Escuchar Front Row

Journalist Siân Pattenden & critic Stephanie Merritt join Tom to discuss Self Esteem's third album A Complicated Woman, which features collaborations with Nadine Shah and Moonchild Sanelly. Ahead of the release, Self Esteem AKA Rebecca Lucy Taylor showcased the album by staging a five-night theatrical presentation at London's Duke of York theatre. Tom and guests also talk about the Belgian film Julie Keeps Quiet, where a star player at a top tennis school deals with the aftermath of her coach being suspended. And they review the RSC's Stratford-upon-Avon contemporary production of Much Ado about Nothing which is set in the world of elite football. Plus, presenter Tom Service talks about the line up for the 2025 BBC Proms. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Claire Bartleet

As the journals of the American writer Joan Didion (based on conversations with her psychiatrist) are published, writer and journalist Rachel Cooke and Alan Taylor, editor of actor Alan Rickman's diaries, discuss the challenges, responsibilities and ethics of posthumously publishing the diaries of great writers, artists and actors. Acclaimed German pianist Pianist Igor Levit talks about his own challenge - that of performing Erik Satie's pioneering piece Vexations, in a performance at the Multitudes arts festival at London's Southbank Centre. The performance is directed by leading performance artist Marina Abramovic and is expected to last approximately 15 hours, as Levit repeats Satie's one-page score 840 times. And how should great women be memorialised? Cultural critic Stephen Bayley and author and activist Sara Sheridan discuss what a memorial to Queen Elizabeth II might look like, and why, in comparison to their male counterparts, so few women have grand memorials in our towns and cities. Presenter: Kirsty Wark Producer: Mark Crossan

Jamaica's former poet laureate, Lorna Goodison, on setting Dante's Inferno on the island of her birth; Journalist Joanna Moorhead on Pope Francis' relationship with the arts; Poet and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts on writing a form-breaking book to re-examine French composer Olivier Messiaen's form-breaking masterwork - Quartet for the End of Time; and going in search of an important piece of theatre history with Daniel Swift, author of The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare. Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Mr. Turner director Mike Leigh, art historian Charlotte Mullins and senior curator at Tate Amy Concannon join Tom Sutcliffe to celebrate the life and work of JMW Turner, as we approach the 250th anniversary of his birth. Also in this edition, David Hockney on Turner's skill as an artist, Alvaro Barrington talks about his continuing influence on artists today, and Tom goes to the conservation studio at Tate Britain to see what’s being done to protect Turner's bequest and look after his fragile and damaged works. Producer: Claire Bartleet Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe

Alex Garland's latest film Warfare, which is co-directed by US military veteran Ray Mendoza turns back the clock back nearly twenty years to reconstruct a real-life surveillance mission in Iraq. Film critic Tim Robey and journalist Zing Tsjeng give their verdict on the analysis of the theatre of war, which unfolds in real time. They've also been to see Shanghai Dolls at London's Kiln Theatre - which spans six decades of Chinese history, focusing on the life of an actress who was to personify the terrifying face of the cultural revolution, Madame Mao. Literary critic Boyd Tonkin reflects on the legacy of Nobel prize-winning Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa who has died at the age of 89. Samira and her guests have also been reading Katie Kitamura's new book Audition, about an actress who agrees to have dinner with a young man who seems fixated on her, and includes a 'sliding doors' alternative reality. And as the actress Cate Blanchett announces her intention to retire, Radio 4 listeners have a chance to hear her star in her first major radio drama The Fever, in which she plays a privileged woman who travels to a war-torn country and reflects on her comfortable life amidst the poverty of others. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Paula McGrath