Front Row

Playwright David Edgar is 70 this year. He was 20 in 1968 coming of age, in Bob Dylan's words, when 'there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air'. In a revolutionary move for him David Edgar is taking to the stage himself in the latest of his many theatre pieces. In his one man show, Trying it On, Edgar reflects on the political eruptions of his lifetime and his engagement with them. Why did some revolutionaries embrace Thatcherism? What has his generation achieved? Viv Albertine, author of two bestselling autobiographies, and former member of The Slits, joins literary historian Rebecca Stott, whose ground breaking memoir The Days of Rain won the Costa Biography prize this year, to discuss women's non fiction writing. Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One at Tate Britain marks 100 years since the end of the war, and reflects on how artists responded to the physical and psychological effects of the fighting. Co-curators Emma Chambers and Rachel Smyth consider how art changed from the middle of the war in 1916 to the 1920s and early '30s.TV Critic Emma Bullimore on the British Soap Awards which took place on Saturday. Is there a greater appetite for dark themes?

Orlando Bloom swaps Middle-earth and the high seas for a Texas trailer park in his first West End production in over a decade, Killer Joe. He talks about playing Joe Cooper, a policeman turned assassin, employed by a family at their wits end to kill their mother for a cut of her life insurance money.Is death, the 'last taboo', finally being broken down by the arts? We consider the recent glut of writing and performance about grief with Cariad Lloyd, whose podcast Griefcast, in which she talks to fellow comedians about losing someone, swept the board at the recent British Podcast Awards. Stig is also joined by writer Kim Sherwood whose debut novel Testament is about family secrets and mourning the death of a grandfather. It has been a winning week for rap as Kenrick Lamar, Stormzy and Dave are all awarded prestigious song-writing prizes. We ask whether it's about the music, or the message, the poetry or the politics? In Antony Gormley's new exhibition, Subject, at the recently redesigned Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, the artist continues his investigations into the relationships between the human body and space. Critic Richard Cork gives his response to the works, some of which are new, and others not previously exhibited in the UK.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May.

The £23m Weston Tower and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries at Westminster Abbey will be opening to the public next month. Architecture critic and historian Tom Dyckhoff gives his response to these two new additions to the abbey church, the site of all royal coronations since William the Conqueror in 1066.Why are so many British writers setting their stories in the countryside at the moment? From the second series of the BBC comedy drama This Country, to plays including Barney Norris's Nightfall, Joe White's Mayfly and Simon Longman's Gundog, and novels such as Jon McGregor's Reservoir 13 and Ali Smith's Autumn, writers are turning to a new vision of 'the pastoral' for inspiration. Writer Barney Norris joins novelist Sarah Hall - who was born and raised in the Lake District - to consider whether writing about the countryside has become part of the zeitgeist again and why.Gillian Allnutt's career as a poet stretches over four decades. In 2016 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. The poet discusses and reads from her new collection, Wake.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen star in the rom-com Book Club which makes its older cast the heart of the story. But does it make good use of such stellar talent? Angie Errigo reviews. Singer-song writer Angélique Kidjo performs live from her new album Remain In Light, which re-imagines track-by-track the original post-punk band Talking Heads' landmark album. She talks about making the album and why she wants to take Rock back to Africa.As Roseanne, the top rated American sitcom, is dramatically axed following offensive tweets sent by it's star Roseanne Barr, John discusses the fallout with Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever. Indian novelist Anuradha Roy discusses her new novel All the Lives We Never Lived, about one woman's escape from a stultifying marriage set against India's fight for independence and a world war. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

French director François Ozon discusses his latest film L'Amant Double, a psychological thriller in which a young woman falls in love with her secretive psychiatrist.Patrick Heron, the British artist and critic is celebrated in a new retrospective exhibition at Tate St Ives. Heron played a major role in the development of British post-war abstract art exploring the Cornish light and colour in the landscape surrounding his home. Curator Andrew Wilson and artist Susanna Heron, Patrick's daughter, join Samira. The acclaim for Rachel Kushner's novel The Flamethrowers brought her to a wide audience. Now she has written The Mars Room, the fictional account of a woman in a US prison with a double life sentence - plus 6 years. She describes getting access to the Californian prison system and the extraordinary stories she uncovered there.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Caroline Donne.

At the age of ninety jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine looks back at her extraordinary career. She talks to Stig Abell about her lasting musical and romantic partnership with saxophonist and composer Sir John Dankworth, her friendship with Ella Fitzgerald and collaboration with Ray Charles.Stig visits Cleo at her countryside home, where in 1970 she and husband John Dankworth created The Stables concert hall in their back garden and meets Cleo's daughter, the singer Jacqui Dankworth.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Iconic dancer and choreographer Akram Khan shows John around his studio at his home and discusses a life of dance, preparing for his final solo performance and what he plans to do now that he is retiring from the stage.The Austrian artist Egon Schiele features alongside a young American photographer Francesca Woodman in a new exhibition Life In Motion at Tate Liverpool. The artists used their own naked bodies as the focus for their work at different ends of the 20th century and both died prematurely in their 20s. Co-curator Tamar Hemmes discusses the unlikely pairing.The writer and former US soldier Kevin Powers gave the reader a visceral experience of the war in Iraq in his novel The Yellow Birds following his tour of duty there. Powers discusses his new novel A Shout in the Ruins, in which he gives us a similar experience, but this time focused on the American Civil War.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins.

Designer Orla Kiely is famous for her distinct Stem-patterned bags and a global brand that includes fashion, accessories and homeware. Now the first exhibition dedicated to her opens at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. She discusses the origins of her work at a kitchen table in Ireland and why she thinks that pattern can make you happy without even noticing. Crime novelist Belinda Bauer talks about her new novel Snap. Based loosely on the real-life murder of Marie Wilks in 1988, it begins with three children left at the side of the road in a broken-down car as their mother goes to find an emergency telephone. Twice winner of the Crime Novelist of the Year, Belinda considers the importance of childhood memory, landscape and the ordinary fears that haunt us in her writing. What is the identity of British South Asian theatre today? As the Royal Court Theatre holds a series of evenings celebrating the canon of British South Asian theatre going back 50 years, theatre directors Sudha Bhuchar and Prav MJ consider the importance of that legacy, how you preserve and honour the past while looking at the future, and how the preoccupations of South Asian theatre makers has changed in the last 50 years.

The American writer Philip Roth, whose death at the age of 85 was announced today, is remembered by Ian McEwan, his biographer Claudia Pierpont, and American novelist Amy Bloom. From Roth's first novel Goodbye Columbus in 1959 to Portnoy's Complaint, American Pastoral and The Plot Against America, he was writer who courted controversy and explored complex themes concerning sexuality, Jewish life and America.Presenter John Wilson Producer Hilary Dunn.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, writer and star of TV series Fleabag, discusses balancing performance and writing, and her latest role as L3, a female droid in the latest Star Wars episode, Solo. Andrew Sean Greer has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his comic novel Less, about a failed novelist who embarks on a trip round the world rather than attend his ex-lover's wedding. He discusses writing about gay marriage, ageing and why the win came as a surprise. Following the announcement that the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for UK Comic Fiction is being withheld for the first time in its history, journalist and critic Arifa Akbar joins Andrew Sean Greer to discuss the current climate for writing a laugh-out-loud novel. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Caroline Donne.