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Front Row: Peter Capaldi as Dr Who, new Star Wars, US poet Ben Lerner and E R Braithwaite

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14/12/2016

Peter Capaldi as Dr Who, new Star Wars, US poet Ben Lerner and E R Braithwaite

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Peter Capaldi as Dr Who, new Star Wars, US poet Ben Lerner and E R Braithwaite

Peter Capaldi on Dr Who, Rogue One - A Star Wars Story, poet Ben Lerner & E R Braithwaite.

Samira Ahmed talks to Peter Capaldi about the Dr Who Christmas special; Rogue One reviewed; US poet Ben Lerner; E R Braithwaite, who wrote To Sir With Love.

Peter Capaldi tells Samira Ahmed what it's like for a young sci-fi fan to regenerate as one of his heroes - he's Dr Who in the Christmas Special. He touches, too, on another doctor, Martin Tucker, the eloquently foul-mouthed spin man in The Thick of it. 

Rogue One is a new Star Wars story that goes back before the beginning. It's a prequel to the original 1977 block-buster. Lots of familiar archetypes, a C3PO-type droid, Darth Vader himself and storming troops of Stormtroopers. But is it adequately Force-full? Critic Catherine Bray considers. 

Ben Lerner recently wrote a monograph, The Hatred of Poetry, in which he questions why there is such anxiety and embarrassment about the art, and so reveals his love of it. Now he has published, No Art, which brings together his many poems old and new. He explains that in a world of Trump, climate change and poverty, poetry is as important as ever.

E.R. Braithwaite has died aged 104. His novel 'To Sir With Love', about a black teacher's struggles, and eventual success, as a teacher in an East End London school in the 1950s, made a profound impact. It was made into a film starring Sidney Poitier - with Lulu - in 1967. The playwright Roy Williams, who dramatised the book for radio and the stage, remembers the man, and his work.

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