Preview: The New Book From Mary And Bryan Talbot – ‘Armed With Madness, The Surreal Leonora Carrington’

by Richard Bruton

With art by the legendary Bryan Talbot, one of the true greats of British comics, Armed With Madness sees Mary M. Talbot take a fascinating look at the feminist icon and influential Surrealist.

After collaborating together on Dotter of her Father’s Eyes (2012), Sally Heathcote: Suffragette (2014, with Kate Charlesworth), The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia (2016), and Rain (2019), Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot‘s latest work is the biography of the influential surrealist painter and feminist icon, Leonora Carrington.

The book comes out on 28th April in the USA and 11th May in the UK.

Here’s the PR from SelfMadeHero for a book that looks as good as it sounds…

“Reluctant muse and feminist champion… society heiress and rebel refugee… the last of the Surrealists: Leonora Carrington played many roles in her long and extraordinary life. Renouncing her privileged upbringing in pre-war England for the more exciting elite of Paris’s 1930s avant-garde, she comes to rub shoulders (and more) with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Salvador Dalí, after embarking on a complicated love affair with Max Ernst. But the demons that have both haunted and inspired her work are gathering, and when the world goes mad with the outbreak of war and the Nazi invasion, Leonora’s own hold on reality collapses into a terrifying psychotic episode of her own.

Eventually fleeing war-torn Europe, she emerges into a new and richly creative life in Mexico City, establishing herself as a prodigious painter, writer, and advocate of women’s rights. This new work by the acclaimed partnership of Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot celebrates the life and career of a truly remarkable woman – and artist.”

Professor Mary M. Talbot is an academic turned graphic novelist with four successful and critically acclaimed graphic novels to her name before this one, including Dotter of her Father’s Eyes (with Bryan Talbot), which won the 2012 Costa Biography Award.

Bryan Talbot, or Dr Bryan Talbot now that he’s been awarded both Doctorates in Arts and in Letters, as well as being a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, is one of the finest graphic novelists alive today. His ground-breaking work, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright revolutionised what comics could be, whilst his subsequent works, including The Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland, and the Grandville series, as well as illustrating the books written by his wife Mary, have been perennial entries on comic lovers bookshelves for many years (mine included).

Before we give you a preview, here’s the trailer for Armed With Madness, directed and edited by Jordon Smith with music composed by Gary Lloyd. Smith’s worked with Talbot before, creating the cover to Talbot’s Alice In Sunderland, based on Talbot’s pencilled rough. Lloyd’s work includes providing music for a magnificent version of Brought to Light, narrated by Alan Moore, works with author Iain Banks, and founded the dance theatre company, Company Carpi, with Bettina Carpi, with work including When You Light A Candle, You Also Cast A Shadow that features a poetry cycle by Mary Talbot, and the work in progress adaptation of the Talbot’s Dotter of her Father’s Eyes into an opera/dance production.