The opening dinner will be prepared with the team at the Caleta Hotel by Matt Tebbutt, the hugely popular presenter of Saturday Kitchen, the weekly food and chat show broadcast on BBC 1.
Matt is also the presenter of Food Unwrapped on Channel 4; has filmed two series of Save Money Good Food with fellow presenter Susanna Reid; and co-presented Market Kitchen on UK TV with Rachel Allen, Tom Parker-Bowles and Matthew Fort. He put his degree in Geography and Anthropology to good use as the host of Kings of the Wild on the Discovery Channel, in which he foraged for food in amazing jungle locations around the world. Matt was trained under culinary greats including Marco Pierre-White, Alastair Little, Bruce Poole and Sally Clarke. For fourteen years, with his wife Lisa, he ran the Foxhunter restaurant in Monmouthshire, where he was known as a passionate exponent of Modern British cooking, using only the freshest locally-sourced ingredients.
Matt has written two cookbooks, Matt Tebbutt Cooks Country and Guilty Pleasures. The closing dinner will be prepared with the team of Bistro Point at the University of Gibraltar by Diana Henry. Diana is an award-winning food writer, journalist and broadcaster. She is the Sunday Telegraph’s food writer and has a column in Stella, the newspaper’s magazine. She also writes a monthly column in BBC Good Food Magazine and writes regularly for House & Garden and Red. Diana was named Cookery Writer of the Year in both 2013 and 2015’s prestigious Fortnum & Mason Food & Drink Awards. She has also three times been awarded ‘Cookery Journalist of the Year’ by the Guild of Food Writers.
Joining the list of participants in the festival is James Attlee who is the author of Guernica: Painting the End of the World. He has written articles and reviews for publications including The Independent, Frieze, Tate Etc., Review 31, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, Artists & Illustrators and others.
In his illustrated talk James Attlee will trace the genesis, creation and complex afterlife of Guernica, its travels across Europe and the Americas and its impact on other artists from the 1930s to today. In 1937, Guernica sounded a warning; that warning, Attlee will argue, is just as relevant today.
Diana Moran may be a familiar face to many on screen but she is also a tireless supporter of the NHS.
The former Green Goddess who was the ultimate fitness guru in the 1980s and is now a member of Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals’ Patient Panel – a group of people who act as the "eyes and ears" of the hospital.
The NHS relies on patient representatives like Diana to help improve the experience for patients, whether it’s in hospital, in community settings or even local GP surgeries. Diana who is nearing her 80th birthday has a deep appreciation of the NHS.
Diana’s presentation will be based on her book written with Muir Gray called Sod Sitting, Get Moving!, that is a guide to staying fit and healthy in your 60s, 70s and 80s. Diana will explain which exercises, stretches and strengthening movements will help with fitness, strength and suppleness and urge everyone to walk more and move more to ensure they are fitter and feel better.
Making a welcome return to present two events is Robert Daws who trained at RADA. His many television credits include Dr Gordon Ormerod in eight series of The Royal. His first crime novella, The Rock, was published in 2012 and made the top of the Amazon Bestseller list five times.
His second Sullivan and Broderick murder mystery, The Poisoned Rock, was published in Sept 2016. His third in the series, Killing Rock, will be available in 2018. His ghost story, Tunnel Vision – also set in Gibraltar, recently became an Amazon No 1 bestseller. An annual participant in the Festival is William Chislett. This year his event will be titled - Question Time with William Chislett - Forty years of Spanish democracy.
This will be the audience’s chance to question William about the history and future of Spanish democracy; and Spain’s reaction to Brexit. William Chislett will speak for 40 minutes, followed by 40 minutes of Q&A.
William Chislett covered Spain’s 1975-78 transition to democracy for The Times and was then posted to Mexico for the Financial Times until 1984. He has lived in Madrid since 1986 and writes about Spain for the Elcano Royal Institute, Spain’s leading think tank, which has published four books of his on Spain. Oxford University Press published in 2013 his book Spain: What Everyone Needs to Know in their well-known series.