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by James Valender (Editor), Stanley Richardson (Author)
One afternoon in February 1935, the Chilean diplomat Carlos Morla Lynch is at home in Madrid with Federico García Lorca, when suddenly the door opens and in comes a fair-haired young Englishman. He has just arrived from London, bearing a letter for Morla Lynch from Manolo Altolaguirre. Before the Chilean can open the letter, the young man presents himself: "I am Stanley Richardson, the greatest English poet alive". After this rather theatrical entrance, Richardson becomes close friends not only with Morla Lynch and Lorca, but also with many of the poets and intellectuals-such as Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre and Pablo Neruda-who form the literary world in which they move. When Richardson returns to London a month later, Morla ponders on this visit in his diary: "What mysterious force allows some individuals-in the space of just a few days-to become part of our world, while others never manage to penetrate inside it?"
Who was this young English poet, who was so well received in Madrid? How did he happen to be there? What sort of relationshp did he develop with the Spanish poets of the day? In an attempt to answer some of these questions, the present book tells the story of a young man from a poor, rural background who wins a scholarship to study Modern Languages at Cambridge University, who publishes poems in 1616, the bilingual poetry magazine edited by Altolaguirre and Concha Méndez in London, who translates the Poema de Mio Cid, who has a brief affair with Cernuda, who is one of the first to translate the poetry of the Generation of 27, and who during the Spanish Civil War works as press secretary in the Spanish Embassy in London, before taking on the role of Secretary of the Arden Society for Artists and Writers Exiled in England. It also tells the story of a talented writer who is sadly killed at the age of 29, when he is just beginning to find his own voice as a poet.
