The Guardian on Pablo Neruda

["After the end of the Spanish civil war he saved the lives of 2,000 Republicans by shipping them out to Chile in an old fishing boat. He spent a year in hiding from his own country's tyrannical president, Gabriel González Videla, and risked death in a daring horseback escape across the Andes. His three years in exile in Europe included a successful flight from the Italian authorities by gondola in Venice. Back in Chile, he was nominated as candidate for the presidency, only to stand down in favour of Salvador Allende."]

["Born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto on July 12, 1904, he changed his name at the age of 16 to Pablo Neruda - probably in homage to the great Czech writer Jan Neruda. He was 20 when the book which first made his name, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, was published. He continued to write poetry while working as a junior diplomat."]

["After desolate consular postings in the Far East, he was transferred in 1933 to Argentina, where he became a close friend of Lorca, and then to Spain the following year. It was Lorca's murder in August 1936 that pushed Neruda into deciding it was worth compromising his diplomatic position by supporting the Republican side.

["He started writing his great hymn to the victims of the Spanish civil war, " España en el corazón " (Spain in My Heart), in which he clearly laid down his commitment to social and political justice."]