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Stig Abell

Idris Elba

Deborah Mays

Douglas Murphy

Anton Lang

Julian May

Front Row: Idris Elba, director; Listed buildings; Stig Abell, poet

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29/08/2018

Idris Elba, director; Listed buildings; Stig Abell, poet

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Idris Elba, director; Listed buildings; Stig Abell, poet

Idris Elba on directing his first film, Yardie. Plus, are there too many listed buildings?

Idris Elba on directing his first film, Yardie. England now has 400,000 listed buildings. Too many or not enough? Plus, presenter Stig Abell writes a sonnet.

Idris Elba is a man of many parts - actor, DJ, kick-boxer and now film director. He discusses his first feature, Yardie, based on the hit novel of the same name, by Victor Headley which, in 1992, told the tales of "D", a Jamaican in London engaged in the super-violent drugs trade of the 1970s. 

The former Raleigh Cycle Company headquarters in Nottingham recently became the 400,000th listed building in England. Deborah Mays, Head of Listing Advice at Historic England, writer and architect Douglas Murphy, and Dr Anton Lang, Chartered Town Planner, discuss whether we have too many listed buildings in the UK.

For the Front Row Inspire season, each of the presenters has taken on a creative challenge to try something new, and Stig elected to write a sonnet for his new-born daughter Phoebe. He visits the Walthamstow Forest Poets, one of over 85 'Stanza' poetry meetups around the UK run by volunteers from The Poetry Society. Stig reads his sonnet, gets some advice on it and finds out where the poets in the group get their inspiration. 

Presnter: Stig Abell
Producer: Julian May.

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