Front Row - 25/11/2008

Presented by John Wilson. Historian Tom Holland reviews a new two-part series, After Rome: Holy War and Conquest, presented by Boris Johnson. Filmed before Johnson became Mayor of London, the programme investigates the early beginnings of what some people now call the clash of civilisations between Christianity and Islam. John meets award-winning British R&B singer Estelle. Her single with Kanye West, American Boy, topped the UK charts earlier this year. The Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist Art Spiegelman is best known for Maus, his comic book treatment of the Second World War. Now he is publishing Breakdowns, a facsimile reprint of his rare collection of conceptual strips from the 1970s. As they prepare to travel to a festival looking at the impact of the economic crisis on art, John meets Gavin Turk and Jane Simpson, who have transformed a horsebox into a gallery-cum-studio-cum- performance space, in which they will be displaying and selling art works from their House of Fairy Tales project.