Front Row

25 years since she published her first Charlie and Lola book, former Children's Laureate Lauren Child returns with a new friendship-focused series featuring best-friends Lotta and Lola. She joins us to talk about her approach to writing for children and about the importance of reading together as a family.
Refik Anadol, one of the creative team behind Dataland, a vast new museum dedicated to AI art which opened this weekend in Los Angeles, tells us about the multi-sensory experiences visitors walk through on their journey through the building and how the Museum embraces and celebrates digital art while finding solutions to energy usage and volumes of data.
Turner Prize winning artist Jasleen Kaur's new trail of sculptures on the banks of the River Clyde in Glasgow take the form of weather vanes and question the city's links to trade and colonialism. She tells us more about this commission to mark Glasgow 2026, the cultural festival which complements this summer's Commonwealth Games.
And as an exhibition of theatrical portraits of stars of stage and screen by Cecil Beaton go on display at Harewood House in Yorkshire, curator Bryony Smith and design historian Stephen Bayley explain why everyone who was anyone wanted to sit for the legendary photographer, and how his photographs also changed public perceptions of the monarchy.
Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Mark Crossan

Bill Nighy joins to talk about his new family drama 500 Miles, where he plays a reclusive painter on the west coast of Ireland who gets an unexpected visit from his two Sheffield-based grandsons. He also discusses his early days in acting, his famous role in Love Actually, and why he's become an agony uncle in a new podcast.

Today, the Carnegie Medal for Writing was awarded to Beth O’Brien for her debut YA novel Wolf Siren, and Kate Rolfe won the Carnegie Medal for Illustration for her book Wiggling Words. Both join Front Row to discuss their books

Hold To This Earth: Works by Contemporary Indigenous North American Artists from Tia Collection is the new show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Art critic Veronica Simpson reviews.

Merky Books Prize-winning writer, and filmmaker, Sufiyaan Salam, on the inspiration behind his debut novel, Wimmy Road Boyz, which follows three young males pushed to the limits of their masculinity during a life-altering night out.

Presenter Nick Ahad
Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Linda Perry came to fame as lead singer of the all-female band Four Non-Blondes. She went on to be a hugely successful songwriter and producer, writing hits for the likes of Pink and Christina Aguilera, and collaborating with Dolly Parton. She's now released her first solo album for 27 years - Let It Die Here - and a documentary film of the same name. Linda came to perform for Front Row and explain why she’d stepped back into the limelight.
Mel Brooks is the filmmaker who gave us such comedies as Blazing Saddles and The Producers. He turns 100 on Sunday so we're celebrating it with his son Max Brooks, and the writer and culture journalist Hadley Freeman.
James Burrows, who died at the weekend at the age of 85 directed more than a thousand episodes of many classic American sitcoms – such as Friends, Will and Grace and The Big Bang Theory. The writer and TV Critic Scott Bryan remembers James Burrow's life and career.
And Glenn Tillbrook from Squeeze tells us about The Everywhere At Once Festival, a special music event this weekend that’s celebrating grassroots venues around the UK.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Andrea Kidd

Writer Stephanie Merritt and Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin join Tom to review Anish Kapoor’s immersive exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, which includes huge red sculptures, black holes and boundless mirrors that challenge perspectives.
They also discuss The End Of Everything by M. John Harrison, a post-apocalyptic novel where the nature of the crisis remains unclear.
And they review Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day – a film adaptation of her novel with a cast including Haley Bennett, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders and Lily Allen.
Plus, Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton talks about the latest film in the franchise, and as a co-writer for all the films in the series he talks about how they've changed over the years.
Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Claire Bartleet

Priya Parmar's novel The Original tells the story of how actor Katharine Hepburn set out to become one of the true movie icons of the 20th century and succeeded. She's joined to talk about Hepburn's life and career by film historian Pamela Hutchinson.
As the Obama Presidential Center opens later this week in Chicago, we hear how its architecture is being viewed in the city, how it compares with other presidential libraries and what it might do for the people of Chicago.
As the National Library of Scotland's new exhibition showcases how artists, filmmakers and poets across the centuries have been inspired by rain, poet Don Paterson and head of collections at the library Alison Stevenson join us to discuss why we're conditioned to think about rain in particular ways and about the best creative responses to a weather condition we know all too well.
Presenter: Kate Molleson
Producer: Mark Crossan