Front Row

Samira Ahmed presents live from Old Billingsgate in London, where the announcement of the winner of the Booker Prize 2026 is taking place.
The novels on the shortlist are: The End of Everything by M. John Harrison, The Disappearers by Marlon James, May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, Black Bag by Luke Kennard, The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout, and John of John by Douglas Stuart.
As well as speaking to the winner, Samira talks to some of the judges including Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and Chair of judges classicist Mary Beard.
The poet Raymond Antrobus performs a work inspired by his experience of being a Booker judge. In it he warns about an artificial future and his performance is accompanied by composer and violinist Sasha Scott.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Claire Bartleet

The six authors shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize discuss their novels ahead of tonight's ceremony, which is broadcast live on Radio 4 at 9.30pm in a special extra edition of Front Row.
M. John Harrison on The End of Everything
Marlon James on The Disappearers
Rebecca Perry on May We Feed the King
Luke Kennard on Black Bag
Elizabeth Strout on The Things We Never Say
Douglas Stuart on John of John
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Claire Bartleet

Tom Sutcliffe is joined by reviewers Nancy Durrant and Tim Robey for this week's review.
Keira Knightley stars in The Lives of Others, adapted for the stage and directed by Robert Icke, from the 2006 film, about love and Stasi surveillance in East Germany.
La Bola Negra is Spain's nomination for the foreign language Oscar. It's a gay love story set during the Spanish Civil War intertwining three timeframes and the complications of love and war.
Twice Booker Prize-nominated author Tom McCarthy's latest novel, The Rhyl Poster, about a jurist -turned- double agent in the Court of Justice of the European Union.
We speak with Baillie Gifford Prize winner Edmund Richardson, whose book about Alexander The Great has won this year's £50,000 award.

Artist Sam Taylor Johnson has photographed a wide range of actors, artists and musicians including Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tracey Emin, Philip Seymour-Hoffman and Alexander McQueen. She's also made biographical feature films about John Lennon and Amy Winehouse, and has repeatedly turned the camera on herself. She talks to us about the art of portraiture and what she has learned about selfhood.
Oscar winning writer and director Sian Heder talks to us about Being Heumann, her unflinching feature about the Disability Rights Movement which is based on true events and stars Ruth Madeley as Judith Heumann, a lifelong activist for people with disabilities, who died in 2023.
Later this month a conference commemorates the centenary of the publication of what is billed as "the wildest, most ambitious, most controversial poem in Scottish literature": Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. The modernist poem, in which a drunk man on a moonlit hillside addresses the thistle, the nation and the universe is widely credited with igniting a literary renaissance in Scotland, and also contributed towards the formation of a new nationalist movement. MacDiarmid's official biographer Alexander Linklater and the poet's daughter-in-law, Deirdre Grieve, also a writer, join us to discuss the significance of the poem and the contradictions in MacDiarmid's own life.
And it's emerged that Fleabag creator, writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge purchased a flat in London which is providing a home for playwrights from underprivileged backgrounds. Sofie Mason, the co-founder of Writers’ Block and the director of the theatre charity Off West End, tells why this will make such a big difference.
Presenter: Kirsty Wark
Producer: Mark Crossan

Musician Nitin Sawhney's latest composition has been inspired by Samantha Harvey's Booker prize-winning novel Orbital. Called Orbiting Orbital, it also includes original writing by Samantha. They discuss the work and their collaboration with Kate.
Author Jasper Rees talks about the acclaimed actor Michael Gambon's life and career as his new authorised biography is released - from being spotted by Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre through to his role as Dumbledore later in life.
Curator Charlene Prempeh introduces the new exhibition The Nue Black Aesthetic at the Design Museum.
And we pay tribute to the musician Juan Atkins who is widely regarded as the godfather of techno.
Presenter: Kate Molleson
Producer: Lucy Collingwood