Front Row

Adeel Akhtar, who stars in the new BBC1 series Back to Life, talks about his acting career – from Four Lions to becoming the first non-white male to win a Best Actor BAFTA for the TV drama Murdered By My Father.Doris Hatt (1890-1969) was a painter, feminist, socialist and pioneer of British Modernism. Her work spanning five decades is the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton near where she lived. Curator Sarah Cox and historian Denys Wilcox discuss the life and art of Doris Hatt. It's fifty years since Joe Orton's play What the Butler Saw shocked audiences with its black comedy. Orton cultivated his image as a doyen of 60s counterculture but new research into his record collection reveals a surprising taste in music. Emma Parker has been listening to Orton's LPs. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Timothy Prosser

We consider the connection between the public house and the arts. Why do pubs make such great settings, provide so much inspiration and serve as great venues for the arts? Al Murray ponders the longevity of his pub landlord and what this character allows him to explore about Britishness, as literary journalist Suzi Feay considers the representation of pubs in books and TV. Musician Eliza Carthy remembers her first ever public performance in The Bay Hotel in Robin Hood’s Bay, where she was a regular at the folk club there, while crime novelist David Mark tells us how he finds inspiration from the host of intriguing characters he meets down his local, the Samson Inn in Gilsland, Cumbria.But, as pubs continue to be in decline – 25% of pubs have closed since 2001 - we consider how some hostelries are reinventing themselves as cultural destinations. Dawn Badland runs The Inn Crowd, a project which supports rural pubs to host spoken word performances, and Adam Lacey is manager of The Old Joint Stock, a Birmingham pub with its own 100 seater theatre. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins

Liz Pichon on her creation Tom Gates, the hugely popular series of books for young readers now on stage.Zanib Mian is the author of a new book about a Muslim family, Planet Omar - Accidental Trouble Magnet. Last year a report found that only 1% of children's books featured a main protagonist of colour. Alongside commentator and blogger Darren Chetty she considers whether that picture is changing - and whether any change will last.One in three books sold is aimed at children. Is this a golden age for children's books? Celebrity authors such as David Walliams are clocking up huge sales but what is the range and quality of all the books on offer? Children's book experts Dawn Finch and Imogen Russell Williams discuss.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Sarah Johnson

The saxophonist Jess Gillam was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician award in 2016 and went on to take the Last Night of the Proms by storm last year. She plays live in the studio and talks to Samira about her beginnings in a carnival band in Cumbria and how she wants to expand the repertoire for sax players in classical music. The influential graphic designer Abram Games, who created The Festival of Britain 1951 poster and the BBC’s first television logo, first came to prominence as the 'Official War Poster Artist' during the Second World War. Over 100 of the posters he created while employed by the War Office are on display at new exhibition at the National Army Museum in London. Curator Emma Mawdsley discusses the significance of the artist and his work. Tayari Jones’s novel, An American Marriage, tells the story of a young African-American couple whose lives are torn apart when the husband is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Tayari Jones discusses the inspiration for her the book which has been championed by Oprah and picked by Barack Obama as one of his favourite summer reads of 2018.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Harry Parker

Two female icons of the music industry release new works today. Beyonce’s new film Homecoming is released alongside a surprise new live album. The film focuses on her historic 2018 Coachella performance in which she celebrated America's historically black colleges and universities, black culture and black female empowerment. Also today, Madonna releases a new single ahead of her upcoming album and has revealed a new alter-ego - Madame X. Academic Emma Dabiri and broadcaster Katie Puckrik discuss Beyonce’s cultural significance and Madonna’s latest reinvention.Choreographer Aletta Collins talks about her work for the Manchester Royal Exchange’s new production of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s classic, West Side Story. She reveals why they chose to change Jerome Robbins's famous choreography, the first time a professional production has done so.Ahead of a Front Row bank holiday special on children’s literature, two award-winning writers of children’s fiction, Katherine Rundell and Bali Rai, discuss the significance of reading between the ages of 7 and 12.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Ben Mitchell

