Front Row

Margaret Atwood's long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - The Testaments - is due to be published next Tuesday, but following the release of a number of copies by Amazon, reviewers have managed to obtain early copies. M J Hyland reviews Atwood's sequel which takes place 15 years after the original tale of Gilead. In 1958 Alvin Ailey, aware that there were few opportunities for African-American dancers and choreographers, founded a company to tell the stories of black people through movement. Since then the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has become one of the most popular modern ensembles in the world. The company's artistic director, Robert Battle, talks to Kirsty Lang about its history, ambition and that constant difficulty – how to get boys to dance. Conductor, composer and pianist Ryan Wigglesworth is playing all three roles in this year's BBC Proms. He discusses the challenge, and considers how his early experience as a chorister influenced his future compositions.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald

Proceedings in the House of Commons yesterday drew an unusual degree of public attention, with set pieces from Boris Johnson (interrupted by the defection of one of his MPs, crossing the floor to join the Liberal Democrats), the Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg lying supine, humour from Kenneth Clarke and a range of colourful interventions from Mr Speaker, it represents one of the most colourful and dramatic days in the Commons in recent memory. Newsnight Culture Correspondent Stephen Smith and Lyn Gardner of The Stage newspaper join Samira to bring an artistically critical eye to the parliamentary theatrics. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, Rebecca Pow, has put temporary export bars on five works of art up for sale this summer, including paintings by Turner and Monet, and a Victorian crab sculpture. We speak to the Minister about why they don’t want these works sold abroad and ask what the Conservatives are doing to protect the arts amid the Brexit high drama in the House of Commons this week.Chrissie Hynde, singer with rock band The Pretenders, on her new album which is all covers of songs by people such as Hoagy Carmichael, John Coltrane and Charlie Mingus. But, she insists to Samira, Valve Bone Woe is not a jazz album.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

William Feaver discusses the first part of his comprehensive biography of the great British figurative painter Lucian Freud, who died in 2011. Feaver first got to know the mercurial artist in 1973 and had regular conversations and meetings with him over the decades. The former Observer art critic's two detailed biographies – Youth and Fame - are the result of 20 years’ work.Earlier today the shortlist for the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced. Critics Arifa Akbar and Toby Lichtig give their verdict on the chosen few.Arts Council England recently published a report about if and how the arts and cultural offer within a place can attract and retain individuals and businesses and help to shape its identity. We speak to Laura Dyer, Deputy Chief Executive, Places & Engagement at Arts Council England about what the arts actually contribute to a place. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Oliver Jones

BBC One’s big autumn thriller serial is The Capture. Telling the story of former soldier Shaun Emery, whose conviction for an unlawful killing during active duty is overturned because of flawed video evidence. The drama delves into the increasing reality of misinformation and fake news. Scriptwriter Ben Chanan talks to Samira about the manipulation of video evidence in our criminal justice system. Venice Film Festival is well underway where the films coming to our screens in the autumn compete for the coveted Golden Lion Prize. Critic Jason Solomon fills us in on the highlights including Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of the Joker, the new Polanski film and Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver’s depiction of a divorce in Marriage Story. A Freedom of Information request placed by the Daily Mail has revealed that in 2016 the Royal Mint was considering honouring children’s author Enid Blyton with a commemorative 50 pence coin, but that officials withdrew the author from consideration because "she [Blyton] is known to have been a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer". Literary historian John Mullan and columnist Harriet Hall discuss the resulting furore and consider the ethics of viewing the culture of the past through a contemporary lens. Presenter : Samira Ahmed Producer : Dymphna Flynn

Sir Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children has twice been named the Best of Booker. Now his new novel Quichotte, a modern take on Cervantes' classic that is both a satire of modern politics and a consideration of familial love, has been Booker longlisted. Rushdie discusses writing about the new politics, family, and keeping up with popular culture.Director Joanna Hogg discusses her new film The Souvenir, in which a young film student in the early '80s becomes romantically involved with a complicated and untrustworthy man. Honor Swinton Byrne plays the student, with her real-life mother Tilda Swinton playing the matriarch of the well-to-do family.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jerome Weatherald

Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave star in Mrs Lowry and Son, a new film about the Pendlebury painter LS Lowry and his mother. Critic Sarah Crompton reviews.Singer and electric guitarist Anna Calvi has written the music for the latest series of the gangster TV drama Peaky Blinders. Along with the director Anthony Byrne she talks about how they created the soundtrack. Anna also discusses her latest album Hunter and performs a track from it live in the studio.The poet Stephen Sexton’s first collection takes its title from a pastoral poem by Sir Walter Raleigh, written in 1600. But If All the World and Love Were Young is a very contemporary pastoral as the idyllic landscape it celebrates is that of the Super Mario Nintendo video game. It is, too, a moving elegy to the poet’s mother. Stephen Sexton tells Front Row how the real world of his childhood and that of Mario the Italian plumber, complete with dinosaurs and mushrooms, come together in his poems. Presenter: Tom Shakespeare Producer: Hannah Robins

