Front Row

Melvin Burgess, who's been dubbed the Godfather of Young Adult fiction, talks about his new book The Lost Witch about a teenage girl who discovers she has magical powers.A record-breaking 3.6 million people watched this year's Love Island final. That's more viewers than were watching BBC One, BBC Two or ITV in the same time slot. Journalist and critic Alix O'Neill discusses the show's cultural impact. In Thursday's Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall Milŏs Karadaglíc will give the world premiere of Ink Dark Moon, a guitar concerto written for him by Joby Talbot. Milŏs plays live in the Front Row studio, and the pair discuss the relationship between musician and composer. They consider, too, the range of a modern musician's work: Milŏs has recorded classics beyond the classical repertoire - an album of tunes by The Beatles - and Joby writes ballet music, has composed an opera and arranged music for Tom Jones and The Divine Comedy.Brian Friel's Translations is enjoying a sell-out run at the National Theatre; when it comes to an end Aristocrats will open at the Donmar Theatre. Philadelphia Here I Come!, Faith Healer, Dancing at Lughnasa - there is almost always a Friel play on somewhere. All of them are set in Ballybeg (which means 'small town' in Irish) and most are family dramas. Roy Foster, Professor of Irish history and literature, teases out why Friel's domestic dramas of Donegal hold such universal appeal. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Jack Soper.Main image: Love Island. Credit: ITV

Chris Dunkley, for many years television critic of the Financial Times, discusses the impact and ongoing popularity of Dad's Army, which was first broadcast fifty years ago this week.Music streaming platforms have reported a rise people aged under 30 listening to jazz, with the genre's new sound also being produced by musicians in that age group. Music journalist Teju Adeleye and jazz musician Emma-Jean Thackray discuss why young people are responding to jazz now more than ever, if jazz was less accessible in the past and how has the sound evolved. The Marvellous Mechanical Museum, a new exhibition at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, looks back to the historical automata (or animated mechanical objects) museums of the 18th centuries and re-imagines them for the modern day. The exhibition includes 57 works, historical pieces dating back to 1625 and new commissions by contemporary artists, all of which explore the themes of life, creation, imitation, and our fraught relationship with technology.After WOMAD festival organisers complain about foreign artists being deterred by the "humiliating and difficult" process of applying for a British visa, David Jones, director of Serious, a company which produces over 800 events nationwide with over 2,600 artists and a broadcast reach of 44 million, discusses what foreign artists have to do when applying for a British visa, what has changed in the last couple of years and what might be done about it.Presenter : Samira Ahmed Producer : Dymphna FlynnMain image: Dad's Army Christmas Special 1975. Credit: BBC(Clive Dunn as L-Cpl Jack Jones, Ian Lavender as Pvt. Frank Pike, Arthur Lowe as Captain George Mainwaring, John Le Mesurier as Sgt. Arthur Wilson, John Laurie as Pvt. James Frazer and Arnold Ridley as Pvt. Charles Godfrey.)

New film Iceman was inspired by Ötzi, the prehistoric man who was found perfectly preserved in the ice in the Ötztal Alps in 1991. Dubbed "The European Revenant" the characters speak in an extinct language which isn't subtitled. We review with film critic Hannah McGill and survival enthusiast and Costa Children's Book Award winner Katherine Rundell.A recent Parliamentary meeting addressed the issue of mental health and the performing arts as statistics show that there is a higher than average risk of suicide in those professions. How should employers respond? MP Luciana Berger who chaired the meeting and Louise Grainger of Equity talk to Front Row.Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings is one of the world's most loved pieces of classical music, but Barber also wrote many other works, including the opera Vanessa, which is being revived at Glyndebourne sixty years after it was hailed as the first great American opera. Kirsty speaks to director Keith Warner.Main image: Juergen Vogel in Iceman. Copyright: Martin Rattini for Port Au Prince Film Kultur Produktion and Echofilm.

Fran Ross was a gifted African-American author who died in 1985. Her novel Oreo, written at the height of the Black Power movement, tells the rollercoaster story of a black-Jewish girl's quest for her white father using Greek myth, slang, Yiddish, puns, made-up words and Ross' own extraordinary imagination. The novel sank without much trace but Man Booker-Prizewinning author Marlon James, who's written the introduction to a new edition, claims its time is now. As the Mercury Prize shortlist is revealed, music journalist Laura Snapes discusses what surprised and delighted her, and what disappointed.Museums and galleries are under increasing pressure to rethink their displays and collections acquired under colonial rule. What does change look like for these institutions and how will it affect the visitor experience? University College London curator Subhadra Das, anthropologist Dr Charlotte Joy and art historian and independent tour guide Alice Procter discuss what exactly decolonising a museum means and what the process entails.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Rebecca ArmstrongMain image: Marlon James. Credit: Jeffrey Skemp.

Andre Holland is perhaps best known for his role as Kevin, the chef (and love interest) in the Oscar winning film Moonlight. Now he is in Britain playing Othello at Shakespeare's Globe in a production also featuring Mark Rylance as Iago. He tells Kirsty Lang how, unlikely as it might seem, his southern American accent fits the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare's lines perfectly. The arrival of artists in rundown areas invariably signals that gentrification is on its way with those very same artists, as well as other locals, eventually getting priced out. London is where this process seems to happen fastest but it's also in London that new housing models for artists are being explored. Hadrian Garrad, director of Create London, and Marcel Baettig, artist, founder and chief executive officer of Bow Arts, discuss the work involved in providing affordable homes for artists.Women Invent the Future is a new anthology of science fiction short stories by and about women. One of the authors, Molly Flatt, discusses re-imagining the future from a feminist perspective with Christina Dalcher, whose new novel Vox is set in a dystopian world where women's voices are strictly limited. And how on this day, 25th July, in 1965 music changed. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Julian May.