As France vows to restore Notre-Dame de Paris after last night's devastating fire, we discuss the artistic, musical and cultural significance of this great Cathedral. With music historian Mark Everist, art critic Waldemar Januszczak and French literature academic Eve Morisi.Roger McGough, one of Britain’s most widely read poets, talks about his latest anthology, joinedupwriting, in which he explores themes of childhood, ageing and politics. He reflects on the appeal of different forms of verse and how the critical reaction to his work sits with its popular appeal. Lucy Kirkwood's hit 2013 play Chimerica comes to Channel 4 as a new TV drama series, updated to the Trump era. Sarah Crompton reviews. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser

Andrew Scott, who played the priest in the recent run of the TV comedy drama Fleabag, talks about the sexual chemistry between him and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, how he approached “that wedding speech” in the series finale and his new film Steel Country, in which Scott plays a garbage collector in Pennsylvania who believes a boy has been murdered. Dame Maggie Smith returns to the stage after 12 years to deliver a one hour forty minute monologue as Joseph Goebbels' secretary Brunhilde Pomsel, her words based on an interview the 103 year old former Nazi gave recently to filmmakers. Adapted by Christopher Hampton, A German Life is at London’s Bridge Theatre. Susannah Clapp reviews. Pioneering colour photographer William Eggleston is about to celebrate his 80th birthday, and a new exhibition of some of his groundbreaking work has just opened in London. A series of images of rusted cars, industrial decline and the mundane details of everyday life in 1970s California are typical of his work, featuring the vivid saturated colours he’s most associated with, often bathed in the glow of the early evening sun. In a rare interview, the influential photographer reflects on a life behind the lens. Presenter : John Wilson Producer : Dymphna Flynn

Seamus Heaney died in 2013. Had he lived tomorrow would have been his 80th birthday. Heaney was a rare writer - a poet both beloved and respected. He was an eloquent advocate for the place and craft of poetry. Who would have thought Beowulf could be a modern day bestseller? Seamus Heaney's translation was. He made a profound social impact, too, and at the time of the Good Friday Agreement President Clinton memorably quoted his lines from 'The Cure at Troy' '...once in a lifetime/ The longed-for tidal wave/ Of justice can rise up,/ And hope and history rhyme.' Front Row this evening is devoted to Heaney's work, life and continuing inspiration. Kirsty Lang talks to Leontia Flynn, one of the leading younger writers of the North of Ireland; to his friend the poet Bernard O'Donoghue, who is working on a new edition of Heaney's Collected Poems with Rosie Lavan - from whom we hear, too. The composer Mohammed Fairouz explains how he set some of the poems in his piece for choir and viola, 'In a New Light', which will have its European premier performance tomorrow in Bellaghy, where Heaney was born, and is buried.And, from the BBC's archive, there is the wonderful voice of the poet himself, introducing and reading his work.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Julian May

British painter Jenny Saville, the most expensive living female artist in the world, discusses her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt's masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles. Cellist Laura van der Heijden, who won the BBC Young Musician competition when she was 15, plays live and discusses her debut album of Russian music called 1948, which last night won the BBC Music Magazine's Newcomer of the Year Award. Plus the art of working to a deadline, with authors Robert McCrum and Sophie Heawood and Teresa Amabile from Harvard Business School.Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jack Soper

The contemporary classical composer Gavin Bryars talks about the latest incarnation of his acclaimed 1971 work, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet – a 12-hour overnight rendition at Tate Modern in London. The piece is based on a fragment of tape of a homeless man singing, and this performance combines the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Bryars’s own ensemble, the Southbank Sinfonia, and the participation of several homeless people.Gavin Bryars also contributes his thoughts to the question: can opera singers sing pop and vice versa? What are the main differences between a trained bel canto voice and what some would call the more natural approach taken by folk, jazz or rock singers? Music critic Anna Picard and Christopher Purves, opera singer and former member of jazz vocal group Harvey and the Wallbangers, discuss.Hailed by Zadie Smith as 'uncommonly poised and truly beautiful', the debut novelist Isabella Hammad discusses her 500-page epic The Parisian, set around the Palestinian struggle for independence in the early twentieth century. Presenter Janina Ramirez Producer Jerome Weatherald