Front Row

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by reviewers Nancy Durrant and Tim Robey for this week's review.Keira Knightley stars in The Lives of Others, adapted for the stage and directed by Robert Icke, from the 2006 film, about love and Stasi surveillance in East Germany.La Bola Negra is Spain's nomination for the foreign language Oscar. It's a gay love story set during the Spanish Civil War intertwining three timeframes and the complications of love and war.Twice Booker Prize-nominated author Tom McCarthy's latest novel, The Rhyl Poster, about a jurist -turned- double agent in the Court of Justice of the European Union.We speak with Baillie Gifford Prize winner Edmund Richardson, whose book about Alexander The Great has won this year's £50,000 award.

Artist Sam Taylor Johnson has photographed a wide range of actors, artists and musicians including Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tracey Emin, Philip Seymour-Hoffman and Alexander McQueen. She's also made biographical feature films about John Lennon and Amy Winehouse, and has repeatedly turned the camera on herself. She talks to us about the art of portraiture and what she has learned about selfhood. Oscar winning writer and director Sian Heder talks to us about Being Heumann, her unflinching feature about the Disability Rights Movement which is based on true events and stars Ruth Madeley as Judith Heumann, a lifelong activist for people with disabilities, who died in 2023. Later this month a conference commemorates the centenary of the publication of what is billed as "the wildest, most ambitious, most controversial poem in Scottish literature": Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. The modernist poem, in which a drunk man on a moonlit hillside addresses the thistle, the nation and the universe is widely credited with igniting a literary renaissance in Scotland, and also contributed towards the formation of a new nationalist movement. MacDiarmid's official biographer Alexander Linklater and the poet's daughter-in-law, Deirdre Grieve, also a writer, join us to discuss the significance of the poem and the contradictions in MacDiarmid's own life. And it's emerged that Fleabag creator, writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge purchased a flat in London which is providing a home for playwrights from underprivileged backgrounds. Sofie Mason, the co-founder of Writers’ Block and the director of the theatre charity Off West End, tells why this will make such a big difference. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

Musician Nitin Sawhney's latest composition has been inspired by Samantha Harvey's Booker prize-winning novel Orbital. Called Orbiting Orbital, it also includes original writing by Samantha. They discuss the work and their collaboration with Kate.Author Jasper Rees talks about the acclaimed actor Michael Gambon's life and career as his new authorised biography is released - from being spotted by Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre through to his role as Dumbledore later in life.Curator Charlene Prempeh introduces the new exhibition The Nue Black Aesthetic at the Design Museum.And we pay tribute to the musician Juan Atkins who is widely regarded as the godfather of techno.Presenter: Kate Molleson Producer: Lucy Collingwood

Grandmaster Flash, one of the founding fathers of hip-hop, talks about his memoir, Birth of a Culture, and the music and events that shaped his life and his music. The Ramayana is one of the world’s oldest stories and as the new film, Rise of A Legend, hits screens this week telling of the epic battle between the evil Ravana and righteous Rama, we look at the cultural and literary significance of this famous tale with performance storyteller and author Vayu Naidu and writer and director Jatinder Verma.Patrick Stewart won people's hearts from his Shakespearean theatre work to his portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. We hear an interview he gave to Front Row from 2023, in which he discusses his journey from working class Yorkshire to Hollywood. And the voice of K9, John Leeson, has died. Actor and comedian Toby Hadoke pays tribute to the man behind Doctor Who's iconic robot dog. Presenter: Samira AhmedProducer: Andrea Kidd

Nina Raine has adapted George Eliot's Middlemarch for the RSC, into a 2 part, 6-hour long stage play. How does it measure up to the book and the much-loved TV adaptations?The British Library is celebrating the life and writing of Agatha Christie in an exhibition to mark 50 years since her death. She wrote the world's longest-running theatre play - The Mousetrap, (75 years so far) - and has sold more than 2 billion books. But who was the woman behind the stories? With artefacts and handwritten notes, this exhibition also looks at her pre-novelist career.The film Gentle Monster from Maria Kreutzer is about a family that is confronted by the father committing an appalling crime. How do they rationalise his actions... can they?And is Russia's targeted bombing of Ukrainian book storage depots, libraries and bookshops part of a campaign to erase Ukraine's culture?Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Actor Ashley Walters, who previously starred in the acclaimed series Adolescence and Top Boy, on his feature directorial debut Animol, a harrowing drama about youth crime and humanity, set in a juvenile detention centre, which draws on Walters' own experience as a younger man. We discuss the reinvention and subversion of the fairy tale genre, with comedian and author Daniel Foxx. whose new book Fairytales for Privileged Children: Little Red Riding Hood Blows Her Trust Fund & Other Premium Tales skewers the wealthy and elite in today's society, and with Michelle Anya Anjirbag, whose Cinderella: A Cultural History is published this week. How have writers across the centuries used often ancient plots to explore contemporary themes such as justice, gender and sexuality? And in the latest of our interviews with the writers shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, we speak to author Elizabeth Strout about The Things We Never Say, a spare and economical tale set in the American state of Maine, about marriage, secrets and kindness. And there's been a spate of theatre closures across the country this year. What's behind this, and did Chancellor John Healey's budget today offer any support for the sector? Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

