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Front Row: Love Island, Melvin Burgess, Milos Karadaglic and Joby Talbot, Roy Foster on Brian Friel

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31/07/2018

Love Island, Melvin Burgess, Milos Karadaglic and Joby Talbot, Roy Foster on Brian Friel

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Love Island, Melvin Burgess, Milos Karadaglic and Joby Talbot, Roy Foster on Brian Friel

Love Island is over, but what is the cultural impact? Plus Melvin Burgess on his new book.

Melvin Burgess on his new book, the cultural impact of Love Island, and guitarist Milos Karadaglic and composer Joby Talbot join. Plus Roy Foster on Irish dramatist Brian Friel.

Melvin Burgess, who's been dubbed the Godfather of Young Adult fiction, talks about his new book The Lost Witch about a teenage girl who discovers she has magical powers.

A record-breaking 3.6 million people watched this year's Love Island final. That's more viewers than were watching BBC One, BBC Two or ITV in the same time slot. Journalist and critic Alix O'Neill discusses the show's cultural impact. 

In Thursday's Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall Milŏs Karadaglíc will give the world premiere of Ink Dark Moon, a guitar concerto written for him by Joby Talbot. Milŏs plays live in the Front Row studio, and the pair discuss the relationship between musician and composer. They consider, too, the range of a modern musician's work: Milŏs has recorded classics beyond the classical repertoire - an album of tunes by The Beatles - and Joby writes ballet music, has composed an opera and arranged music for Tom Jones and The Divine Comedy.

Brian Friel's Translations is enjoying a sell-out run at the National Theatre; when it comes to an end Aristocrats will open at the Donmar Theatre. Philadelphia Here I Come!, Faith Healer, Dancing at Lughnasa - there is almost always a Friel play on somewhere. All of them are set in Ballybeg (which means 'small town' in Irish) and most are family dramas. Roy Foster, Professor of Irish history and literature, teases out why Friel's domestic dramas of Donegal hold such universal appeal. 

Presenter: Stig Abell 
Producer: Jack Soper.

Main image: Love Island. Credit: ITV

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