Front Row Folgen

Sarah Perry discusses Melmoth, her eagerly awaited novel after her award-winning The Essex Serpent. Her new novel is about an English translator who, hiding from her past in Prague, uncovers the legend of Melmoth – a woman in black who wanders the world bearing witness to humanity’s worst crimes.BBC1’s new Sunday night drama is a television adaptation of Helen Fitzgerald’s novel The Cry, in which the abduction of a baby leads to the psychological disintegration of a young woman. Emma Bullimore reviews The Cry and considers why child abduction or disappearance is such a recurring theme in contemporary television drama, with series such as Missing, Kiri and Save Me. What is ‘cultural first aid’? And why is it so important to save heritage in the face of natural disaster, fire, flood and conflict emergencies? Biovanni Boccardi of UNESCO alongside Aparna Tandon and Jose Luiz Pedersoli from ICCROM join Samira to discuss, and also to look at how cultural first aid is being used to help the National Museum of Brazil after the recent devastating fire.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kate Bullivant

After being appointed director of last year’s opening event for Hull’s year as City of Culture, award-winning and Hull-born filmmaker Sean McAllister decided to make a documentary looking at the impact of the City of Culture on Hullensians by following the work of one man to set up a hip-hop project for disadvantaged kids. He discusses the result, A Northern Soul, and explains his current efforts to challenge the film’s certification.Jamaican-born Poet Tanya Shirley is one of the Hull 18, a selection of poets who have been commissioned to create new work to be premiered in Hull during the Contains Strong Language festival. She joins Jeremy Poynting, founder of Peepal Tree Press, the largest, worldwide publisher of Caribbean and Black British writing to discuss the rise of Caribbean literature.The artist Sean Scully is famous for his distinctively striped oil paintings. As he opens the first exhibition of his sculpture and paintings in the UK, he talks about his love of stripes, his move into sculpture, and why Van Gogh’s painting of his wooden chair had such a profound impact on him. At last year’s Contains Strong Language festival, poet Vicky Foster, joined Front Row to read out some of the poems written by the people of Humberside about places special to them in the region. She returns to Front Row to read a new work that she’s written, Bathwater, about her experiences of living with violence.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Ekene Akalawu

In Theatr Clywd’s new production of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies, the group of schoolboys stranded on a remote island have all been reimagined as girls. Critic Gary Raymond reviews.Forty playwrights and actors have accused National Theatre Wales of favouring English artists and companies over Welsh ones. In an open letter on the Wales Arts Review website, the Welsh artists also claim that the company is staging too few productions and say that non-Welsh artists and companies should only be engaged to support Welsh or Wales-based artists. Gary Raymond, editor of the Wales Arts Review, and Kully Thiarai, Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales, discuss the issues.From John Cage’s controversial composition 4’33”, a three-act movement where no sound is made, to the Rothko Chapel in Texas, a place for contemplation housing 14 of the artist’s large, dark paintings, silence has had a significant place in culture. Actor and director Simon McBurney, conductor Jeremy Summerly, and art critic Charlotte Mullins consider the use and importance of silence in theatre, music and art.Berta Isla is the latest novel by Javier Marías, Spain's most celebrated contemporary writer. Critic Alex Clark explains its place in the context of the author's body of work.Presenter: Janina Ramirez Producer: Hannah Robins