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Front Row: Ted Hughes biography, Frank Auerbach, Suffragette, Beasts of No Nation

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07/10/2015

Ted Hughes biography, Frank Auerbach, Suffragette, Beasts of No Nation

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Ted Hughes biography, Frank Auerbach, Suffragette, Beasts of No Nation

Jonathan Bate talks about The Unauthorised Life, his biography of Ted Hughes.

Arts news, including Jonathan Bate on his biography of Ted Hughes, a review of Frank Auerbach, director of film Suffragette Sarah Gavron and a review of Beasts of No Nation.

Ted Hughes, The Unauthorised Life, a new biography by Jonathan Bate, has attracted attention because of its scandalous revelations about the poet's adulterous relationships; including the fact he was in bed with another woman the night Sylvia Path took her life. Jonathan Bate talks about the connection between the poet's life and work.

For more than 60 years Frank Auerbach has lived and worked in the same place, painting almost every day of his life. Tomorrow a major retrospective, of more than 70 of his portraits and landscapes, made almost abstract by his bold brushwork, opens at Tate Britain. The writer and art critic Sue Hubbard reviews.

Director Sarah Gavron on the film Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan as a working class foot soldier of the feminist movement and Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst. 

Beasts of No Nation, starring Idris Elba, is based on the novel by Nigerian author Uzodinma Iweala. The film follows the story of a child soldier trapped in the civil war of an unspecified African country. Elba, who made his name in The Wire and Luther, plays the warlord who leads the band of child soldiers into battle. The film, the first feature film acquired by Netflix, marks a new strategy in film distribution with a brief, limited cinema release before appearing on Netflix's home subscription service a week later. Briony Hanson reviews the film and discusses the changing landscape of feature film distribution.

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