Front Row

BBC Radio 4
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May 28, 2025 • 42min

Paul Hartnoll of Orbital on the band's Brown album, and a new biography of Muriel Spark.

Paul Hartnoll of electronic music duo Orbital talks about the reissue of the band's Brown album which was originally released in 1993, with the addition of 23 extra tracks of rarities and previously unreleased material and about the intersection between dance music and politics. Frances Wilson, who has previously published acclaimed biographies of D H Lawrence and Thomas De Quincy tells us about her latest book Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, about the great Scottish writer, poet and essayist. And the creator of Netflix's new detective series Dept. Q, Scott Frank, who previously wrote and directed The Queen's Gambit and has written the scripts for Hollywood movies from Minority Report to Marley & Me, talks to us about adapting bestselling Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen's books for the screen and why he's transposed the setting for the series from Copenhagen to Edinburgh. Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Mark Crossan
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May 28, 2025 • 42min

Alison Steadman live from Hay Festival

Live from the Hay Festival, Alison Steadman talks to Samira about her career, from Abigail's Party to Gavin and Stacey. Laura Bates and Gwyneth Lewis discuss Arthurian Legends and The Mabinogion. Hisham Matar champions the Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. And transatlantic husband and wife country duo Outpost Drive perform on stage. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Oliver Jones
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May 27, 2025 • 42min

Will Butler formerly of Arcade Fire on his play set in a recording studio

Stereophonic is a play about the creative process, power dynamics and fraught personal relationships of a 1970s rock band. It won a Tony and many other awards on Broadway. Now Stereophonic has come to the West End. Playwright David Adjmi and Will Butler, sometime of Arcade Fire, who has written the music, discuss their own artistic process as they created it. Plus Skin from Skunk Anansie on their first LP in almost a decade, news of a new exhibition shedding light on painter Joseph Wright of Derby's artistic process and Alexander Larman joins Antony Gormley to pay tribute to Alan Yentob.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Simon Richardson
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May 22, 2025 • 43min

Mission Impossible & Benicio Del Toro

Benicio Del Toro talks about playing a business tycoon in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme. This aesthetically stylised film, by the director who also made The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel, is reviewed by Tom and critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Rachel Cooke. They also give their verdict on Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the 8th and final film in the franchise, and discuss fictional portrayals of food as Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle is published.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry Graham
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May 21, 2025 • 42min

Shirley Manson of Garbage

Frontwoman of Garbage, Shirley Manson talks about the band's latest album Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, which is inspired by contemporary events including the killing of George Floyd in Los Angeles, but which presents an optimistic perspective on a dystopian world. We hear from the winner of the International Booker Prize, which was announced at a ceremony last night. And Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller talks about how he has curated joyful and exuberant events in towns and cities around the UK - Derry-Londonderry, Dundee, Llandudno and Plymouth - to celebrate the bicentenary of the National Gallery.
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May 20, 2025 • 42min

Musician Rhiannon Giddens on returning to her North Carolina roots after working with Beyoncé

Musician Rhiannon Giddens on returning to her North Carolina roots after working with Beyoncé. As a huge retrospective of the work of the artist Helen Chadwick opens at The Hepworth Wakefield, art critic Louisa Buck and the exhibition's curator, Laura Smith, discuss why Chadwick should be viewed as the godmother for a golden generation of British contemporary artists, and another chance to hear Daniel Swift, author of The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare, investigate an important piece of theatre history.Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu
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May 19, 2025 • 42min

Joanne Harris on the return of Chocolat

25 years after Joanne Harris introduced readers to the soothing delights of Chocolat, she's released her new book Vianne. It’s the prequel that explains how her heroine found her way into the world of high end French confectionery. A new exhibition at the British Museum sheds light on the provenance of popular images of the Hindu god Ganesha, the Buddha and Jain enlightened teachers. We talk to curator Sushma Jansari about Ancient India: living traditions, alongside expert in Indian ritual art, Professor Partha Mitter.The 2025 Cannes Film Festival is well underway. We get the latest from Daily Telegraph Critic, Robbie Collin.Rumours abound about the planned axing of the Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Alison Cole, head of the Cultural Policy Unit think tank, tells us what this could mean for the arts.Presenter Samira Ahmed. Producer Harry Graham
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May 15, 2025 • 43min

Review: Sondheim's final musical Here We Are, The Marching Band, Daniel Kehlmann's The Director

David Benedict and Viv Groskop review Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are, a surreal story of brunch and existential dread; French film about about grassroots music, The Marching Band and Daniel Kehlmann’s new novel, The Director, about a real life German filmmaker navigating the Third Reich.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Simon Richardson
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May 14, 2025 • 43min

Ocean with Attenborough, Garden Design, Turning Contemporary Politics into Opera

Colin Bulfield, Executive Producer of the new film Ocean With Attenborough, talks about working with the celebrated broadcaster and filmmaker Sir David Attenborough on his latest project, an exploration of the vital importance of healthy oceans to our planet which is in cinemas around the country now. Current exhibitions at V&A Dundee and the British Library in London shed light on the history and future of garden design. Curator James Wylie and academic and author Becca Voelcker discuss how gardens reflect society, how they have influenced other fields such as art and philosophy, and what gardens might look like in 50 years time. And librettist Emma Jenkins and composer Toby Hession talk about how their new operetta for Scottish Opera and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, A Matter of Misconduct!, which is inspired by political scandals, the No.9 Downing Street press briefing room and classic British comedy from Hancock's Half Hour to The Thick of It. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan
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May 13, 2025 • 42min

Morcheeba perform, Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway 100th anniversary

Novelist Elif Shafak, artist and writer Edmund de Waal and Professor Rachel Bowlby join Samira to discuss the centenary of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. As the Semi Finals of Eurovision start tonight in Basel, Switzerland, Paddy O'Connell talks about this year's contest. Four hundred leading British Artists such as Paul McCartney and Kate Bush have been giving their support to a campaign to try and stop tech films being able to use their work for AI training. Film director and peer Baroness Beeban Kidron talks about leading a successful amendment to this Data bill in the House of Lords. Morcheeba's Skye Edwards and Ross Godfrey are celebrating 30 years in the music business with new album Escape the Chaos. Formed in 1995 the band, who have been called trip hop pioneers, have had 3 top ten albums and gained global success. They perform, for the first time, an acoustic version of Call For Love from their forthcoming album. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Claire Bartleet

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