Front Row

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Front Row: Armando Iannucci, Booker shortlisted author Maggie Shipstead, Paul McCartney on Penny Lane

Armando Iannucci, Booker shortlisted author Maggie Shipstead, Paul McCartney on Penny Lane

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Armando Iannucci, Booker shortlisted author Maggie Shipstead, Paul McCartney on Penny Lane

Armando Iannucci discusses his mock-heroic epic poem and Paul McCartney on Penny Lane.

Armando Iannucci talks about his new mock-heroic epic poem Pandemonium, Paul McCartney remembers writing Penny Lane and the final Booker Prize book group with Maggie Shipstead.

Meet the anagrammatical Orbis Rex, Queen Dido, Blind Dom’nic, as they battle a wet and withered bat from Wuhan in Front Row as Armando Iannucci, Samira Ahmed’s guest, reads from and talks about Pandemonium, his new mock-heroic epic poem written in response to the Covid pandemic and the times we live in.

The sights and sounds of Liverpool are evoked as Paul remembers the 1967 Beatles single Penny Lane.

In the last of our Booker Prize Book Groups, listeners put their questions to shortlisted author Maggie Shipstead, whose novel Great Circle tells the story of Marian Graves, a pioneering female pilot in the first half of the 20th century, and in a separate strand in the present, Hadley Baxter, an actress playing Marian in a Hollywood movie.

Daniel Clark is one of  ten young poets from around the world chosen through a Poetry Society competition to perform work that addresses the climate crisis at Cop 26. He reads, and talks about poetry as activism. 

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Julian May

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Front Row

Armando Iannucci, Booker shortlisted author Maggie Shipstead, Paul McCartney on Penny Lane

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