Front Row (radio)

Front Row is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. The BBC describes the programme as a "live magazine programme on the world of arts, literature, film, media and music." It is broadcast each week day between 7.15pm and 7.45pm and has a podcast available for download (podcasts consisted of weekly highlights until September 2011, but have been full daily episodes since). Shows usually include a mix of interviews, reviews, previews, discussions, reports and columns. Some episodes however, particularly on bank holidays, include a single interview with prominent figures in the arts or a half-hour-long feature on a single subject.

It developed out of Radio 4's previous daily arts programme Kaleidoscope, which ran from 1973 to 1998.

Front Row has been broadcast since 1998. The first ever writer to be interviewed on the programme was Beryl Bainbridge.

The programme's presenters include Samira Ahmed, John Wilson and Kirsty Lang. Former presenters include Francine Stock. In 2013, Tracy Emin presented, for a brief while, a series on the programme where people discussed their favourite piece of art work. A total of 75 creative minds appeared on the programme and talked about their favourite piece of art work, which they all felt had particularly inspired them. This feature was called "Cultural Exchange" and for the first night of the feature (22 April 2013) Tracy Emin herself appeared on the programme and said that her favourite piece of art work would be a painting by Vermeer. Other people on the Cultural Exchange have included Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, who selected The War Requiem by Benjamin Britten; Nicholas Hytner, Director General of the National Theatre, who chose Mozart's opera The Magic Flute; historian Antonia Fraser, who selected the painting The Fighting Temeraire by J. M. W. Turner; novelist Sarah Hall, who selected the film Blade Runner; the author Mark Haddon, who chose The Uffington White Horse; and pianist Stephen Hough, who selected a piece of music by Franz Schubert called "The Hurdy Gurdy Man". Front Row has also covered popular media topics, among them Buffy the Vampire Slayer covered by Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon in December 2013 and the film Nymphomaniac covered by Antionia Quirke during February of 2014.

External links

• BBC Radio 4 website, with link to listen to all episodes from the last week and to selected archive clips