Front Row

Ian McKellen looks back on his acting career and his work as a gay rights activist as a new documentary film comes out about his life.Critic Julia Raeside reviews season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale, which has just started on Channel 4. Bill Gold - the creator of some of the most memorable classic movie posters from the early 1940s until 2011, including Casablanca, Alien and Dirty Harry - died yesterday, aged 97. Publisher and vintage movie poster specialist Tony Nourmand remembers the man whose motto was 'Less is more'. Poet, writer, and dancer Tishani Doshi talks about her new poetry collection, The Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, which was inspired in part by the murder of a close friend. The poems consider how women's bodies are treated, and explore themes of anger, love and loss as well as ways to find hope and strength in the modern world.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.

Shakespeare's Globe found itself in a storm of controversy when Artistic Director Emma Rice left the theatre amid objections to her use of modern lighting and amplification. In her stead the actor Michelle Terry was appointed and her first two productions, As You Like It and Hamlet, have just opened. Terry takes the title role in Hamlet but the approach is a resolutely ensemble one, with casting across gender, disability and ethnicity. Are these productions a radical new approach or are they back-to-basics Shakespeare? Critics Kate Maltby and Susannah Clapp give their verdicts. The marginalia in the philosopher John Stewart Mill's 1700 volume library is being digitised, revealing an unknown side of this reticent man. We look at the history of marginalia, and consider what our own attitudes to writing on books reveal about their changing significance. Biographer Kathryn Hughes and Bill Sherman, a historian of reading, discuss writing in the margins - and confess to their own guilty scribblings. And...a few weeks into her new job Dundee library assistant Georgia Grainger discovered a secret code in some library books - what lay behind it, and why did her tweet about it go viral? Will Pound is a harmonica and melodeon virtuoso - and dancer. His latest CD, 'Through the Seasons', ranges through the year and the country, from the Cotswolds to Shetland. The album, and his show, is a celebration of the variety of Morris and other folk dance music. Will tells Stig Abell about rapper music (in the pub not the 'hood), clog percussion, and the melodies Border and Cotswold Morris. He demonstrates, playing live in the studio. And there's a special tune for the Royal Wedding, one Meghan could skip down the aisle to.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May.

As he celebrates his 80th birthday, photographer Joel Meyerowitz looks back at his career which is the focus of his new book of photos, Where I Find Myself. It features his early work as a street photographer in New York in the '60s, his images of Ground Zero immediately after the 9/11 attacks, and his most recent still lifes in Tuscany. In a unique commission to open the 2018 Charleston Festival, novelist Ali Smith will be performing a piece of creative prose inspired by the Famous Women Dinner Service, a work of 50 ceramic plates featuring the portraits of historical female figures, produced by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant in 1932. Kirsty discusses the significance and the artistry of the dinner service with Ali Smith, Darren Clarke, curator at Charleston, and art dealer Robert Travers.The Girl on the Train, the psychological thriller by Paula Hawkins, became an overnight bestseller and was later adapted into a film starring Emily Blunt as the troubled Rachel who wakes up with a hangover and an uneasy feeling she's seen something she shouldn't have seen. Now it has been adapted for the stage and opens at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds with Jill Halfpenny as Rachel. Theatre Critic Nick Ahad has been to see it. As Hugh Grant stars as the disgraced MP Jeremy Thorpe in the BBC drama A Very English Scandal, TV critic Emma Bullimore charts the evolution of Hugh Grant's career, from romcoms to recent darker roles. Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Film critic Jason Solomons reports from Cannes on the big films, rising stars and talking points at this year's festival.In 1970 Lou Reed not only left The Velvet Underground but he decided poetry was his vocation. In 1971 he gave a reading at St Mark's church in New York which was recorded. 'Do Angels Need Haircuts?' is a slim volume of Reed's early poems that draws on this recording and other archive material. The artist Laurie Anderson, who was married to Reed and is curating his legacy, talks to John Wilson about Reed's writing life.As the three-week Brighton Festival reaches its half-way point, John visits the coast to try his hand at life drawing in Guest Director David Shrigley's project Life Model II. He meets the members of Three Score Dance who are performing work by Pina Bausch on the seafront and travels to the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft to meet artist Morag Myerscough and discover the art of former Los Angeles nun and activist Corita Kent.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Caroline Donne.

