The 8th Gibunco Gibraltar International Literary Festival will be held from 25th-27th November 2022.

A statement from the Government follows below:

Minister for Business and Tourism, the Hon Vijay Daryanani MP, is pleased to announce the following speakers will be present at this year’s festival. 

Raffi Berg 

Raffi Berg is the Middle East editor of the BBC News website and been journalist for 30 years. During his talk he will liftthe lid on the true story of how Israeli secret agents set up a hotel in Sudan in the early 1980s, acting as staff by day and people smugglers by night - all under the noses of the Sudanese authorities and guests. 

Rory Cormac 

Rory Cormac is a professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. He will be talking about his book, The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown from Victoria to Diana. The book uncovers the remarkable relationship between the royal family and the intelligence community, from the reign of Queen Victoria to the death of Princess Diana. 

Matthew Dennison 

Matthew Dennison is the author of ten critically acclaimed works of non-fiction, including the international bestseller, The Queen. In his talk he will explore aspects of the Queen’s life and reign. 

Loyd Grossman CBE 

After starting a career in journalism, he was diverted into television where, as a writer, presenter, or deviser he was involved in a wide range of programmes including Through the Keyhole and MasterChef. Loyd will be discussing his book An Elephant in Rome - Bernini, the Pope, and the making of the Eternal City. 

Jonathan Fenby 

Jonathan Fenby is author of 20 books and a former editor of the Observer in the UK and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. His latest book, Crucible, describes the shaping of the modern world in 1947-8 from Europe to China.

Martin Sixmith 

Author, presenter and journalist, Martin Sixmith will be discussing his book The War ofNerves which probes the psychology of the Cold War years, examining the thinking behind the decisions that were taken and the mistakes that brought the world to the brink of destruction. More than any other conflict,theColdWar was fought on the battlefield ofthe human mind; and,thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its legacy endures in our politics, thoughts and fears. 

Professor Mary Beard 

Mary Beard is one of Britain's best-known Classicists. Mary’s lecture will discuss her book Twelve Caesars - Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern and explore Roman emperors in the modern world and ask why, since the Renaissance, they have remained so important on our cultural map. And it will shine a particular spotlight on the emperor Vitellius who briefly rules in 69 AD. 

Sir Peter Ricketts 

Lord Peter Ricketts was a British diplomat for 40 years. He spent much of his career dealing with international security issues and crisis management. His wide-ranging talk will draw on his book Hard Choices: the making and unmaking of global Britain, to challenge established thinking in Britain about the country’s international role, and argue that international cooperation - including with Britain’s European neighbours - is the surest way to prosper in a dangerous and divided world. 

Nicholas Janni 

Nicholas Janni has devoted his life to the study of human potential. Over the last 20 years he has gained an international reputation for his transformational coaching and leadership development seminars. He will discuss his book Leader asHealer which explores the highestlevels of presence and peak performance leadership, and the cultures that ensue from them, in which well-being, results and contribution to the world are naturally interwoven. 

Alan Johnson 

Alan Johnson was General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union before entering Parliament as Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle in 1997. He served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that, he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor ofthe Exchequer. He will be discussing his new thriller ‘One of Our Ministersis Missing’. 

Maggie Gee 

Maggie Gee OBE ‘s seventeenth book, The Red Children, set partly in Gibraltar and inspired by its Neanderthal history and culture, was published in 2022. Her life has been about telling stories and she always hopes her readers will love her characters, as she does, and to make them laugh, as well. On a trip to Gibraltar a decade ago Maggie discovered about the flora and fauna of the Upper Rock and the extraordinary Neanderthal caves down at sea-level which set her on a path to new knowledge which culminated, in 2022, with her novel The Red Children. 

Patrick Gale 

His seventeen novels include Take Nothing With You (2018), which was his fourth Sunday Times bestseller, Rough Music (2000), Notes From an Exhibition (2007), A Perfectly Good Man (2012) and A

Place Called Winter (2015). He will be discussing his most recent work of fiction, Mother’s Boy, of which a chapter of the story was based in Gibraltar. 

Charlotte Philby 

Novelist Charlotte Philby, the granddaughter of the communist double-agent Kim Philby, talks about her  book Edith and Kim, a fictional retelling of the story of Edith Tudor-Hart, the woman behind the third  man. Kim Philby was introduced to his Soviet handler by Tudor-Hart. Charlotte draws on secret intelligence  files on Tudor-Hart and on the private archive letters of her grandfather to tell the story of the mother, lover,  revolutionary and spy. 

Jess Phillips MP 

In 2015 Jess was elected the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley. She has worked with the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Communities and Local Government on issues of Violence Against Women and Girls. Jess Phillips will be discussing her most recent book The Life of an MP. In her book she lifts the lid on what a career in politics is really like and why it matters. 

Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP 

In 2022, Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP made a return to government as Minister of State for Development  following the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister. Veering from the hilarious to the tragic, Andrew  Mitchell’s tales from the parliamentary jungle make for one of the most entertaining political memoirs in  years in his most recent book, Beyond a Fringe- tales from a Reformed Establishment lackey. 

Alastair Santhouse 

Alastair Santhouse is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital in London. During his talk he will draw on his experience of treating thousands of hospital patients to show how our emotions are inextricably linked to our physical wellbeing. He argues that conventional medical models overlook the most important component of our health – our state of mind. 

Professor Cath Green 

Professor Green specialises in creating vaccines for clinical trials. Her team has been an integral  part of the project to develop a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The  CBF made the first batch of clinical material that was used in Oxford's COVID-19 vaccine trials and  continues to support these trials. Together with Professor Sarah Gilbert, she wrote Vaxxers: The  Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the race against the virus. 

Tickets for all events can purchased at The Gibraltar Garrison Library Box Office or online via  www.buyticket.gi