BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, welcome to the new series of shortcuts.

I am so, so thrilled to be back.

And today's programme is one to enliven the mind and the spirit

and to make you feel thrilled about the richness of potential that lies all around us. It's dedicated to the artist and writer

Leonora Carrington and the first thing you're going to hear is her own words. She's talking about the

house in England that she grew up in.

She's talking about the house in England that she grew up in. The images are, or the memories rather, because they're memories.

I think of the garden, there was a lake.

We had the myth that it didn't have a bottom.

It was bottomless.

We weren't allowed to go there alone.

And it was surrounded by rhododendrons. Huge bushes, enormous bushes from rhododendrons.

Huge bushes, enormous bushes of rhododendron.

And it was a kind of dark, rather exciting place we liked to go there.

We did think that there was a ghost in the tower.

So we used to want to be taken up to see if we could see the ghost.

And I remember seeing a hand came out and waved.

Very frightening, I remember.

And I remember we once found a bird's skeleton, my brother and myself.

We had a funeral for it, I remember that. Is it a place that's marked you?

I should think so, yes.

...