Front Row Folgen

The paintings of Winston Churchill are being exhibited at the Wallace Collection in London. Xavier Bray, Director of the Wallace Collection, and Katharine Carter, curator at Chartwell, Churchill’s country house in Kent, discuss what we learn about Churchill from his art.Creator and star Phil Dunning talks about series two of Smoggie Queens, which follows a close-knit group of friends; it’s a celebration of queer culture and a love letter to Middlesbrough and its community.As questions are being asked about the use of AI in one of the regional winning entries of a prestigious short story prize for unpublished fiction, writer and journalist Hari Kunzru talks about the impact of AI on writing.And Tom visited the RHS Chelsea Flower to see the Tate Britain show garden, which offers a taster of the forthcoming Clore Garden.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet

Leo Woodall stars in the film Tuner, about a young piano prodigy who turns to crime, in cinemas on the 29th May.The classical music world has been paying tribute to the soprano Dame Felicity Lott, who died on Friday at the age of 79. Critic David Benedict joins us to discuss her life in music.Ronald Firbank is considered a pioneering queer voice of modernist fiction, but he's often overlooked. Sir Alan Hollinghurst and the poet and critic Jack Parlett join us to assess his literary impact and his legacy, a century on from his death.Mary Astell championed women’s education and spoke out against what she saw as the tyranny of marriage in the early 18th century. But despite her impact she's in danger of being forgotten. Now a new play imagines her in conversation with another famous feminist philosopher, Virginia Woolf, encountering each other in a celestial waiting room. We speak to the playwright, Shelagh Stephenson about her play Astell & Woolf, playing now at Newcastle's Live Theatre.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Harry Graham

Observer Theatre critic Susannah Clapp and Heat's Entertainment Director Boyd Hilton join Samira to discuss The Christophers - Steven Soderbergh’s film about an ageing artist and a young forger hired to copy his work, starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. They also discuss the second series of Rivals, based on Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster novel which was set in the affluent 80s world of commercial TV. Plus, they talk about the West End transfer of 1536. It's Ava Pickett’s award-winning historical debut play about female friendship set around the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s arrest for treason.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Claire Bartleet