Front Row

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Front Row: Immy Humes and Aindrea Emelife, Charlotte Higgins and David Greig, Stefan Golaszewski

Charlotte Higgins and David Greig, Immy Humes and Aindrea Emelife, Stefan Golaszewski

Immy Humes and Aindrea Emelife, Charlotte Higgins and David Greig, Stefan Golaszewski

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Immy Humes and Aindrea Emelife, Charlotte Higgins and David Greig, Stefan Golaszewski

Views of Roman Britain today, Raymond Briggs, women in photography, BBC drama Marriage.

Charlotte Higgins and David Greig on views of Roman Britain today, Immy Humes and Aindrea Emelife on women in photography, Stefan Golaszewski on upcoming BBC One drama Marriage.

Both journalist Charlotte Higgins and playwright David Greig are fascinated by the Roman occupation of Britain. Higgins’s book Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain, an account of her travels to the Roman remains scattered about Britain, is really about how we today relate to Roman Britain. It seems an unlikely subject for a play but Greig has adapted it for the stage and they both talk to Samira Ahmed about the project. Did the Romans bring civilisation to these islands? Were they violent imperialists? Did British history really begin once they had left? And what of the society that was here already when the Romans arrived?

Front Row celebrates the life of author and illustrator Raymond Briggs who has died aged 88. He became famous for his books The Snowman, Father Christmas, Fungus The Bogeyman and his parable of nuclear war When The Wind Blows – all of which were also made into films or TV programmes.

American documentary maker Immy Humes has spent the last five years mining the archives for photographs of lone women in majority male environments, from 1862 to the present day, for her book The Only Woman. And British art historian Aindrea Emelife has also been mining the archives, searching for images of black women from 1793 to the present, for her exhibition Black Venus at the Fotografiska Gallery in New York. They join Samira to discuss issues of visibility, tokenism and the female gaze in visual culture, past and present.

BAFTA-winning writer and director Stefan Golaszewski talks to Samira about his upcoming BBC One Drama, Marriage, starring Sean Bean and Nicola Walker as a couple navigating the ups and downs of a 30-year relationship.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Julian May

Image: Shirley Chisholm, Politician, New York, New York, USA, 1972. Credit: Getty Images / Bettmann/ Phaidon

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