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Episode details

Radio 4,04 Aug 2017,30 mins

Irvine Welsh's Performers, Bookshop economics, England Is Mine, CN Lester on Stone Butch Blues

Front Row

Available for over a year

Irvine Welsh discusses Performers, a new one-act play he has co-written with Dean Cavanagh about the '60s cult film Performance. Directed by Donald Cammell and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, it starred James Fox and Mick Jagger. Welsh's play dramatises the casting process in which East End criminals were sought for the villain roles. When James Daunt became Managing Director of the bookshop chain Waterstones in 2011, the company was receiving £27m per year selling its window space and high-profile in-store locations to publishers who wanted greater visibility for their books. He immediately stopped the practice, but what were the repercussions? James Daunt and Will Atkinson, Managing Director of Atlantic Books, discuss bookshop economics and the role of the 'recommendation'. Morrissey's early years get the rock-star biopic treatment in the film England Is Mine. Anita Sethi reviews. For Front Row's Queer Icons series, singer-songwriter and LGBTI rights activist CN Lester chooses Leslie Feinberg's semi-autobiographical novel Stone Butch Blues, a coming-of-age story about Jess Goldberg, who challenges sexual and gender definitions in a pre-Stonewall America. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Edwina Pitman.

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