Front Row Folgen

Last year, wunderkind playwright James Graham premiered three plays Ink, Labour of Love, and Quiz which looked respectively at the rise of the Sun newspaper, Labour party history; and the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire "coughing Major" scandal. As he begins 2018 with another premiere, The Culture: A Farce in Two Acts, he discusses turning his attention to Hull's year as City of Culture and his desire and energy to keep creating new work.The V&A's new exhibition Ocean Liners: Speed and Style explores the golden age of ocean travel through all aspects of ship design from ground-breaking engineering, architecture and interiors to the fashion and lifestyle aboard. Design critic Corrine Julius reviews.Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi on her novel Kintu - lauded as 'The Great Ugandan Novel' - which has just been published in the UK for the first time.And we speak to the winner of the 2017 Costa Book Prize, live from the ceremony. The book is chosen from the five category winners - Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore (Poetry); Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (First Novel); Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (Novel); The Explorer by Katherine Rundell (Children's) and In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott (Biography).

Former National Theatre director, Sir Nicholas Hytner on his new production of Julius Caesar, starring Ben Whishaw and David Morrissey, which offers the audience a chance to stand and be immersed in the action. Sir Nicholas talks about the staging, how contemporary politics resonates with this Shakespeare play and about his new venue the Bridge Theatre. Ruth Barnes looks at what the list of Grammy winners says about the current state of popular music.The pioneering architect Neave Brown, responsible for celebrated landmark designs in social housing, died earlier this month. Architects Joanne McCafferty and Paul Karakusevic assess Brown's legacy and his influence on social housing design today.Joe Dunthorne, who achieved great success with his debut novel Submarine whilst still in his twenties, talks to John about his third book, The Adulterants. Set in trendy East London it's about a group of thirtysomethings making life choices against a backdrop of the 2011 summer riots.

As part of Radio 4's Reading Europe season, Kirsty Lang explores Turkish literature in Istanbul, talking to leading writers including Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk.Critics Kaya Genc and Nagihan Ibn Haliloglu discuss how the Turkish literary scene compares to our own: what are the bestselling books, and how are writers dealing with the current political situation, given Turkey has imprisoned more writers recently than any other country. Orhan Pamuk on his latest novel The Red-Haired Woman (Radio 4's current Book at Bedtime), and its themes of authoritarianism and the clash between the old and new Turkeys. Since being sacked from her job as one of Turkey's most-read newspaper columnists because of her political views, Ece Temelkuran has concentrated on her career as a novelist, including writing the bestselling Women Who Blow on Knots. Burhan Sönmez, the prize-winning Kurdish writer whose latest novel Istanbul, Istanbul, inspired by his own experience of torture and imprisonment, is about four political prisoners who tell each other magical stories about Istanbul. Why has a little known love story written in 1940 recently topped the Turkish bestseller charts? Filiz Ali talks about her father Sabahattin Ali, who was murdered in 1948 but whose novel Madonna in a Fur Coat has become a publishing phenomenon. The books discussed in our programme are:The Red-Haired Woman, written by Orhan Pamuk and translated by Ekin Oklap Istanbul, Istanbul, written by Burhan Sönmez and translated by Ümit Hussein. Women Who Blow on Knots, written by Ece Temelkuran and translated by Alexander Dawe. Madonna in a Fur Coat, written by Sabahattin Ali and translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe. The Stone Building and Other Places, written by Asli Erdogan and translated by Sevinç Türkkan.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Timothy Prosser.