Front Row: Archive 2011

With Kirsty Lang. Vermeer's Women, a new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, features four works by the Dutch master, including The Lacemaker from the Louvre in Paris, on show in the UK for the first time. Tracy Chevalier, whose novel Girl With A Pearl Earring was inspired by a Vermeer painting, reviews the show. The actor Paddy Considine, known for films including In America, Dead Man's Shoes and Hot Fuzz, has written and directed his first feature film. Tyrannosaur is loosely based on Considine's own father, and stars Peter Mullan as a man plagued by violence and rage, whose life changes when he meets a religious charity shop worker. Paddy Considine discusses the film and the difficulties he faces coping with Asperger's Syndrome, diagnosed last year.Mohammed Hanif, Pakistan-born journalist and writer of the prize-winning A Case of Exploding Mangoes, talks about his new novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, the story of a junior nurse in downtown Karachi. He explains the art of being a sit-down come