Aug 13 -Art And Politics Top The Bill For This Year's Gibunco Literary Festival
Details of the prestigious authors and speakers who have confirmed their participation in the 3rd edition of the Gibunco Gibraltar International Literary Festival have now been released.
The festival is scheduled for the weekend of November 12-15 2015.
The full programme will be available in September when the website will go live, and tickets go on sale.
Over the past two years the Gibunco Gibraltar International Festival has become one of the most outstanding literary festivals in the English speaking world, featuring distinguished novelists, historians, biographers, food writers and public figures from Britain, the USA, North Africa and Asia.
The festival will again be based at the Garrison Library and other historic venues around Gibraltar.
This year the festival will run for four days (as opposed to three days in 2013 and 2014) and the festival bookshop at the Garrison Library will be open for six days from Wednesday 11 to Monday November 16.
The Schools' Festival will once more be staged over two days - Thursday 12 and Friday 13 November in association with the Department of Education.
Among the highlights will be a talk by art historian and acclaimed JMW Turner biographer James Hamilton entitled ‘Turner in Gibraltar,’ and another by author Andrew Lownie on his new book ‘Stalin’s Englishman’ a biography of Soviet spy Guy Burgess.
There will also be contributions from Professor Andrew Lambert on Gibraltar’s Royal Navy role during World War II and by Andrew Chislett, veteran English journalist, author and expert on the Spanish transition to democracy. Mr Chislett will give a talk entitled ‘Spain Forty Years after Franco'.
A full programme for schools and a panel discussion on Brexit – Britain’s possible exit from the EU and its potential implications for Gibraltar – chaired by Dr Charles Powell, King Juan Carlos I of Spain’s biographer, are also planned. Dr Powell is the current director of the Instituto Elcano think-tank.
Minister for Tourism, Equality, Social Services and Housing, Samantha Sacramento MP, said she was delighted that the literary festival has again secured an impressive field of world- class speakers.
She adds: “The Gibunco Gibraltar International Festival is going from strength to strength with each successive edition. The varied and exciting programme includes culture, art, politics, gastronomy and history. I am confident the talks will appeal to a wide cross section of the community.
“The literary festival has become an important part of Gibraltar’s cultural calendar and forms part of the Gibraltar Government’s event-led tourism policy which we have worked hard to promote, and which has proved such a success in opening up the Rock as a major cultural venue to the rest of Europe.
“We are looking forward to a third edition which has been made possible through the close collaboration of the Gibraltar Tourist Board, with the support of the Ministry for Culture, and in partnership with other key stakeholders in the private sector.”
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