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Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music

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John Wilson

Peter Gabriel

Rachel Cooke

Helen Oyeyemi

Paco Pena

Mark Thomas

Rebecca Armstrong

Front Row: Peter Gabriel; Paco Peña; Helen Oyeyemi; Great War in art; Mark Thomas

Peter Gabriel; Helen Oyeyemi; Great War in art; Paco Pena

26/02/2014

Peter Gabriel; Paco Peña; Helen Oyeyemi; Great War in art; Mark Thomas

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Peter Gabriel; Paco Peña; Helen Oyeyemi; Great War in art; Mark Thomas

Arts news with John Wilson, including an interview with Peter Gabriel about his new film.

Peter Gabriel on film Back to Front; Paco Peña on flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia; Helen Oyeyemi on her new novel; how artists depicted the Great War; Mark Thomas on Bill Hicks.

With John Wilson.

Peter Gabriel's film Back to Front documents the experience of performing his most commercially successful album, 1986's So, with the band he originally toured with. He tells John why despite being a famously forward looking artist, he wanted to revisit the album once more.

The National Portrait Gallery's exhibition The Great War in Portraits explores how artistic representations of the conflict and its participants changed as the fighting progressed. Beginning with magisterial portraits of leaders and generals and finishing with the anguished German expressionism of the Die Brücke group, the show depicts the vastly divergent experiences bound up in 'the war to end all wars'. Rachel Cooke reviews.

One of the world's most celebrated flamenco guitarists, Paco de Lucia, has died in Mexico, at the age of 66. In 2004, he was awarded Spain's prestigious Asturias Prize for Art as the "most universal of flamenco artists". We speak to his friend and fellow flamenco guitarist Paco Pena about his legacy and why he will be remembered as a revolutionary and a genius.

Helen Oyeyemi was listed as one of Granta's Best Young Novelists 2013. She wrote her first novel The Icarus Girl whilst studying for her A-levels - and secured a book deal on the same day as she received her results. Still only 29, she is about to publish her fifth title Boy, Snow, Bird. She talks to John about confronting issues of race in the novel, her love of fairy tale and myth and how Hitchcock inspired her lead character.

Mark Thomas discusses the legacy of controversial comedian Bill Hicks, who died 20 years ago today.

Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.

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