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Episode details

Radio 4,20 Mar 2012,30 mins

The Hunger Games; Kensington Palace; Paul Weller on beat poetry

Front Row

Available for over a year

With John Wilson. The film The Hunger Games, based on the best-selling book by Suzanne Collins, is set in a future dystopia in which young people are forced to kill each other as entertainment. Antonia Quirke gives her verdict. Kensington Palace is about to re-open to the public after a multi-million pound transformation, including an exhibition about Queen Victoria in the apartments in which she grew up. Writer and biographer A N Wilson reviews. The BBC's new talent show The Voice begins this weekend, in which the judging panel cannot see the contestants when they first appear, relying only on what they hear. Pop critic Kitty Empire and James Inverne, former editor of Gramophone magazine, consider whether image plays too great a role in musical success. Poet Michael Horovitz, who is now in his late 70s, has written a new long poem, commissioned by Paul Weller for the cover of his new album Sonik Kicks. They discuss the energy of beat poetry, and the relationship between poems and song lyrics. Producer Timothy Prosser.

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