburgh, Alison opens up these museums in her imagination, beginning tonight with a strange meeting in the Handel and Hendrix Museum. As shops begin to reopen today, bookshops have introduced ‘book quarantine’ bins where books that have been picked up are placed to avoid cross-contamination. So are we now more likely to judge a book by its cover? Designer Jamie Keenan on the secrets behind a good book cover. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Prodcuer: Timothy Prosser Main Image: Self Portrait © Tracey Emin

The Salisbury Poisonings, a new BBC One three-part drama, focuses on the 2018 Novichok poisonings, the public health response, and the heroism of the community. Writer Declan Lawn describes how his years as an investigative reporter for Panorama primed him to create this drama based on real events, and the resonance of the story with the government's response to the pandemic.Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, Front Row’s Lockdown Artist in Residence, has been entertaining us each week with a live performance from the empty Harpa concert hall in Reykjavík. For his eleventh and final performance Víkingur plays Debussy’s The Snow is Dancing from the Children’s Corner. The historian Tom Holland and film critic Hanna Flint give their verdicts on Pilgrims, the latest novel by Matthew Kneale, recounting the journey of a disparate bunch who set off for Rome in 1289. His earlier book English Passengers won the Whitbread Book of the Year. They also watch Banana Split, a high school movie with a difference, starring and co-written by Hannah Marks. It foregrounds the friendship of two teenage girls who’ve gone out with the same boy.We announce the winner of the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.Presenter Tom Sutcliffe Producer Jerome Weatherald Studio Manager Duncan Hannant

It’s as the clever but put-upon Will Mackenzie in The Inbetweeners or the elder son Adam in Friday Night Dinner that Simon Bird has come to public attention but now the star of these successful sitcoms has stepped behind the cameras to direct his first feature film. Simon joins Front Row to discuss Days of the Bagnold Summer.The death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota Police has led to worldwide protests and calls for the end of systemic racism. What part can white artists and writers play to illuminate a subject that so many white people find difficult to understand and address? Playwright and performer Professor Eliza Bent, and writer and author Professor Jess Row discuss the subject of Whiteness and how it obscures racism.Musicians have been deeply affected by the loss of concerts, shows, and tours but an overlooked area has been Artist-In-Residencies programmes which many of our national music institutions offer to musicians for their career development. Ruth Patterson, lead singer of Newcastle-based folk-rock band Holy Moly & The Crackers, was an Artist-In-Residence at Sage Gateshead this year to enable her to develop as a solo performer. She joins Front Row to discuss her debut single as a singer-songwriter, performing as a musician in wheelchair, and she’ll be singing live on the show.As the lockdown eases for some next week, those heading into Manchester city centre will see posters featuring a new poem by Tony Walsh, aka Longfella, called The Sum of Us. Tony came to public attention with the poem, This Is The Place, that he performed in the city in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing. He joins Front Row to talk about the new work and perform an extract from it.Presenter: Katie Popperwell Producer: Ekene Akalawu