Front Row

Madonna is still in the spotlight 45 years after bursting onto the pop scene in the 1980s, inspiring fashion, dance and youth culture, as well as being the world’s best-selling female artist of all time. Author of the biography Madonna: A Rebel Life, Mary Gabriel explores what’s behind her enduring influence and music critic Pete Paphides assesses last night’s Celebration tour performance, rescheduled after her recent serious health scare. The latest film from director Martin Scorcese focuses on the Osage Nation community, who back in the 1920s had become rich overnight when oil was discovered beneath their land in Oklahoma. Based on a true story, Killers of the Flower Moon sees an improbable romance develop between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest and Lily Gladstone’s indigenous Mollie, as members of her Osage tribe are murdered under mysterious circumstances, killings which are investigated by what was to become the FBI. Published in 2015, Adam Sisman wrote what is considered to be the definitive biography of John le Carré. What he left out about the author befits a Cold War spy novel: he was secretive, self-mythologizing and even deceptive. Sisman’s new book, The Secret life of John le Carré, reveals for the first time the frustrating process of writing a biography about the writer who hid his infidelities and inconsistencies.The Forward Prizes are among UK and Ireland’s most coveted poetry awards. These include best poetry collection, first collection, single poem - written and, new for this year, best single poem – performed. Tonight in Leeds the judges will announce the winners as Front Row is on-air - and we should know who has won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem – Written, and be able broadcast the poet reading it.

Samira Ahmed is joined by critics Anne Joseph and Nancy Durrant to review some of this week’s cultural highlights. They discuss the new series of the classic TV comedy Frasier, which is returning to our screens after nearly two decades, and a new exhibition, Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style.Martin Hayes has gone from playing the fiddle in his father’s ceilidh band in County Clare to performing for President Obama at the White House. Martin brings his band, The Common Ground Ensemble to perform in the Front Row studio. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Corinna Jones

Actor Richard Armitage – who starred in North and South and the Hobbit - joins Nick to discuss writing his debut novel, the bio-tech thriller Geneva, which is about to be published in hardback but was originally commissioned as an audio book. Autumn 2023 has seen Opera North launching its first sustainable ‘Green Season’. This includes the world premiere of an ambitious new production, Masque of Might which repurposes the music of composer Henry Purcell in a spectacle of song and dance. We hear from its director Sir David Pountney and soprano Anna Dennis.The Leicester Indie band EasyLife is about to play its last gigs under that name - because the owners of the airline easyJet said their name was too similar to that of the budget airline. EasyGroup confirmed they'd received an agreement from the band saying they would cease using the name after playing at Leicester's 02 Academy and London's Koko. It's not yet known what their new name will be. The Turner prize winning artist Lubaina Himid was once told “black people don’t make art”. Part of the 1980s movement of Black and Asian British artists, it was decades before her contribution to the arts was recognised with a CBE. She’s now curated an exhibition called A Fine Toothed Comb that looks at the hidden communities of Manchester though her own work and that of other women artists. She steers Nick Ahad around the show and talks about belonging, removing statues and the joys of opera

Nigel Kennedy remains the best selling violinist of all time with a repertoire that spans jazz, classical, rock, klezmer and more. Ahead of his four night residency at Ronnie Scott’s in London this week, Nigel Kennedy and cellist Beata Urbanek-Kalinowska join us in the Front Row studio to perform two reworkings of pieces by Ryuichi Sakamoto and the Polish film score composer, Krzysztof Komeda. Author Christine Coulson discusses her novel ‘One Woman Show’ written entirely through the medium of art gallery labels – and why we should be looking for longer at the paintings themselves. She’s joined by Dr Catherine McCormack, an independent curator and lecturer at Sotheby’s Art Institute, who reveals more about how labels have changed over the years and provide valuable context for visitors to galleries and museums. New figures compiled exclusively for Front Row reveal that 65,000 items are currently missing from museums around the world and listed on the Art Loss Register. Carolyn Atkinson goes on the trail of one of those missing artworks, a painting stolen during a brazen art heist in 1989, that has just been returned to a Glasgow museum.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening’s new album, Cloud Horizons, fuses synthesizers with a bone flute, a sistrum – very old Egyptian instrument - and lyrics based on an inscription in Latin carved on a stone in Northumberland nearly 2 millennia ago. Kathryn talks to Samira about this ancient Northumbrian futurism and plays her smallpipes, live. We remember the film director Terrence Davis, perhaps best known for the film Distant Voices, who has died aged 77. Samira spoke to him for Front Row last year, about his Netflix drama Benediction, which followed the life of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.Samira talks to Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, essayist and editor. Her latest offering Roman Stories marks a return to shorter fiction, presenting snapshots of a city and its unnamed residents in flux. Today the Heritage Fund announces nine ‘Heritage Places’ across the UK- the first of twenty to receive a share of £200 million in National Lottery funding over the next 10 years to support local heritage. We hear from Eilish McGuinness, Heritage Fund Chief Executive about how the money will be spent and from Eirwen Hopkins, founder of the heritage group Rich History in Neath Port Talbot, one of the nine places to receive the cash injection.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

The winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature is Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who is best known for his innovative plays. Playwright Simon Stephens, who has translated his work, talks about the impact of his plays which are widely performed across Europe but little known in the UK. Front Row reviews Golda, which stars Helen Mirren as Israeli prime minster Golda Meir, and an exhibition of work by the artist Philip Guston at the Tate Modern in London. Poet Aviva Dautch and art critic Ben Lukes give their verdict.Musician Tim Ridout discusses recording Elgar’s famous cello concerto on the viola, a performance for which he won the concerto category at this year’s Gramophone Award. The theme of this year’s National Poetry Day is refuge and to mark it Front Row hears a poem on the theme, A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry Parker

Mike Skinner helped define an era with The Streets' album Original Pirate Material in 2002. Now he's back with not only new music but an accompanying film, The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light. He talks to Nick Ahad about guerrilla filming in nightclubs and the influence of Raymond Chandler. The choreographer, writer and founder of hip hop dance company ZooNation, Kate Prince, tells us about a dramaturg who has been a key influence on her. We hear about the advice and inspiration offered by Lolita Chakrabati ahead of her work inspired by the music of Sting and The Police. The British Textile Biennial 2023 is highlighting the extraordinary influence of Lancashire. From the moors to the mills, it's a region which defined the modern world's approach to the clothes we wear. That troubling and complex legacy is explored by a series of installations. Evie Manning, co-creator of Common Wealth, talks to Nick Ahad about Fast Fast Slow - a community-led catwalk experience which explores throwaway fashion and our relationship with clothes. Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Kevin Core

The actor Patsy Ferran talks to Samira about her transformation from flower girl (with some autonomy) to duchess (with none at all) in Pygmalion at the Old Vic, and a career in which she transformed from Edith, the maid in Blithe Spirit with Angela Lansbury to Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire with Paul Mescal, via Jem in Treasure Island.“Rubenesque” has long evoked a voluptuous image of female nudity in art, but a new exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery seeks to explore the complex relationship between Peter Paul Rubens and the women in his life. Co-curator Amy Orrock and critic Louisa Buck discuss how they influenced, and in many cases financially supported, the 17th century Flemish painter.And as Netflix airs the fifth and final series of ‘Top Boy’, which first appeared on Channel 4 starring Ashley Waters, Clive Nwonka, author of ‘Black Boys The Social Aesthetics of British Urban Film’ and film critic Leila Latif discuss representations of black urban culture on screen.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Nicki Paxman

The portraits in the National Gallery’s new retrospective of the artist Frans Hals capture his informal and fresh style which contrasted with other masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt. We hear from the exhibition’s curator Bart Cornelis and by the writer Benjamin Moser whose forthcoming book The Upside-Down World describes his lifelong passion for the art of what’s often called the Dutch Golden Age. The enthusiasm of politicians for the spectacular U-turn has reached the cultural sphere; in Scotland the government has U-turned a U-turn in its arts funding. Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman’s theatre critic and political columnist, explains what has happened and not happened and what it all means for the arts in her country. As a retrospective of her work opens at the Courtauld Gallery in London, Claudette Johnson talks to Tom Sutcliffe about her portraits of Black women, her work in the 1980s with the BLK art group and how Rembrandt and Toulouse Lautrec’s approach to painting women has inspired her. And Ghosts are in the ether… an upsurge of interest in the supernatural often coincides with disruptive events like the Covid pandemic. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Jeanette Winterson whose new book Night Side of the River tells 13 ghost stories, and by Danny Robins’ whose book Into the Uncanny has just been published. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

Front Row reviews two of this week’s cultural highlights. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by writer Hettie Judah and film critic Peter Bradshaw to discuss Happy Gas, a retrospective of work by Sarah Lucas at the Tate Britain, and The Old Oak, which director Ken Loach has said will be his final film. Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, was Front Row’s artist in (remote) residence during the lockdown, playing for us live in the empty Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik. At last Víkingur comes to the Front Row studio in person to talk to Tom Sutcliffe about his recording of the Goldberg Variations which, he says, are a musical metaphor for life itself. And the actor Sir Michael Gambon has died at the age of 82. Best-known for his role as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, his work also encompassed theatre, TV and Radio drama. Theatre writer Paul Allen and film critic Peter Bradshaw discusses his career on both stage and screen. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Corinna JonesMichael Gambon 1:12 Happy Gas 8:41 Vikingur Olafsson 16:32 The Old Oak 33:12