Front Row

The CILIP Carnegie Medal, and CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal are the most prestigious prizes for literature for children and young people. Both winners were announced today and are on tonight's Front Row. Elizabeth Acevedo’s Carnegie-winning novel tells the story of Xiomara, a Dominican-American girl growing up modern-day Harlem. Elizabeth explains why she chose to unfold the story of The Poet X in a long series of short lyrics. The Lost Words, for which illustrator Jackie Morris has won the Kate Greenaway Medal, is also a poetry book. It's her collaboration with writer Robert Macfarlane, inspired by the words left out of a new children’s dictionary, words such as bluebell and acorn. Jackie tells Stig how she approached illustrating the poems with three very different images, but of the same subject.As we head into the final weeks of this year’s prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year competition, Front Row begins looking at the five shortlisted institutions vying for the top prize of £100,000. Today it’s the turn of Nottingham Contemporary, and its director Sam Thorne joins Stig to explain why he believes Nottingham Contemporary would be a worthy winner.It was the success of the Yorkshire-born sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth that contributed to the UK’s largest county becoming the pre-eminent destination for sculpture. As the opening of the inaugural Yorkshire Sculpture International draws near, Andrew Bonacina, chief curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, and Jan Dalley, arts editor of the Financial Times, discuss how sculpture has evolved since the heyday of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Joseph O’Connor, whose book Star of the Sea was critically acclaimed and a global bestseller, talks about his latest novel Shadowplay. Taking the well-known presumption that Bram Stoker based the character of Dracula on the Shakespearean actor Henry Irving, Shadowplay is about the close collaboration and intense friendship between Stoker, Irving and his famous acting partner Ellen Terry. Portuguese-born artist Dame Paula Rego's work across paint, pastel, etching and fabric is often based on children's folktales. But the animals and people that populate her work convey tough political messages. A new exhibition at the recently extended and remodelled MK gallery in Milton Keynes offers an edited retrospective of the 84 year old artist's substantial body of work. Art critic Louisa Buck reviews. Pauline Kael was a film critic renowned for her personal writing style that combined scathing wit and passion. In the week she would have turned 100, film critics Tim Robey and Gavia Baker Whitelaw consider her work, what makes a perfect review and the role of the critic in the digital age. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman

Tracy K. Smith has just completed her time as the Poet Laureate of the United States and published Eternity, her selected poems. For Front Row she reads poems reflecting the variety of her work: the story of a clandestine border crossing; a poem linking David Bowie with the cosmos; another that she did not write so much as discover, a letter to Abraham Lincoln from a mother appealing for the release of her son from the Union army in the American Civil War. Political commentator Helen Lewis joins Front Row to look at what the Tory leadership election might mean for the arts, considering the arts track records of the remaining candidates and exploring the value of a cultural hinterland in modern politics. Today sees the release of new albums by Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. Kate Mossman reviews Western Stars and Madame X, as well as the posthumous new album Tim by Avicii.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Sarah Johnson

Rob Lowe, the Brat Pack Hollywood heart-throb who went on to star in hit American series such as The West Wing and Parks and Recreation, talks to Kirsty Lang about his surprising role as a Chief Constable in Boston, Lincolnshire in ITV’s darkly comic new series Wild Bill. Live in Moscow Maria Kornienko outlines the repression and harassment faced by artists making work publicly critical of Vladimir Putin's regime, and the moves they are taking to counter this.Keith Haring was also an artist and activist, in 1980s New York. He was prolific and commercially successful with his signature black line images of crawling babies, dancing figures, and barking dogs. A friend of Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, he used art to make political points about apartheid, nuclear weapons and the AIDS crisis. The first major retrospective of his work in the UK is about to open at Tate Liverpool. Co-curator Tamar Hemmes, and artist Samantha McEwen who became friends with Haring at art school in New York, discuss the art, life, and legacy of the pop artist.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Julian May

