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Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

Book of the Week: The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington

Juliet Stevenson

Joanna Moorhead

Sara Davies

Alexa Moore

Book of the Week: The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington: Episode 4

The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington, Episode 4

The artist suffers a mental breakdown and ends up in an asylum in Madrid.

The artist suffers a mental breakdown and ends up in an asylum in Madrid, where an extreme form of treatment is practised.

Leonora Carrington, born in 1917, was the last surviving member of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. A prodigious painter and writer, she was caught up in some of the most exciting - and most terrible - events of the 20th century. Joanna Moorhead tells the remarkable life story of her father's cousin.

At the age of 17, Leonora Carrington rejected her upper class English upbringing and her family, in favour of the bohemian life of an artist, first in London and then Paris. She became the lover and muse of Max Ernst, and friend of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many other creative geniuses. Soon after the outbreak of the war however, she suffered a mental breakdown and ended up in an asylum in Madrid. She eventually escaped war-torn Europe by marrying a Mexican, which enabled her passage to New York, and from there she journeyed to Mexico where she lived out the rest of her life.

Mexico is where Joanna Moorhead went to find Leonora in 2006. During Joanna's childhood, all she knew was that her father's cousin had been a wild child who had caused the family no end of trouble and "simply flounced off into the sunset". But this first visit of many was the start of a life-changing friendship. During days of talking and reading, of drinking tea and tequila, of going for walks and eating in local restaurants Leonora told Joanna her amazing life story. 

This book is the story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the relationship between two women. And it's about Surrealism as Leonora lived it - a way of approaching the world in a spirit of constant curiosity, with the desire to work out, if not the answers, then at least some of the questions.

Read by Juliet Stevenson
Written and introduced by Joanna Moorhead
Abridged by Sara Davies
Directed by Alexa Moore

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Joanna Moorhead's biography of her father's cousin, the surrealist artist and writer.

Joanna Moorhead tells the remarkable life story of her father's cousin, surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington.

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