Neruda, Poetry and Green ink: The colour of hope
Perhaps the most important Latin American poet of the 20th Century, Neruda was a Chilean poet as well as a
Not a lot is known about Walter Starkie, the Irish Hispanist, musician, travel writer, who, as the first director of the British Council in Madrid (1940-1976), fostered and preserved relationships between Spain and England at a critical time in the Second World War and at the same time created the “much mythologised subject” of himself.
He was known in Spain as Don Gualterio as a result of being elected President of the World society of Gypsies.
It was after he had published Spanish Raggle-Taggle (1934) and Don Gypsy (1936) and he had become Director of the British Council in Madrid (1940) that he became fully integrated into Spanish society. The endless list of contacts with Spanish writers and artists included Antonio Espina; Gregorio Prieto; Menendez Pidal; Pio Baroja; Camilo Jose Cela and Rodríguez Acosta. Given his personality he would have added many more to this list and made another for Anglo-Saxon writers, artists and politicians.
During his tenure at the British Council he was often linked with the Franco regime but as with his books on Spain, he inclined towards prudence and did not display his political allegiances openly. Whether he was the diplomat supreme as Director or a gregarious British agent, remains an unresolved issue. His flat was used by the British Embassy as a safe house for escaping P.O.W’s and Jewish refugees going to Gibraltar and Lisbon.
Reading Spanish Raggle-Taggle and Don Gypsy are indispensable in the literary canon of travel literature of Spain.
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