Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
‘Like many others, I found Leonora Carrington irresistible, beguiling, unique and wonderful’, says Marina Warner in this episode of Fiction and the Fantastic. Marina is joined by Chloe Aridjis to explore the prodigious artist’s fiction, which has attained cult status after her death.
Chloe and Marina knew Leonora Carrington personally, and in this extract they discuss her life and ‘huge personality’.
To listen to this episode in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/applecryt
In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsyt
Further reading in the LRB:
A Leonora Carrington A-Z by Chloe Aridjis:
lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/april/a-leonora-carrington-a-to-z
Edmund Gordon on Carrington’s life and short fiction:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n21/edmund-gordon/save-the-feet-for-later
ABOUT CLOSE READINGS
Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books which looks at different periods and themes in literature through selections of key texts, covering poetry, fiction, history and philosophy from Ancient Greece to the present day.
Find more episodes here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT6dL0t3N1uwntdebUCvXl_JD7K9J8B0K
Subscribe: lrb.me/closereadingsyt
LRB AUDIOBOOKS
Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's 'Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre' and Bee Wilson's 'Complicated Women'.
lrb.me/audiobooksff
ABOUT THE LRB
The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.
‘Like many others, I found Leonora Carrington irresistible, beguiling, unique and wonderful’, says Marina Warner in this episode of Fiction and the Fantastic. Marina is joined by Chloe Aridjis to explore the prodigious artist’s fiction, which has attained cult status after her death.
Chloe and Marina knew Leonora Carrington personally, and in this extract they discuss her life and ‘huge personality’.
To listen to this episode in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:
Directly in Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/applecryt
In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsyt
Further reading in the LRB:
A Leonora Carrington A-Z by Chloe Aridjis:
lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/april/a-leonora-carrington-a-to-z
Edmund Gordon on Carrington’s life and short fiction:
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n21/edmund-gordon/save-the-feet-for-later
ABOUT CLOSE READINGS
Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books which looks at different periods and themes in literature through selections of key texts, covering poetry, fiction, history and philosophy from Ancient Greece to the present day.
Find more episodes here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT6dL0t3N1uwntdebUCvXl_JD7K9J8B0K
Subscribe: lrb.me/closereadingsyt
LRB AUDIOBOOKS
Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's 'Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre' and Bee Wilson's 'Complicated Women'.
lrb.me/audiobooksff
ABOUT THE LRB
The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance.
As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.
