Front Row - 30/09/2008

Presented by Mark Lawson. The American composer John Adams reflects on a career which has included a life-changing encounter with the music of Wagner while driving, and reveals why he believes that America has yet to produce a composer whose music offers the gravitas of Beethoven or Mahler. Comedian, writer and critic Natalie Haynes reviews the film How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, based on a book by Toby Young, which stars Simon Pegg as an English journalist who hopes to make a name for himself working on a New York magazine. Mark discusses the cartoonist Osbert Lancaster who introduced 'pocket' cartoons to British newspapers in his work for the Daily Express. We hear from writer and curator James Knox, publisher John Murray and cartoonist Charles Peattie, the creator of the Alex cartoon in The Daily Telegraph.