Front Row - 09/07/2009

Arts news and reviews with Kirsty Lang. Lynda Nead reviews the BBC2 drama Desperate Romantics which follows the lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as they struggle against the Establishment for fame and fortune. MJ Hyland's last novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her latest novel, 'This Is How', is set in a British seaside town and focuses on a young man unable to understand the world and those around him. Hyland talks to Kirsty Lang about why she wanted to answer the question that is invariably asked when a murder is committed: how did this happen? For his new soundpiece, which was inspired by Darwin, Marcus Coates has used digitally manipulated sounds from everyday life such as the beep of the supermarket checkout, the siren of a police car and the noises of a school playground and mixed them with field recordings of animals and birds. Forty years after the first manned lunar landing, author Andrew Smith and music journalist Kevin LeGendre reflect on the music which formed the soundtrack to the Apollo missions, from the sometimes surprising recordings astronauts chose to take into space, to the impact cosmic exploration had on musicians back on Earth.