Front Row: Archive 2013

With Kirsty Lang. A Mormon community in Lancashire provides the setting for The Friday Gospels, a novel by Betty Trask Prize-winner Jenn Ashworth. She was raised as a Mormon until she was a teenager, and she reflects on why she wanted to write about her experience as a British Mormon, when most literature focuses on American Mormon communities. My Mad Fat Diary is a new TV comedy drama series, based on the real life journals of Rae Earl, who recorded her teenage life in Lincolnshire. Stand-up comic Sharon Rooney stars as an overweight 16 year-old, recently released from a psychiatric hospital, and attempting to find a new circle of friends. Writer Grace Dent reviews. Cellist Matthew Barley is celebrating Benjamin Britten's centenary year with 100 concerts and workshops, with a focus on the composer's Third Suite For Cello - written for Rostropovich in 1971. Barley's tour, Around Britten, visits castles, hospices, lighthouses and a cave in the Peak District - as well as concert halls from Orkney to Devon. He t