Oscar winner Sam Rockwell and Oscar nominee John Malkovich join Tom to talk about their new film Wild Horse Nine from Banshees of Inisherin writer and director Martin McDonagh.A new resource pack from the University of Leeds's Cultural Institute offers practical tools to help arts organisations prepare for, manage and learn from conflict, particularly divisive 'culture wars' issues. Its author Professor Aylwyn Walsh tells Tom about the growing need for this resource. Marlon James won the Booker Prize in 2015 for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. He has been shortlisted again this year for his new book The Disappearers, which focuses on the difficulties of being gay in 1980s Jamaica. He discusses the book with Tom as part of our series of interviews with all of this year's shortlisted authors. And last week the new president of Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella, ordered the removal of dozens of items from the National Museum of Colombia, including artefacts related to LGBTQ+ history, feminism and the political history of the country. Luis Fajardo from BBC Monitoring joins Tom to talk about the events and the subsequent protests. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Tim Bano

Best-selling author of The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger talks about her much-anticipated sequel Life Out of Order, which returns to the story of the time travelling father and daughter.Playing FBI agent Dale Cooper in the 1990s tv series Twin Peaks made a cult star of actor Kyle MacLachlan. He discusses his memoir Fictional Selves, which reflects on this, and his other roles for auteur David Lynch.Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic classic Dracula may have shaped visions of vampires for generations, but the blood-sucking creature of the night has fascinated writers long before he first left Transylvania. Nick Groom joins to talk about his new collection Vampire Tales, which features some of the earliest known stories about vampires, while author and vampire fan Suzi Feay reads her new poem Vampire from her latest book of poetry Maledictions.And Gilles Mentré, co-founder of the Prix Pascal of AI Literature, explains his hopes for this new award.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Andrea Kidd

Reviewers Alexander Larman and Bidisha consider two films: Fatherland, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, starring Sandra Huller, it tells the story of novelist Thomas Mann's tour of war-ravaged Germany in 1949.And Korean family drama Possible Love, directed by Lee Chang-dong, which delicately and incisively explores the tensions of power and wealth in two couples from different strata of society. Also... the return of Martin Guerre, the musical. From the team behind Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, it debuted in 1996, and over the following three decades it has had many rewrites and reimaginings. Now it's back for a very short run. And with a much shorter duration. Have they found the formula to make it a critical and popular success this time around? Today the shortlist was announced for the UK City of Culture 2029. Four places are now in the running and the £10 million prize. They are Blackpool, Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Wrexham. These four locations were recommended by the UK City of Culture expert advisory panel, chaired by Sir Phil Redmond who tells us more about the shortlist and what it means to win the title. Presenter: Samira Ahmed

Director Sofia Coppola on completing her mother Eleanor’s documentary about the making of Sofia’s feature Marie Antoinette, following her death. The film goes behind the scenes of the lavish 2006 biopic starring Kirsten Dunst - in spectacular locations such as Versailles - and is in cinemas around the UK from this Friday. Can prescribing culture - such as choirs, art classes and poetry workshops - improve young people's mental health? As the Southbank Centre in London launches Ombri, a new referral platform prescribing access to arts for young people, we're joined by the centre's Artistic Director, Mark Ball, and by GP and broadcaster Margaret McCartney, to discuss the practicalities of prescribing culture, how to ensure young people from disadvantaged communities are reached, and how the success of a scheme such as this can be measured. Pulitzer Prize-winning Argentinian-American writer Hernan Diaz has mined history as inspiration for his previous novels, but in his latest, Ply, he looks to a dystopian future, and a city, resembling a decaying New York, in which his central character, a "pincher" steals electricity from the grid to power a underground music scene, but risks the wrath of the authorities, He tells us about moving into the realm of speculative fiction and about how he was inspired by everything from ancient Greek philosophy to 21st century particle accelerators. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan