Following the announcement of the death of the musician Charlie Watts, tonight’s Front Row is an archive edition featuring John Wilson in conversation with the band he was a member of - The Rolling Stones. The programme was recorded in 2012 to mark 50 years since the band’s first performance. In it, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood reflect on life in the Rolling Stones as they prepare to return to the stage.

With John Wilson. In a rare extended interview, the Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young discusses his latest disc, a selection of traditional songs, recorded with the uninhibited rock band Crazy Horse. The album includes a version of God Save The Queen, the anthem Young recalls singing as a schoolboy in Canada. Young, who topped the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic 40 years ago with his LP Harvest, also reflects on the role of the protest song in the age of the TV talent...

Mark Lawson turns quizmaster to test the cultural knowledge of two teams in the Front Row Quiz of the Year. Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and film-maker Asif Kapadia join team captain Natalie Haynes to compete against actress Maureen Lipman and singer Rumer, under the captaincy of crime writer Mark Billingham. Questions cover a wide range of the year's events, and there's a teasing round of Nordic TV crime drama clips - in their original languages. Producer Claire Bartleet.

With Mark Lawson. Damian Lewis, Hugh Laurie, Thandie Newton, Adrian Lester, Clive Owen and Ashley Jensen are among the actors who discuss the highs and lows of working as British performers in America. Many high profile American TV shows and films are casting British actors in key roles. The success of programmes such as Homeland and House are testament to the strong parts tempting British actors across the pond. Director Stephen Frears explains his theory that there is a crisis in...

Kirsty Lang turns the spotlight on the backstage stars, some of the key individuals behind-the-scenes who play a key role in big events and major TV shows. The band from Strictly Come Dancing lurk at the back of the stage in the shadows as the brightly-lit action takes place on the dance floor in front of them. Band leader Dave Arch, bass player Trevor Barry and singers Haley Sanderson and Lance Ellington give us an insight into the view from the back, and what they can do when things don't...

John Wilson talks to musicians including Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Paul McCartney, Emeli Sandé, Jonny Greenwood and Pete Townshend about their first musical influences. Neil Young reveals why he recently recorded a version of God Save The Queen, the anthem he sang regularly during his Canadian childhood. Paul McCartney discusses how songs by the great American tunesmiths of the 1930s, which he heard in his childhood home, influenced his own approach to...

With Mark Lawson. Jack Whitehall, Greg Davies, Niamh Cusack and Frances de la Tour are among the performers and artists who share memories and reflections on working with close members of their families. Christmas is the time when people are most likely to spend time with their closest relatives. But for some in showbusiness the holidays are not a rare family reunion but a continuation of a professional relationship or, for writers and comedians, an encounter with the relatives who have...

Mark Lawson unwraps interviews with arts headline makers of 2012, in the second of two programmes. Writer E L James reflects on a year in which she became a global publishing phenomenon, with her best-selling trilogy which began with Fifty Shades of Grey. Mark looks back at the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with director Danny Boyle and designer Thomas Heatherwick, who created the highly original cauldron for the Olympic flame. Singer Emeli Sandé remembers how nervous she felt moments before...

Mark Lawson unwraps new interviews with arts headline makers of the year, in the first of two special programmes. In the wake of the record-breaking success of the James Bond film Skyfall, Judi Dench reflects on her role as M, and director Sam Mendes discusses the pressures of working on such a high-profile movie - and whether he knew about Bond's secret role in the Olympic opening ceremony. Hilary Mantel remembers the night when she won the Man Booker Prize for the second time - the only...

With Kirsty Lang. A new film The Impossible, starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, focuses on the powerful tsunami which occurred in the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004, and killed over 280,000 people. The film shows how events affected one family on a Christmas holiday in Thailand. Novelist Kamila Shamsie reviews. Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, and Tom Morris, Artistic Director at Bristol's Old Vic Theatre, discuss the future of arts funding. Leading figures in the arts,...

With Kirsty Lang. Barry Norman reviews Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut, Quartet. The film is set in a home for retired opera singers and features Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly and Michael Gambon among the all-star cast. Katy Carr is a singer, songwriter and aviator. She's half Polish and her album, Paszport, focuses on Polish stories from World War II, including a veteran who escaped from Auschwitz. She reflects on how she turns personal histories into songs. The release of new DVDs by...

With Mark Lawson Salman Rushdie has written his first ever screenplay, an adaptation of his own Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight's Children. He reflects on condensing the family saga which follows India from Colonialism to Partition, about filming in Sri Lanka, and about the experience of writing his memoir, Joseph Anton. Victoria Wood discusses her TV drama Loving Miss Hatto, in which Francesca Annis and Alfred Molina play real-life concert pianist Joyce Hatto, who died in 2006, and her...

With John Wilson. Photographer Don McCullin was on Front Row earlier this year talking about an exhibition of some of his most famous photographs of conflict, from Vietnam to Iraq. He said then that - at the age of 75 - his days on the frontline were over. But this morning The Times newspaper published new McCullin photographs of life on the streets of Alleppo, Syria, taken over the last few days. He explains why he decided to go back. Martin Freeman discusses playing Bilbo Baggins in the...

With Kirsty Lang. Writer William Boyd discusses the television adaptation of his novel, Restless, which stars Michael Gambon, Michelle Dockery and Charlotte Rampling. Ravi Shankar, who has died at the age of 92, took the sitar to a global audience, and was a huge influence on many musicians. Choreographer Akram Khan pays tribute. Dramatist Martin Crimp discusses his new play In the Republic of Happiness. It centres on a family Christmas interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Uncle...

With Mark Lawson. Director Paul Thomas Anderson reflects on his film The Master, which has already won numerous awards and is heavily tipped for Oscar success. In the week that Green Day release the third in a trilogy of albums and Peter Jackson announced that The Hobbit will be divided into three parts, Mark asks whether three is the magic number for films, novels and albums, with Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Toby Litt and David Hepworth. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars in the film Smashed, a...

With John Wilson. Paul Auster is the best-selling author of The New York Trilogy and Moon Palace. His latest book, Winter Journal, takes him in a more reflective direction, examining his own life through a series of autobiographical fragments and memories. He explains why he refuses to call the book a memoir and why - despite priding himself on being a safe driver - he has given up driving completely. The musician Beck has sold millions of CDs, but his latest album Song Reader exists only...

With Mark Lawson. The 1992 film The Bodyguard, starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, was a huge box office hit. Now a stage musical version of the film has opened, with Heather Headley in the leading role. Music critic Rosie Swash gives her verdict. Writer Ali Smith combines fiction and essays in her new book Artful. She discusses the challenges involved in working in different forms. The pioneering jazz pianist Dave Brubeck has died at the age of 91. Front Row pays tribute to the...

With Mark Lawson. Mamma Mia and The Iron Lady director Phyllida Lloyd returns to the stage with a new all-female staging of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It's set in a women's prison and contains a heavy-metal soundtrack. Harriet Walter takes the role of Brutus alongside Frances Barber as Caesar. Writer and critic Bidisha reviews. Playwright Mike Bartlett is known for writing Earthquakes in London, Love Love Love, 13 and for adapting Chariots of Fire into a stage production. His first...

With John Wilson. Elizabeth Price has won this year's Turner Prize for work including her video installation The Woolworths Choir of 1979. She discusses her inspirations and what winning the prestigious art prize might mean for her future plans. Ben Folds is best known for his musical career, notably with his band Ben Folds Five, but he is also a keen photographer and takes his camera on tour, sometimes capturing images of the audience at his gigs from the stage. Ben Folds discusses why Ben...

Martin McDonagh won the 2008 Best Original Screenplay Oscar for In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell as an unlucky hit-man. In McDonagh's new film, Seven Psychopaths, Farrell is a struggling screenwriter dragged into the Los Angeles crime world when his quirky friends (Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken) kidnap a dog belonging to a gangster (Woody Harrelson). Kamila Shamsie reviews. Novelist Beryl Bainbridge, who died in 2010, won the Whitbread Prize twice and was nominated for the Booker...

With Kirsty Lang. Following the huge success of Matilda, the RSC has a new Christmas show for family audiences. The Mouse and His Child is based on a book by Russell Hoban, and features the adventures of two wind-up mice, a purple elephant, and Manny Rat who pursues the mice as they try to find their home. Writer Jamila Gavin reviews.. Writer Robert Greene has inspired rappers such as Jay-Z and 50 Cent and attracted hard-to-reach readers, including prisoners, with his best-selling books...

With Kirsty Lang, Booker Prize-winning novelist Roddy Doyle talks about his new novella, Two Pints. It's a year's dialogue between two men in a Dublin pub over their pints. Beginning with the landmark Royal visit to Ireland in May 2011 and ending with the Paralympics last September, they set the world to rights and talk about the day's news. Michael Boyd's last production as Artistic Director of the RSC is an adaptation of Pushkin's Boris Godunov. Theatre critic Andrew Dickson reviews the...

With Mark Lawson. Daniel Radcliffe and John Hamm star in A Young Doctor's Notebook, a new four-part TV comedy drama based on a collection of short stories by the celebrated Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov. Including graphic scenes, the series is partly based on the author's experiences as a young country doctor working at the dawn of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reviews. Oliver Sacks' seminal 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat described...

With Mark Lawson. Bryan Ferry discusses The Jazz Age, a new album of instrumental versions of his greatest hits including Love Is The Drug, Virginia Plain and Avalon. Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong are the writing duo behind Channel 4 comedies Peep Show and Fresh Meat. In the week that Peep Show began its eighth series and the current series of Fresh Meat ends, they reflect on their unusual collaborative methods and the perils of getting to know the actors too well. Helena Bonham Carter,...