Front Row

Musician and campaigner Bob Geldof discusses A Fanatic Heart, his feature length documentary about poet W B Yeats. He explains how he came to love the poetry of Yeats and why he considers the Nobel prize-winning poet to be one of the founders of modern Ireland.As Fifty Shades Freed, the third and final instalment of the Fifty Shades franchise is released in cinemas this week, literary critic Alex Clark and Clare Binns, director of programming and acquisitions for Picturehouse Cinemas discuss the cultural impact of the Fifty Shades phenomenon.The bandoneon is a traditional Argentinian squeezebox and a key component in tango music. Virtuoso Julian Rowlands performs on the instrument alongside the Santiago Quartet and gives Stig Abell a lesson in how to play it.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Edwina Pitman.

Chadwick Boseman discusses taking on the role of Black Panther, the first black mainstream comic book hero, and talks about the responsibility he feels in taking on the first black lead in a superhero film. Following the release of Black Panther, critic Dreda Say Mitchell, and comic book writer, Kieron Gillen, review the film, and consider whether the time of the black superhero has finally arrived.When and how should we be introducing children to Shakespeare? Is it better to start with the stories and move onto the complexity of the language or do we miss out on something vital by not starting with the text? Purni Morell, Artistic Director of the Unicorn Theatre and Erica Whyman, Deputy artistic director of the RSC, discuss.Today is Dydd Miwsig Cymru - Welsh Music Day, which celebrates not just Welsh music, but music in Welsh. Through the programme Stig Abell samples the variety of contemporary music performed in the Welsh language today.Presenter: Stig AbellProducer: Julian May.

Playwright David Hare talks to Samira about his latest television drama Collateral, a series that begins like a police procedural but drifts into a state-of-the-nation thriller. Carey Mulligan stars as a police detective whose investigation into the shooting of a pizza delivery man has spiraling repercussions. Carmen is opera's greatest femme fatale, the sexually liberated cigarette factory worker killed by her spurned lover. Opera critic Alexandra Coghlan and opera historian Flora Willson discuss how we view Carmen in the 21st Century, as two new productions - at the Royal Opera House and in Florence - re-interpret this mythic heroine. John Burningham, author and illustrator of Mr Gumpy's Outing, and Helen Oxenbury, the illustrator of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, have been announced as the joint winners of the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award. Their books are family friends to many children - and adults. They talk about how they work, their distinctive styles and the secrets of their long marriage.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Edwina Pitman

Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz on their new film The Mercy, which tells the true story of the ill-fated attempt in 1968 by the amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst to become the first person to sail solo, non-stop, around the world.Vaseem Khan discusses his latest Inspector Chopra novel, about an Indian detective with a baby elephant as his sidekick, which he has written as a Quick Read.As Irish and Northern Irish women poets campaign for greater recognition in their home country, we discuss the gender battle currently taking place in Irish literature, with campaign co-founder Mary O'Donnell, playwright Rosemary Jenkinson and novelist John Boyne. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser.

As artists back photographer Nan Goldin's call to hold arts patrons the Sackler family to account over the US opioid crisis, we discuss the ethics of funding the arts. Soul singer Mica Paris talks about her current projects exploring the life and work of legendary jazz pioneer Ella Fitzgerald, and performs live in the studio.Jim Crace has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. He talks to John about his new novel The Melody. Set in an unnamed town on the Mediterranean, its main character is a composer facing loneliness as a recent widower. The novel, Jim Crace says, has its roots in seeing child foragers on a rubbish dump in India. And to mark the centenary of some women being granted the vote in 1918 we hear the poem Suffragette written by Jan Dean. It's from the anthology Reaching the Stars which contains poems about extraordinary women and girls.Presenter : John Wilson Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Mike Bartlett, the writer of Doctor Foster and Charles III, on his new three-part TV drama Trauma, in which Adrian Lester stars as a surgeon accused of negligence by a patient's father, played by John Simm. Last week a new prize was launched for thriller novels that do not include any violence against women. Since that announcement the Staunch Book Prize has been both lauded as much needed, and criticised for being censorial. We discuss the prize with its founder Bridget Lawless and crime-writer Val McDermid. Cornelia Parker was the official artist for the 2017 election. As her resulting work goes on display in the Palace of Westminster, she discusses her approach and the challenges she faced in maintaining impartiality.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Nicola Benedetti has co-written a new cadenza for Beethoven's Violin Concerto. As she embarks on a tour with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, she talks to Kirsty Lang about the challenges of performing this classical masterpiece. Jason Solomons reviews Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built, which stars Helen Mirren in the first horror movie of her 50 year career and is set in the real life house that the Winchester gun heiress built to keep ghosts at bay.As part of Reading Europe Radio 4 is dramatising 'The Bride and Groom' , a novel by the award-winning Russian author Alisa Ganieva. Kirsty talks to Alisa about the contrasting picture of tradition and modernity she presents of Dagestan, her homeland in the Caucasus. Grigory Ryzhakov, author of a guide to modern Russian literature, gives us an overview of what Russians are reading both in terms of literary fiction and popular novels, from crime thrillers to the classics.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser.

Simple Minds, the stadium-filling band from Glasgow, have been together for 40 years. As they release Walk Between Worlds, lead singer Jim Kerr looks back on the four decades and the band perform an acoustic version of a song from the new album.Reputed to be Daniel Day-Lewis' final film before retiring from acting, Phantom Thread travels behind the doors of London's 1950s fashion houses. Film critic Catherine Bray discusses director Paul Thomas Anderson's latest project.Theatre company Told by an Idiot's latest production Napoleon Disrobed imagines a comical alternative history in which instead of dying in exile, Napoleon traverses Europe alive, well and in disguise. Director Katherine Hunter and actor Paul Hunter explain the challenges of re-writing history on stage.Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns argues that the South African novelist Alex La Guma is an overlooked literary colossus who should be restored to his rightful place at the centre of the literary canon.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Edwina Pitman.

All day long I'd bidi-bidi-bum... Sheldon Harnick is 93 and won worldwide acclaim as the lyricist of the hugely successful Fiddler on the Roof. As a new production of Rothschild & Sons, one of his lesser-known musicals, opens in this country he talks about a lifetime of lyrics.Britain's first professor of Musical Theatre, Professor Millie Taylor, and theatre critic David Benedict discuss the evolution of the musical since the premiere of Fiddler on the Roof in 1964.The Danish Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is best known for his large-scale installation art using natural elemental materials, such as The Weather Project, a dazzling sun in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Nikki Bedi met him at his studio in Copenhagen to discuss his views on the cultural landscape of Denmark, artistic collaborations and breakdancing.Presenter: Nikki Bedi Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.

Last year, wunderkind playwright James Graham premiered three plays Ink, Labour of Love, and Quiz which looked respectively at the rise of the Sun newspaper, Labour party history; and the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire "coughing Major" scandal. As he begins 2018 with another premiere, The Culture: A Farce in Two Acts, he discusses turning his attention to Hull's year as City of Culture and his desire and energy to keep creating new work.The V&A's new exhibition Ocean Liners: Speed and Style explores the golden age of ocean travel through all aspects of ship design from ground-breaking engineering, architecture and interiors to the fashion and lifestyle aboard. Design critic Corrine Julius reviews.Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi on her novel Kintu - lauded as 'The Great Ugandan Novel' - which has just been published in the UK for the first time.And we speak to the winner of the 2017 Costa Book Prize, live from the ceremony. The book is chosen from the five category winners - Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore (Poetry); Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (First Novel); Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (Novel); The Explorer by Katherine Rundell (Children's) and In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott (Biography).