Playwright James Graham, author of Brexit: the Uncivil War and The Coalition, talks about making drama out of a constitutional crisis and how soon is too soon to begin fictionalising current political events. Jeff Pope’s writing credits include a number of high-profile factual TV dramas for ITV including Pierrepoint and See No Evil: The Moors Murders, as well as Philomena and Stan & Ollie for the big screen. The writer and producer discusses his new ITV drama series A Confession, starring Martin Freeman, about the murder of 22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan in Swindon in 2011.James and Jeff also discuss the ups and downs of television drama trailers.Fifty years after British troops arrived on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry in an attempt to quell disorder which seemed to be taking Northern Ireland towards civil war, writers Sinead Gleeson and Glenn Patterson discuss the way in which The Troubles have been presented across the arts, especially in literature and on film

Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, about slaves escaping from the southern states and seeking sanctuary in the north. The author discusses his new novel The Nickel Boys, which follows the misfortunes of a young black boy, Elwood Curtis, who finds himself being sent to the brutal Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school where the threat of severe - and sometimes fatal - punishment beatings is a constant fear for all the pupils. Prior to Thursday’s Prom featuring the sacred music of Duke Ellington, Samira talks to two of the performers in the concert, singer Carleen Anderson and conductor Peter Edwards, about Ellington’s blend of big-band, gospel and orchestral music in this evening of dance, song and jazz with a Christian theme. Carnival Row is a new fantasy from Amazon Prime which debuts on Friday. Ekow Eshun reviews the series described "as a complex and dark world where Game of Thrones meets Ripper Street." Starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, and directed by Jon Amiel, it features a human detective and a fairy rekindling a dangerous affair in a Victorian fantasy world; the city's uneasy peace collapses when a string of murders reveals an unimaginable monster. We end the programme with a tribute to Sheila Steafel, whose death was announced yesterday. A much loved comic performer and versatile actress whose career spanned six decades, Steafel appeared in films including Quatermass and the Pit (1967), was a regular performer in the long-running music hall style variety programme The Good Old Days and the first woman to join the all-male cast of the Radio 4 satirical show Week Ending.

A Front Row for Bank Holiday Monday: Kirsty Lang interviews the writer Edna O'Brien about her new novel, her first novel and her career in between, spanning almost sixty years, 25 works of fiction, as well as biographies and plays. Radio 4 is now broadcasting an adaptation of The Country Girls trilogy. Edna O'Brien's stories of Kate and Baba as they leave rural Ireland for Dublin then London, find work, meet men, and have sex caused scandal when they were published in the 1960s. Her books were banned (six times) and publicly burned in her hometown. Now these are considered among the most significant novels of the last century, important for their exploration of the experience of women and for furthering the cause of their liberation. Times change and now, O'Brien tells Kirsty Lang, she has received, from the president, Ireland's highest cultural accolade. Edna O'Brien is in her late eighties yet research for her new novel, Girl, took her to difficult, dangerous territory in Nigeria. Reading a report about a girl found with her baby wandering in the forest without food, she felt compelled to write their story so set out to find out about the schoolgirls abducted by Bokko Haram. She tells Kirsty how she visited camps, interviewed young women who had been kidnapped, raped and enslaved. She distilled this material into the story of Maryam. It is harrowing, redemptive and beautifully written.Edna O'Brien speaks about the relationship between her own life and her writing and how she has found the courage to move beyond the autobiographical in her fiction. Her ambition, she tells Kirsty, is to carry on, to write one more novel. But that, too, will involve a perilous journey.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Reader: Shalifa Kaddu Producer: Julian May

Screenwriter Andrew Davies talks to Samira Ahmed about his latest period drama, Sanditon, based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen. They discuss what attracted him to the seaside tale, how lead character Charlotte Heywood is a very different kind of Austen heroine, and why he felt it was important to raise the issue of racial prejudice in Regency Britain.Writer and reviewer Vic James looks at Netflix’s reboot of the 1982 Jim Henson puppet film The Dark Crystal which is accompanied by an exhibition of sets, puppets and props at the BFI on London's South Bank. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a ten-part prequel to the original film charting the political awakening of a race of elf-like creatures who begin to question the regime of their oppressive rulers.It's 550 years since Europe’s most trenchant political writer Niccolo Machiavelli was born. In The Prince he laid bare the machinations of the Florentine Republic. Novelist Sarah Dunant, whose last novel In The Name of the Family features Machiavelli, and John Bowen, Professor of Literature at York University, discuss the ways in which writers have explored the relationship between citizen and state in times of political turmoil.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Harry Parker