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Episode details

Radio 4,21 Feb 2012,30 mins

Sue Townsend, Charlotte Keatley, Black Gold

Front Row

Available for over a year

With Mark Lawson. Mark Eccleston reviews Black Gold, a film about warring Arabian tribes during the 1930s oil boom, which was financed by Qatar and stars Antonio Banderas as a desert sheikh and Freida Pinto as a harem charmer. Three decades after publishing the first of her hugely successful Adrian Mole books, Sue Townsend talks about her new novel about modern family life, The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year, and how losing her eyesight has affected her writing process. Charlotte Keatley's play My Mother Said I Never Should is, according to the National Theatre, one of the most significant plays of the 20th Century. Charlotte tells Mark about her latest play, Our Father, and explains why writing a play is like unravelling a dream. Producer Timothy Prosser.

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