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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

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

Kirsty Lang

Alistair McGowan

Jonathan Maitland

Amitav Ghosh

Kathryn Hughes

Norman Lebrecht

Jerome Weatherald

Front Row: Alistair McGowan as Jimmy Savile, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Dadd

Alistair McGowan as Jimmy Savile, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Dadd

12/06/2015

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Alistair McGowan as Jimmy Savile, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Dadd

Alistair McGowan as Jimmy Savile, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Dadd and Bayreuth feud.

Presented by Kirsty Lang. Alistair McGowan discusses playing Jimmy Savile, Amitav Ghosh on his novel Flood of Fire, Richard Dadd's exhibition reviewed and trouble at Bayreuth.

Alistair McGowan plays the role of Jimmy Savile in a controversial new play by Jonathan Maitland which opened last night. McGowan and Maitland discuss their mixed feelings about the project and how and why they chose to portray the serial paedophile.

The novelist Amitav Ghosh talks about the final part of his Ibis Trilogy, Flood of Fire, which follows the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, set during the turbulent times of the Opium Wars.

A new exhibition by the Victorian artist Richard Dadd shows paintings from his early career, when he was seen as one of the most talented and promising artists of his generation, to paintings completed after he suffered a breakdown and was admitted to Bethlem psychiatric Hospital. Historian Kathryn Hughes reviews.

As Wagner's German opera house Bayreuth prepares for the 150th anniversary performance of Tristan and Isolde, music critic and writer Norman Lebrecht considers the almighty row that is taking place between Wagner's two great-grand-daughters who run the festival.

Presenter Kirsty Lang
Producer Jerome Weatherald.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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