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Kathryn Bigelow

Richard Cork

Kevin Jackson

Alex Clark

Helen Oyibo

Stig Abell

Julian May

Front Row: Authors' better, but not-so-famous, books; Kathryn Bigelow; Eric Ravilious; a Shakespeare Sonnet in Pidgin

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22/08/2017

Authors' better, but not-so-famous, books; Kathryn Bigelow; Eric Ravilious; a Shakespeare Sonnet in Pidgin

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Authors' better, but not-so-famous, books; Kathryn Bigelow; Eric Ravilious; a Shakespeare Sonnet in Pidgin

Not-so-famous but better books; Kathryn Bigelow; Eric Ravilious; a great sonnet in Pidgin.

A discussion of books better than their authors' best known; Kathryn Bigelow on why her new film, set in 1967, is urgent now; the English artist Eric Ravilious; a poem in Pidgin.

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's new film is set during the five days of unrest that took place in Detroit in 1967. The drama is based on first hand recollections, police records and eye-witness accounts of the race-riots. Bigelow talks to Front Row about why these 50-year-old events feel as contemporary and urgent as ever. 

75 years ago the English painter, war artist, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver Eric William Ravilious was killed aged 39 when the aircraft he was in was lost off the coast of Iceland. Many of his works are seen as capturing a sense of Englishness that existed between the wars. He also designed many popular pieces for Wedgwood including a commemorative mug for the abortive Coronation of Edward VIII and the Alphabet Mug of 1937. Art critic Richard Cork explains the significance of his work and the artist design movement he was part of.

Famous for the wrong book. It's 170 years since Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was published, 160 years since Flaubert published Madam Bovary and 50 since Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude but are they their writer's best book? Critics Kevin Jackson and Alex Clark show off their literary knowledge of the famous writers whose "other" books we may have never heard of - and certainly not read - but possibly should have done. 

The BBC has just opened a service broadcasting to the 75 million people of West Africa who speak Pidgin. Stig Abell talks to one of the reporters, Helen Oyibo, about the language and its literature, and hears Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day' translated into Pidgin by Oyibo especially for Front Row.

Presenter: Stig Abell
Producer: Julian May.

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