Presented at court as a debutante in 1930s England, Leonora Carrington brought an Aldous Huxley novel and read it to opt out of the marriage market. This episode follows her from a strict Catholic textile fortune and a Gothic revival mansion in Lancashire, through expulsion from two schools, a first glimpse of surrealism in Paris at age ten, art training in London, and the intense relationship with Max Ernst that took her to a farmhouse in southern France.

We trace how World War II shattered that world: Ernst's arrests as an enemy alien and a degenerate artist, her flight to Spain, a sexual assault by soldiers, a psychotic break, and commitment to a Santander asylum where she was treated with seizure-inducing Cardiazol, later documented in her memoir Down Below. The conversation covers her escape in Lisbon through a marriage of convenience  ...