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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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

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Front Row: Sparks, EM Forster adaptations, nature mystery writer Bob Gilbert

Sparks, EM Forster adaptations, nature mystery writer Bob Gilbert

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Sparks, EM Forster adaptations, nature mystery writer Bob Gilbert

The 26th Sparks album, EM Forster adaptations on radio, nature mystery writer Bob Gilbert.

Sparks on their new album The Girl is Crying in Her Latte, EM Forster adaptations on radio and nature mystery writer Bob Gilbert.

Sparks, the American pop duo formed in 1960s Los Angeles, are back with their 26th album, The Girl is Crying in her Latte. Samira Ahmed meets brothers Ron and Russell Mael to discuss how Cate Blanchett came to be dancing in the music video for the title track and their extraordinary longevity.

E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel A Room with a View is being dramatised for Radio 4, as is the novel The Ballad of Syd and Morgan, which imagines a meeting between Forster and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. Samira is joined by the producers Marcy Kahan and Roger James Elsgood to explore Forster's enduring appeal and transposing prose into audio drama.

Nature writer Bob Gilbert's new book The Missing Musk: A Casebook of Mysteries from the Natural World sets out to discover why, all over the world, a popular fragrant flowering plant has lost its scent. Samira talks to the former urban nature columnist about how his book has invented a new literary genre, the detective nature mystery.     

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Olivia Skinner

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Sparks, EM Forster adaptations, nature mystery writer Bob Gilbert

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