That’s Life presenter and founder of the Childline charity Dame Esther Rantzen heads a stellar list of speakers for the 2015 Gibunco Gibraltar International Literary Festival.
Rantzen, pictured left, will talk about her life as one of the most high-profile television presenters in the UK over the last few decades and about her work for Childline and her new charity, the Silver Line.
She also appears at what is expected to be one of the hottest tickets this year – a special festival edition of Just a Minute hosted by Nicholas Parsons and with a panel that also includes well-known comedians and actors Miles Jupp and Marcus Brigstocke and bestselling novelist Felix Francis.
Elsewhere, the festival welcomes historian Dan Jones, who talks on the Magna Carta. Well-known football commentator Guillem Balague, pictured right, talks about his new biography of Cristiano Ronaldo; and world-renowned scientist and writer Professor Frank Close reveals the true story about Harwell physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, who disappeared from Britain’s atomic energy laboratory in Oxfordshire in 1950 only to turn up six years later on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Gibraltar and Gibraltarians are well represented with talks about the artist Turner and Gibraltar by James Hamilton, and about the spy Guy Burgess in Gibraltar by Andrew Lownie. Retired Government Chief Secretary Richard Garcia returns to the festival to talk about his new history of the Gibunco Group.
Also appearing this year are the great nephew of Haile Selassie, Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate, and expert on the Royal Family Ingrid Seward.
Festival favourite Christopher Lloyd also returns with his wallbooks on Shakespeare and the Magna Carta.
Events are now available to book through this website, and more events will be added over the coming days as they are confirmed. A walk-in box office is open at the Gibraltar Garrison Library between 9.30am and 4.30pm.