Front Row Folgen

Twelve flights. Twelve travellers. Twelve stories. David Szalay talks about his new book, Turbulence, which features lives in turmoil, each in some way touching the next. David Szalay was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016 – and Turbulence is an original Radio 4 commission. The 55th annual Golden Horse awards, dubbed the "Chinese Oscars", saw An Elephant Sitting Still win best picture. Created by novelist-turned-director Hu Bo, who adapted it from his own book, it tells the story of four people in a society plagued by cruelty and violence. As the film is released in the UK, critic Simran Hans gives her verdict and Asian film expert, Andrew Heskins, discusses the wider landscape of cinema in China and the way the industry is changing.This weekend UNESCO added the reggae music of Jamaica to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, a programme that looks to protect and promote traditions or living expressions of cultural identity. To discuss the programme and the decision to include reggae on this year’s list we speak to Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO Ernesto Ottone, plus music journalist Kevin LeGendre considers what this means for reggae. Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Hannah Robins

For his final role as an actor, Robert Redford plays a charming bank robber in The Old Man and the Gun, harking back to his early roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Tim Robey reviews. Booker prize winning narrator of Anna Burns’s Milkman reads 19th century novels as she cannot bear the 20th century. What do other fictional characters read and what does it reveal about them, their authors and the period in which the books were written. John Bown, Professor of Literature at York university joins to discuss fiction within fictionPoet Fred D'Aguiar's new collection, Translations from Memory, starts with Gilgamesh, the earliest poem and ends with with a response Kamau Brathwaite, the poet from Barbados, who is still alive. It includes responses to philosophers - Spinoza, Hume, Kant - to writers - Lorca, Akhmatova, Seferis - to scientists such as Marie Curie, to political leaders - Nelson Mandela - to religion - Islam - and great movements such as the Reformation. He talks to Samira Ahmed about writing poems about what amounts to the whole of western civilisation and history. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May

Strictly Come Dancing Head Judge Shirley Ballas describes her approach as fun, firm, feisty but fair. As one of the couples comes ever closer to raising this year’s glitter-ball trophy she talks about her own background in dance, dismisses the “curse” of Strictly and explains why she thinks the show has such appeal to young, old and everyone in between.Sarah Jenkins, who recently won the BBC Proms Inspire competition for young composers, talks about her new piece, inspired by the winter solstice. And the Sun Stood Still is being premiered by the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Southbank Centre on 5 December and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The current criticisms aimed at National Theatre Wales, that neither their productions nor their casts are Welsh enough, echo the criticisms that the National Theatre of Scotland faced a few years ago. Joyce McMillan, theatre critic for The Scotsman, and Dr Emma Schofield, associate editor of Wales Art Review discuss what it means to be a national theatre.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Julian May