The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

Backlisted

Backlisted Podcast

Hobbies, Leisure, Books, Arts

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Leonora Carrington's charming and surreal novel The Hearing Trumpet (1976, probably) is the subject of this episode. Joining Una, Andy and Nicky is author and lecturer Dr Paul March-Russell, who offers insights into all aspects of Carrington's career. Leonora Carrington lived a long and extraordinary life; we discuss the ways in which her biography intersects not just with her books, but her remarkable paintings and sculptures, which at auction now fetch tens of millions of dollars. How did the daughter of a Lancashire industrialist become first a muse to the Surrealists, and then an artist in her own right, whose visionary work will probably outlast theirs? How did the many challenges she faced - institutional, sexist, financial and health - shape her writing? And why, as Paul suggets, is Leonora Carrington so relevant to young artists today? Point your hearing trumpets at wherever you get your podcasts. On Mon 27th Oct 2025, Backlisted is recording a show at 92NY in New York, on William Maxwell at the New Yorker. Tickets are available now from https://www.92ny.org. On Wed 29th Oct 2025, we are recording a second show at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, NYC, a special episode on books by Bob Dylan, including Tarantula and Chronicles Vol. 1. Tickets are available now from https://bitterend.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books.
0:30.1	The book featured on today's show is The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, first published, sort of, in 1976 in both the UK and the US.
0:42.2	I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously and Inventry, an unreliable guide to my record collection.
0:50.2	I'm Dr. Una McCormack, Target Books author and associate fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge.
0:56.9	And I'm Nikki Birch, the producer and editor of Backlisted, and I'm excited to say,
1:02.1	to celebrate 10 years of us podcasting about old books, Backlist is going to New York.
1:08.0	Yes, for the first time ever, we're touring the States because two dates is
1:11.8	definitely a tour. We will be celebrating Maxwell's work via his own novels and short stories,
1:17.8	plus those of writers he championed, including John Cheever and J.D. Salinger, who we haven't
1:23.6	discussed on that listed before, and Elizabeth Taylor and Sylvia Townsend Warner,
1:29.0	who we discussed repeatedly. And we'll be discussing those authors with the help of two
1:34.9	perfect guests, Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of The New Yorker, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning
1:40.9	novelist Jennifer Egan, an old friend of backlisted. And for what it's worth,
1:47.1	in addition to 2025 marking the 10th anniversary of Backlisted, it's also the 100th anniversary of the New Yorker.
1:56.8	But wait, but wait, this is a tour.
2:04.6	I mean, not quite a never-ending tour because it's only two dates, but nevertheless, on Friday the 29th of October, and I can hardly believe I'm saying this,
2:10.2	backlisted will be live at the bitter end in Greenwich Village,
2:15.3	where we will be recording a special episode on books by
2:20.5	Bob Dylan. Yes, it's finally happening. We are going to be covering Tarantula, writings and
2:30.8	drawings, Chronicles Volume 1, the weird little parable on the back cover of John
2:36.4	Wesley Harding, and possibly even if rumours are to be believed in it's published in time,
2:42.3	Chronicles Volume 2. And not for nothing, but October the 29th, 2025 is the 9th anniversary
	...

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