Front Row

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Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music.

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Front Row: Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, Megan Swann, Richard Smyth, The Story of Looking.

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, Megan Swann, Richard Smyth, The Story of Looking.

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, Megan Swann, Richard Smyth, The Story of Looking.

Megan Swann, new Magic Circle President. Richard Smyth, nominee for BBC National Short Story Award. Celebrating artist Dame Elizabeth Blackadder. We review The Story of Looking.

Megan Swann is the first ever female President of The Magic Circle, and the youngest ever President at just 28 years old. She tells Tom how she got into magic, and how she uses magic to share an environmental message.

Richard Smyth is one of the five authors shortlisted for the £15,000, 16th BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University. He tells us what his short story, ‘Maykopsky District, Adyghe Oblast’ and his 2008 appearance on Mastermind have in common.

On what would have been her 90th birthday Front Row celebrates the work of the artist Dame Elizabeth Blackadder who died last month. Susan Mansfield, the writer and art critic for The Scotsman, examines one of her paintings  - Cat and Flowers (1981) from the Fleming Collection

Award winning film maker Mark Cousins’s new film The Story of Looking is a reflection by the film maker as he waits for an operation to restore his vision on the powerful role that the visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives.  Playwright Mark Ravenhill and writer on film Sophie Monks Kaufman give their take on the film, and react to the news of the deaths of filmmakers Roger Michell and Melvin van Peebles.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Harry Parker

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