Front Row - 01/06/2009

Critic Matt Thorne reviews Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation, the fourth film in the sci-fi humans versus cyborgs franchise. Poet and editor Alan Jenkins has collected the published and unpublished poems of Ian Hamilton, the founder of The Review magazine and presenter of BBC book series Bookmark from 1984 to 1987. Former Arts minister Grey Gowrie has edited a selected edition of poems by Stephen Spender, the poet friend of WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood who took part in the Spanish Civil War. They discuss their approach to editing these poetry books. On the day Danny La Rue's death is announced, comedian Barry Cryer remembers the cross-dressing cabaret star. Anne Michaels' 1997 debut novel Fugitive Pieces won the Orange Prize and has been translated into more than 20 languages. The film version, starring Stephen Dillane as a man orphaned in the Nazi occupation of Poland, is on release in cinemas around the country just as her second novel, The Winter Vault, is published. Anne Michaels talks to Mark Lawson about the 12-year gap between her two novels, and why she prefers not to talk about herself.