Bill Nighy on his latest film Sometimes Always Never, about a family torn apart and then reunited by a love of the board game Scrabble, written by Frank Cotterell Boyce and directed by Carl Hunter. The unreliable narrator is a much loved staple of fiction but it's now a key ingredient in videogame storytelling. Ragnar Tornquist, author of the mystery game Draugen, which features an unreliable narrator, discusses with games writer Jordan Erica Webber.Stig, who has always been intimidated by classical ballet, decides to confront his fear and learn how to watch ballet. He talks to English National Ballet artistic director Tamara Rojo and goes to watch their new production of Cinderella at the Royal Albert Hall. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei has designed a flag to be flown across the UK from 24th June to mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He has also just screened his latest documentary The Rest, which focuses on the plight of individual refugees in 23 countries. John Wilson visits the artist in his Berlin studio to discuss art, activism and his current relationship with China.Yacht Rock might be a term you’ve never heard of but you’ll definitely know the bands – Toto, Joni Mitchell, The Doobie Brothers and The Pointer Sisters. Katie Puckrik explains what characterises the genre and what it says about America in the 70s and 80s ahead of her two-part documentary broadcast on BBC Four.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins

Gwendoline Christie, famous for playing warrior Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones, discusses her new stage role as the fairy queen Titania in Nicholas Hytner’s immersive new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Works by Steve McQueen, Lubaina Himid and Yinka Shonibare feature in a new exhibition Get Up, Stand Up Now at Somerset House in London, which explores the impact of 50 years of Black creativity in Britain and beyond. Curator and artist Zak Ové and artist Zoe Bedeaux discuss the themes and goals of the exhibition.The Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Kara Jackson, and Aisling Fahey, who was London’s Youth Poet Laureate in 2014, discuss what they’ve discovered about each others' cities and the poetry being created there, on an exchange between young Poets Laureate in Chicago and London. Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald

Oscar winner Julianne Moore talks about her starring role in Gloria Bell, Chilean director Sebastian Lelio's English-language remake of his celebrated 2013 film Gloria, about a divorcee looking for love on the dance floors of Los Angeles. The much anticipated return of two TV series: Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City and the second season of Big Little Lies, in which Meryl Streep joins Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. Angie Errigo reviews.Jools Holland pays tribute to Dr John, the New Orleans-born singer and pianist whose Grammy award winning music combined blues, pop, jazz, boogie woogie and rock and roll.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser

Dulcet-toned comedian Matt Berry joins us to discuss two new projects: a BBC TV spin-off of the 2014 cult mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows in which Berry plays a jaded 700 year-old vampire, and his new role as Detective Inspector Rabbit, a hardened Victorian booze-hound, in Channel 4’s period comedy Year of the Rabbit. Men make a mess of the world with the First World War. Afterwards a female messiah emerges to lead humanity to salvation, through the work of a community of women in Bedford. That is the milieu of Claire McGlasson’s first book, The Rapture. Her work of fiction, though, is based on fact: the real-life Panacea Society. Claire tells Front Row about her strange love story psychological thriller escape novel. Yesterday the National Trust announced they had bought Brackenthwaite Hows, the Lake District viewpoint that inspired JMW Turner’s watercolour Crummock Water, Looking Towards Buttermere. The site, which is 77 acres and includes a stone viewing-platform, is the first bought by charity specifically for its panorama. The National Trust’s General Manager for North Lakes Tom Burditt explains the site’s appeal. As Vasily Grossman’s 1952 Russian novel Stalingrad is published for the first time in English, critic Boyd Hilton argues that it is one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century: an epic comparable to Tolstoy’s War and Peace.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kate Bullivant

Emma Thompson discusses her role as a TV chat show host in her new film Late Night and, as she embarks on her first stand-up show, talks about politics, performing , and how much things have changed for women in comedy.As the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 is announced, we talk to her live from the ceremony. The books are: It’s The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker; My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite; Milkman by Anna Burns; Ordinary People by Diana Evans; An American Marriage by Tayari Jones; Circe by Madeline Miller.Anthony McCarten's screenplay credits include Bohemian Rhapsody, The Theory of Everything and Darkest Hour. He is also a prolific novelist and playwright. McCarten discusses his new play, The Pope, about Pope Benedict XVI who in 2013 became the first pontiff in seven centuries to resign. The title role of The Pope has tempted Anton Lesser (Thomas More in Wolf Hall) back to the UK stage for the first time in a decade. This morning in Portsmouth, as part of the D-Day commemoration, David Haig recreated a scene from his 2014 play, Pressure. In this true story, James Stagg, the meteorologist, persuades General Eisenhower to delay the invasion by a day because he forecasts that the storm raging in the Channel will, briefly, abate. We hear from the actor as he prepared to stage his play for the first time.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May