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Front Row: Nicole Kidman, Fanny Hill, Women artists

Nicole Kidman, Fanny Hill, Women artists

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Nicole Kidman, Fanny Hill, Women artists

Nicole Kidman on her film Destroyer, Fanny Hill, Female Old Masters.

Nicole Kidman on her role in the new film Destroyer; Sarah Ditum considers the 18th-century pornographic novel known as Fanny Hill; Female Old Masters at Sotheby's; Linda Grant

Nicole Kidman discusses her first lead role for some time as she plays a tortured detective in the grimy LA-set thriller, Destroyer.

John Cleland’s 18th century novel Fanny Hill has become known as 'the most famous banned book in the country'. Written in 1749, it tells the story of Frances ‘Fanny’ Hill who, after her parents' death, travels from the countryside to London earning money as a sex worker. As one of the oldest-known copies is set to go under the hammer, literary critic Sarah Ditum discusses if it still has the power to excite and shock us.

Netflix's Tidying Up with Marie Kondo has caused a stir for suggesting that we should hang on to only 30 books that ‘spark joy’. Stig visits the author Linda Grant in her living room to ask her about famously culling the book collection that she'd built up from childhood.

As Sotheby's prepare their auction The Female Triumphant, a selection of works by female Old Masters from the 16th to 19th centuries, including Artemisia Gentileschi, Sotheby's specialist Chloe Stead and critic Charlotte Mullins consider the role of - and the struggles faced by - women artists from that period and today.

Presenter: Stig Abell 
Producer: Jerome Weatherald


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