The British Library isn’t all books; it has a huge sound archive, one of the largest in the world. It has drawn on this for Beyond the Bassline, the first major exhibition to documenting Black British music. Curators Aleema Gray and Mykaell Riley guide Shahidha Bari through the 500-year musical journey of African and Caribbean people in Britain. Emily Henry is a giant of the Beach Read: indeed one of her best selling novels is literally called that. With her forthcoming Funny Book, she is...

Taylor Swift returns with The Tortured Poets Department, a surprise double album that features 31 tracks that fans are saying is her most intimate and lyrically revealing yet. Joining Tom Sutcliffe to discuss the work are Times music writer Lisa Vericco and Satu Hameenho-Fox, whose new book Into The Taylor-Verse is out next month. The Intercity 125 train, the Kenwood mixer, the Morphy Richards iron, the Wilkinson triple razor, bus shelters, the black cab, and the Parker 25 pen all have one...

Knife is Salman Rushdie’s memoir about surviving a near-fatal knife attack in August 2022 and the long, painful period of recovery that followed. Ben Power’s adaption of the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend – London Tide – which features songs that he co-wrote with PJ Harvey, has just opened at the National Theatre in London. Baby Reindeer is a new Netflix drama written by and starring Richard Gadd who drew directly on his own shocking experience of being stalked. All three are reviewed...

Lionel Shriver on her latest novel Mania, in which she creates an alternative USA where the Mental Parity Movement insists that everyone is equally clever. Can a friendship between two women survive when they hold polarised views on this particular “culture war”? Why are universities all over the country closing arts courses and cutting jobs? Front Row investigates and considers the consequences. Playwright Tyrell Williams talks about his acclaimed play Red Pitch, about three young lads...

Lord Byron died 200 years ago on Friday. Lady Caroline Lamb described him as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. Fiona Stafford has edited Byron's Travels, a new selection of his poems, letters and journals. He was only 36 when he died, but had written seven volumes of verse, thirteen volumes of journal and thousands of letters. The poet A. E. Stallings, who lives in Greece, where Byron died while supporting the Greek struggle for independence - and Fiona Stafford, join Tom Sutcliffe to...

British director Jeymes Samuel discusses his new film The Book of Clarence, a Biblical comedy about a down-on-his-luck young man who tries to escape from a debt by pretending to be a messiah like Christ. Sonali Bhattacharyya on her new play Liberation Square, which just opened at the Nottingham Playhouse and explores the lives of three young Muslim women who find themselves caught up in the state surveillance ‘Prevent’ programme. With the hit Belfast-set drama Blue Lights returning to BBC One...

Back to Black is the Amy Winehouse biopic out this week and directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. James is Percival Everett’s retelling of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, narrated by the enslaved Jim. The Wallace collection spotlights Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and the treasure trove of weapons that kept him in power. Writer Dreda Say Mitchell and journalist and broadcaster Bidisha join Tom Sutcliffe to review. We also look at the BAFTA games awards...

Anna May Wong was an international star who appeared in some of Hollywood’s biggest movies in a career that spanned from the silent films of the 1920s, through the advent of talkies in the 30s, to television in the 1950s, despite all the obstacles in her path. A new biography, Not Your China Doll, examines how against all the odds Anna May Wong found international fame and became a trailblazer for Asian American actors. The English folk singer and guitar virtuoso Martin Simpson performs...

Nathan Hill talks about his new novel Wellness, the follow-up to his acclaimed debut The Nix. Maggie Rogers, the singer-songwriter whose career was launched by a student performance for Pharrell Williams that went viral, talks about her latest album Don't Forget Me. Romesh Gunasekera discusses the novels on the International Booker Prize Shortlist, announced today. And Melanie Abbott reports on how the BBC and Netflix’s disability partnership is progressing over two years on from its much...

Artist Yinka Shonibare talks about his new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, which explores the legacy of Imperialism. Guitarist Sean Shibe performs early Scottish lute music and previews a new classical guitar concerto live in the Front Row studio. And film experts Stephen McConnachie and Inés Toharia explain how fast changing technology and digital decay is putting preserving cinema under threat. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

Beyonce’s new album Cowboy Carter - Netflix drama Ripley starring Andrew Scott - Io Capitano, the Oscar-nominated movie about teens in Senegal in search of a better life - all reviewed by film critic Leila Latif and music writer Jasper Murison-Bowie. And novelist and critic John Domini remembers the American novelist (and his former teacher) John Barth, author of cult bestseller Giles Goat Boy, who has died at the age of 93.  Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Paul Waters

Almost 50 years to the day when ABBA's Waterloo triumphed at Eurovision, ABBA specialist Carl Magnus Palm and Millie Taylor, professor of musical theatre, discuss how the song became such an all-conquering hit. A visit to Harewood House to see a new exhibition, Colours Uncovered, which tells the story of this stately home through the prism of colour. Darren Pih, chief curator and artistic director of the Harewood House Trust and curator and archivist Rebecca Burton, take Nick through the...

Actor Dev Patel joins to talk about his directorial debut Monkey Man, a movie inspired by the Indian legend of Hunaman that tells the dark and brutal story of a young man in Mumbai out to avenge the life of his mother. As exam season approaches we ask which books are currently being taught in our schools, and why? We speak to Kit de Waal, whose breakthrough novel My Name is Leon has just been made a curriculum text, and Carol Atherton, English teacher and author of “Reading Lessons: The...

The National Gallery opened its doors on 10th May 1824. The public could view 38 paintings, free. Now there are more than 2,300, including many masterpieces of European art by geniuses such as Rembrandt, Turner and Van Gogh. It is still free. The gallery's director, Gabriele Finaldi, guides Samira Ahmed through the collection. Artists Barbara Walker, Bob and Roberta Smith and Celine Condorelli, last year's artist-in-residence , choose paintings from the collection that are important to...

Peaky Blinders' writer Steven Knight's new drama, This Town, is out this week. Author Daniel Rachel and art historian Sarah Gaventa review. We'll also review a landmark exhibition on the Italian designer Enzo Mari which opens at the Design museum, showcasing his infinite calendar, self assembly book cases and beautiful children’s books. We take a look inside Perth Museum after its 27 million pound refurbishment. And we remember the American Sculptor Richard Serra who has died at the age of...

Camilla Whitehill on her new Channel 4 sitcom Big Mood, starring Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West, which explores the lives of Millennials. Gareth Malone and Hannah French celebrate Bach's St John Passion, which was first performed in Leipzig 300 years ago this Easter. Joel Morris, author of Be Funny or Die, discusses how comedy works and what makes us laugh with Father Ted director Lissa Evans. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Olivia Skinner

Norah Jones discusses her new album, Visions, and reflects on the song, Come Away With Me, that made her name along with a special performance in the Front Row studio; Sir Ian McKellen and theatre director Robert Icke on tackling one of Shakespeare's greatest characters, Falstaff, in their new production Player Kings; and Keisha Thompson on how her year as artist-in-residence at Yorkshire Sculpture Park led to her creation of "sculpted poetry" in her new collection, Dé-rive. Presenter: Nick...

Nikki Giovanni is one of only a handful of poets whose work has been published as a Penguin Modern Classic in their own life time. A key figure of America's Black Arts Movement as both a writer an activist, she speaks to Tom about her life and career. A well-known actor, Andrew Buchan has now turned to writing with Passenger, the new ITV crimes drama set in the gothic landscape of the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. And Oxford's Ashmolean museum has a new exhibition of Flemish drawings, Bruegel...

The Independent’s chief film critic Clarisse Loughrey and the Telegraph’s film critic Tim Robey review the Oscar-nominated animation Robot Dreams which follows the friendship of a dog and a robot - can their bond survive Robot being locked up on Coney Island beach, after his joints rust over following a paddle in the sea? They also give their verdict on Apple TV’s drama Palm Royale, in which a former beauty queen longs to join the super-rich ladies who lunch in 1960s Florida. And on World...

Writer Kazuo Ishiguro and jazz musician Stacey Kent talk about collaborating on their new book of lyrics, The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain. What’s the significance of the hare in art and mythology? To mark the season of the March hare, writer Jane Russ, sculptor Sophie Ryder and musician Fay Hield explain. And following the British Board of Film Classification’s update to their guidance, film critic Larushka Ivan Zedah and professor of film Ian Christie ask what age ratings mean for...

Marjane Satrapi is best known for being the cartoonist and film maker behind Persepolis. She talks to Samira Ahmed about her new book - Woman, Life, Freedom - which she has created with 17 Iranian and international comic book artists. It documents the story of the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a woman detained for allegedly not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf in 2022, and the subsequent protest movement which has swept Iran. In the Event of Moon Disaster is part of a new...

Daniel Libeskind, the architect best known for the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the World Trade Centre masterplan in New York, talks about designing a building to house Einstein’s archive in Jerusalem. As Germany celebrates the 250th birthday of the painter Caspar David Friedrich with three major exhibitions, art historians Louisa Buck and Waldemar Januszczak discuss the significance of the Romantic artist famous for his paintings of people in evocative landscapes. And the musician and...

Labour leader Keir Starmer joins to discuss his party's new arts strategy, which he unveiled this morning, aiming to boost access to the arts and grow the creative industries. Writer and theologian Professor Tina Beattie and critic and broadcaster Matthew Sweet review Marilynne Robsinson’s new book Reading Genesis which offers a fresh look at the story of creation as told in the first book of the Bible. They also give their verdict on the Japanese filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu's new film...

Paul Theroux discusses his new novel, Burma Sahib, about George Orwell’s formative years as a colonial police officer in what is now Myanmar. Voice expert Professor Patsy Rodenburg quit her job over fears that actors’ traditional “craft” skills are being lost, as screen acting overshadows theatre work. Sam Lee, Bernard Butler and James Keay perform live and talk about Sam's new album, Songdreaming. Sam draws on traditional songs to explore the richness and fragility of the natural world here...