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Front Row

Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner, Diversity in children's fiction, Yves Klein at Blenheim Place

Duration: 30 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LW

Available for over a year

Alan Bennett's new play Allelujah! is set in the geriatric ward of a Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure. It follows a singing, dancing choir of quick-witted elderly patients whose problem is not that they are ill so much as they have nowhere to go. Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner discuss working together and how Alan manages to take on big themes - English identity, education and now the NHS - without being, he says, a "political" writer.

Blenheim Palace is housing a major exhibition of the work of the radical French artist Yves Klein, famous for his ultramarine blue paintings and sculptures. Louisa Buck reviews.

A new survey into ethnic diversity in children's literature has found that only 4% of all the children's books published in the UK last year featured a black, Asian or minority ethnic character. Farrah Serroukh, who led the Reflecting Realities survey, and writer Patrice Lawrence discuss the findings.

Presenter: Kirsty Lang
Producer: Hannah Robins. Show less

Contributors

Presenter:
Kirsty Lang
Interviewed Guest:
Alan Bennett
Interviewed Guest:
Nicholas Hytner
Interviewed Guest:
Louisa Buck
Interviewed Guest:
Farrah Serroukh
Interviewed Guest:
Patrice Lawrence
Producer:
Hannah Robins

About this data

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