Podcasts Culture Front Row Stanley Spencer's wives, the damage to culture in Beirut, Angie Cruz

Stanley Spencer's wives, the damage to culture in Beirut, Angie Cruz

Published: Aug. 19, 2020, 7:28 p.m.

The Wives of Stanley Spencer are the subject of a new exhibition Love, Art, Loss at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire. Artist and illustrator Si\xe2n Pattenden reviews.

The explosion in Beirut two weeks destroyed thousands of buildings in the Lebanese city, including many of the art galleries and museums. Sursock Museum Director Zeina Arida and gallery owner Saleh Barakat consider the damage done to the city's culture as well as its infrastructure.

Continuing Front Row's interviews with all the authors shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction,Angie Cruz discusses her novel Dominicana. Ana is a schoolgirl muddling through adolescence on a small farm in the Dominican Republic, but her mother marries her off to a man twice her age, whom she sees as the ticket to America for the whole family. Ana, fifteen, with no English, no money and no autonomy, arrives on a false passport to begin a new life in cold, grey New York.

Presenter Samira Ahmed\nProducer Jerome Weatherald

Image above: Portrait of Patricia Preece, 1933 by Stanley Spencer

(C) Estate Stanley Spencer & Bridgeman Images, London\nCourtesy Southampton City Art Gallery