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Comedian Angela Barnes is the new host of Radio 4’s stalwart show The News Quiz. Fresh from recording the first episode of the new series, we ask how they’re keeping it funny when the only story is a deadly virus, and what it’s been like making the show under lockdown when there’s no audience to laugh at your jokes.

When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Women’s Prize-winning novelist and games writer Naomi Alderman was in the middle of a new writing project. The subject? A piece of speculative fiction about a global pandemic. Alderman joins us to talk about the dilemmas a novelist faces when unpublished work is overtaken by real events.

John Mullan on the delights of Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen's first published novel, that juxtaposes pain and pleasure to powerful effect.

And how the physical qualities of viruses are re-created by two very different artists: Luke Jerram – the latest in his Glass Microbiology series of glass sculptures is a replica of Covid 19 - and the political cartoonist Martin Rowson. They talk to Front Row about the terrible beauty of viruses and the human attributes we project onto them.

Image: Covid-19 glass sculpture by Luke Jerram
Image credit: Luke Jerram

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Sarah Johnson