Playwright Patrick Marber and actress Indira Varma on Exit the King, Marber's adaptation for the National Theatre of the Romanian absurdist drama by Eugène Ionesco, in which Varma stars as Queen Marguerite alongside Rhys Ifans' King, about to make his final exit. John talks to Nick Drnaso, the first graphic novelist to be longlisted for the Man Booker prize, and critics Arifa Akbar and Toby Lichtig comment on the longlist as a whole. For the full list see below. Poet Tony Walsh, whose poem This is the Place poignantly captured the feelings of the public following last year's Manchester Arena bomb, has written a new poem for the Imperial War Museum North in Salford, part of a season marking the centenary of the final year of the First World War.The 2018 Man Booker LonglistBelinda Bauer (UK) Snap (Bantam Press) Anna Burns (UK) Milkman (Faber & Faber) Nick Drnaso (USA) Sabrina (Granta Books) Esi Edugyan (Canada) Washington Black (Serpent's Tail) Guy Gunaratne (UK) In Our Mad And Furious City (Tinder Press) Daisy Johnson (UK) Everything Under (Jonathan Cape) Rachel Kushner (USA) The Mars Room (Jonathan Cape) Sophie Mackintosh (UK) The Water Cure (Hamish Hamilton) Michael Ondaatje (Canada) Warlight (Jonathan Cape) Richard Powers (USA) The Overstory (Willian Heinemann) Robin Robertson (UK) The Long Take (Picador) Sally Rooney (Ireland) Normal People (Faber & Faber) Donal Ryan (Ireland) From A Low And Quiet Sea (Doubleday Ireland)Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy Prosser.

John Hurt as Artist is a new exhibition in Norfolk which reveals a less well-known side of the actor who died last year. Sir John Hurt's widow Anwen discusses the mainly figurative paintings and drawings which mostly relate to the actor's off-screen life, but also include self-portraits of him in prosthetic make-up for his role as John Merrick in The Elephant Man from 1980. Ian McKellen is playing King Lear in the West End and recently Anthony Hopkins played him on television. Accompanying Lear on his bleak and tragic journey is his Fool. Karl Johnson, Fool to Anthony Hopkins' Lear, and Lloyd Hutchinson, McKellen's Fool, discuss the way they approach this enigmatic figure.Recently we've been offering inspiration on holiday reading to help you choose which books to cram into your suitcase. Today New Statesman book critic Sarah Ditum concludes the series with a set of recommendations for people holidaying closer to home, in the UK and Ireland. Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald.Main image: Sir John Hurt printmaking. Credit: Andi Sapey

American footballer-turned-opera star Morris Robinson is returning to the Proms this weekend to perform as the bass soloist in Mahler's epic Symphony of a Thousand. He sings live and discusses his extraordinary move from the football stadium to the opera house. Sitting around of an evening with friends, a bottle of wine, discussing a good book - that's the cosy image of the Book Club. But the Richard and Judy Book Club is now exclusive to WH Smith, Fern Britten's is partnered with Tesco and Harper Collins, and there's even one called the Specsavers Zoe Ball Book Club. Amanda Ross, the television producer who invented the Richard and Judy Book Club, Guardian books correspondent Danuta Kean and journalist and book editor Sarah Shaffi discuss whether the cosy is turning commercial.Mission Impossible returns to our screens next week with a sixth instalment of the classic franchise. For 22 years the series has captivated audiences with its winning combination of spy games, double - and triple - crosses, hair-raising stunts and stunning set pieces in locations all around the world. Real life action-figure Tom Cruise is back, and at 56 years old is still hurling himself off buildings and dangling out of airborne helicopters. But the real mission (should they choose to accept it...) is for the film makers; keeping the film fresh. Film writer Hannah Woodhead has seen Mission Impossible - Fallout and gives her verdict.Presenter: Gaylene Gould Producer: Julian May.

The Lehman Trilogy at the National Theatre is an epic new play directed by Sam Mendes, which tells the story of the American banking dynasty from its humble beginnings in Alabama to its bankruptcy in the 2008 crash. John talks to Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles, who play the founding Lehman brothers and many other characters too. As the 100th Now That's What I Call Music album is released, John discusses the extraordinary success of the hits compilation series and examines its cultural impact with Now curator Pete Duckworth and music critic Katie Puckrik. Poet Zaffar Kunial's father is Kashmiri, his mother's ancestors lived in Orkney, and he was born in Birmingham, and, as he tells John Wilson, his poetry bridges these worlds and their languages. Zaffar's debut collection Us is published by Faber & Faber, which he describes as like being signed by Manchester United. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Timothy ProsserMain image - (L-R) Simon Russell Beale, Ben Miles and Adam Godley in The Lehman Trilogy. Photo by Mark Douet.

Alan Bennett's new play Allelujah! is set in the geriatric ward of a Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure. It follows a singing, dancing choir of quick-witted elderly patients whose problem is not that they are ill so much as they have nowhere to go. Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner discuss working together and how Alan manages to take on big themes - English identity, education and now the NHS - without being, he says, a "political" writer. Blenheim Palace is housing a major exhibition of the work of the radical French artist Yves Klein, famous for his ultramarine blue paintings and sculptures. Louisa Buck reviews. A new survey into ethnic diversity in children's literature has found that only 4% of all the children's books published in the UK last year featured a black, Asian or minority ethnic character. Farrah Serroukh, who led the Reflecting Realities survey, and writer Patrice Lawrence discuss the findings.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hannah Robins.