The American writer Tom Wolfe has died aged 88. His style of reportage in the late 60s became known as the New Journalism, and his best known books were the Right Stuff about the first NASA astronauts, as well as his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities which epitomised the excesses of Wall Street in the 80s. Writer and critic Diane Roberts pays tribute.Director Richard Eyre talks about his new film of King Lear which is a co-production between BBC Two and Amazon. The stellar cast includes Anthony Hopkins as Lear alongside Emma Thompson and Emily Watson as his scheming daughters. Deadpool 2 is the follow-up to the hugely successful Marvel Comics' Deadpool, whose eponymous anti-hero is a wisecracking mercenary played by Ryan Reynolds. The latest film sees him assembling a team of superheroes to rescue a young mutant. Rhianna Dhillon reviews. As the Royal Academy of Arts celebrates its 250th anniversary, what does it mean to be a Royal Academician? Samira talks to its President, Christopher Le Brun and Keeper of the RA, Rebecca Salter.

As the Royal Ballet stages their new production of Swan Lake this week, we go behind the scenes during rehearsals to meet some of the cast and crew, including choreographer Liam Scarlett, designer John Macfarlane and principal dancer Marianela Nuñez.This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights. An intense tale of passionate relationships, it is considered one of the most powerful and enigmatic works in English literature. As Wuthering Heights is dramatised on Radio 4, we speak to Christine Alexander, author of the Oxford Companion to the Brontës and Professor John Mullan about the short life of Emily Brontë and the impact of her only novel. As Kaffe Fassett's vibrant needlepoints and quilts are celebrated in a new exhibition in Bath, the 80 year-old textile designer talks about his love of bright colours. Presenter: Viv Groskop Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Writer David Nicholls, best known for One Day, talks about bringing sex, drugs and a silver spoon to life in his television adaptation of Edward St Aubyn's acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Gaz Coombes, former frontman of alternative rock band Supergrass, performs a track from his new album, World's Strongest Man, live in the studio and discusses its eclectic influences including the artist Grayson Perry.Kayo Chingonyi is a 31-year-old Zambian-born British poet whose collection Kumukanda was last night announced as the winner of the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize - at £30,000, the biggest prize open to young writers. He'll be reading live in the studio and talking to John about what his win means.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Sarah Johnson.

Michael Fassbender was reportedly happy to be filmed completely naked in the film Shame, but compared with female nudity, male full-frontal shots are still rare on screen. What are the reasons for this disparity and what are the certification issues with representation of the male organ? The BBFC's David Austin and film critics Hannah McGill and Ryan Gilbey consider the long and the short of it.Chris Lang, the critically-acclaimed writer and creator of ITV's Unforgotten, talks about his latest crime drama Innocent, starring Hermione Norris and Lee Ingleby.Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born cultural theorist, political activist and Marxist sociologist who arrived in Britain three years after the Empire Windrush in 1951 and was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. Gilane Tawadros and Professor Kurt Burling discuss what his memoir Familiar Stranger reveals about the man, as well as the impact his work has had on the way Britain's cultural life is understood.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Neil Gaiman discusses the big-screen adaptation of his 2006 short story How To Talk To Girls At Parties. Directed by Hedwig and the Angry Inch director John Cameron Mitchell, the film tells the story of a teenage punk falling in love with an alien, and stars Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Ruth Wilson and Matt Lucas.In our age of heightened awareness of racism, homophobia and sexism in culture, how easy is it to watch old movies with our children? Film historian Ian Christie and journalist Hadley Freeman discuss how to introduce favourite films from bygone eras to the next generation, without also passing on stereotypes of gender, sexuality and race. Film critic Jason Solomons joins us live from the Cannes Film Festival to give us his insights into what we should be looking out for this year.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hilary Dunn.

Ian McEwan discusses the process of adapting his novel On Chesil Beach for the big screen. Set in 1962, it tells the story of two young newlyweds spending their honeymoon preoccupied with - and terrified by - the forthcoming consummation of their marriage.Drew McOnie talks about directing and choreographing the first UK staging of Strictly Ballroom: The Musical, based on the much-loved 1992 Baz Luhrmann film that led to a resurgence of ballroom dancing in popular culture.A recent DCMS survey shows that over-65s are increasingly engaged in the arts. Two members of the Elders Theatre Company at the Royal Exchange in Manchester talk about how they not only go to more events since retiring but are actively participating in the arts. And David Cutler of the funding organisation the Baring Foundation and David Slater of arts company Entelechy discuss the benefits of an interest in the arts for older people. Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jerome Weatherald.