VOX Gibraltar News - More for the Literary Festival Including a Musical Event

As the 2018 edition nears, more events have been added to the programme, enriching the Festival even further.

Joining the line-up are:

James Attlee who is the author of Guernica: Painting the End of the World; Station to Station, shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2017; among other titles. Alongside his writing career James has worked in publishing, mostly in the field of the visual arts, including for a decade at Tate Publishing in London; as editor at large for the University of Chicago Press in the UK; and as a freelance editor and consultant both in Britain and overseas.

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.

Having recently visited Gibraltar, Pooky Knightsmith returns to the Rock to take part in the Festival. An internationally respected face of child and adolescent mental health, Pooky has a PhD in child mental health from the Institute of Psychiatry, is the author of five books and is the current vice chair of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition. She’s also a Mum of two who works hard every day to win her own battles against PTSD, anorexia, self-harm and depression. Pooky will be talking about all these issues in her event.

Dame Felicity Lott DBE, CBE was born in Cheltenham, read French and Latin at Royal Holloway College, London, and won a scholarship to study singing at the Royal Academy of Music. She made her début at English National Opera in 1975 and her Glyndebourne Festival début in 1977, taking part in almost every subsequent Festival until 1990. She specialises in the operas of Mozart and Strauss and has sung at all the major opera houses of the world and with many great conductors. Her repertoire ranges from Handel to Britten and from Offenbach to Noel Coward.

Dame Felicity will be interviewed by Nick Higham in her event entitled, A Musical Conversation.

Hugo Vickers is well known as a biographer and royal historian. Amongst many books he has written lives of the Queen Mother, Princess Andrew of Greece, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Cecil Beaton, Vivien Leigh and Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough. He is frequently in demand for commentaries on major royal occasions such as the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, also the weddings of the Duke of York, Earl of Wessex, Duke of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex, and the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales and the Queen Mother. He has acted as historical adviser on films including The King’s Speech and Victoria & Abdul (in which he was also an extra), while also attacking the many inaccuracies in The Crown in a small book, published in 2017. He recently edited the acclaimed book, The Quest for Queen Mary.

Hugo Vickers is Chairman of the Outdoor Trust, which puts Commonwealth Walkways into Commonwealth countries, overseas territories and protectorates. He visited Gibraltar in the summer to map out a potential Commonwealth Walkway in Gibraltar. He is also a Deputy Lieutenant for Berkshire.

Hugo will deliver two events, one entitled The Quest for Queen Mary and he will interview Christina Oxenberg.

Christina Oxenberg, or Kristina Karageorgevic, is the award-winning writer/author whose dual identities as half-American and also of Serbian royalty has informed and entertained her audience for decades.

Her latest book, Dynasty - A True Story originally published in Serbian (LAGUNA BOOKS 2015), recounts the Oxenberg/Karageorgevic family history--from the ancestor who Napoleon Bonaparte himself called “the greatest military general,” to her family’s two centuries on the front lines of Serbian politics--bloodshed and all. Dynasty - A True Story won an award from the Serbian Academy of Science & Arts in 2016 and has been translated into seven languages.

Oxenberg’ s bibliography includes Taxi (Quartet Books 1986), a collection of anecdotes from her abundance of bold-type connections, and a roman à clef Royal Blue (Simon & Schuster 1998).

Christina will deliver two events, the first is entitled A True Story, where she will be interviewed by Hugo Vickers and the second will be called Are you a Writer? Take the Challenge, which will be a workshop.

Angus Roxburgh studied Russian and German at Aberdeen University. A distinguished journalist and broadcaster, he was Sunday Times Moscow correspondent (1987-89), BBC Moscow correspondent (1991-97) and BBC Europe correspondent (1998-2005). From 2006- 2009 he was media consultant to the Kremlin, and is now a freelance writer and journalist. He is the author of the acclaimed The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia and was consultant on the award-winning BBC documentaries, The Second Russian Revolution, and Putin, Russia and the West.

His event will be entitled: Moscow Calling: Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent

Gelong Thubten is a Buddhist monk, meditation trainer and author. At the age of 21 he ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, 25 years ago, at Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland. He has spent over six years in intensive meditation retreats, the longest of which was 4 years. Thubten specialises in teaching non-religious mindfulness meditation internationally, in businesses, hospitals, schools, universities, prisons and addiction counselling centres. He works with major clients such as Google, Accenture and LinkedIn, he teaches mindfulness to medical students, and he collaborated with Ruby Wax on her latest book. Thubten has also created a meditation app called Samten, and is currently working on his own book to be published in 2019.

Thubten will deliver two events. The first will be a solo talk about remaining mindful and human in a busy world. The second will be a bespoke talk to pupils of the senior years at school.

Returning to the Festival is Guillem Balague who is the author of Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Barça, Pep Guardiola and A Season on the Brink. A key fixture of Sky Sports’ coverage of Spanish football since 1997, he appears regularly on live match coverage and presents the weekly round-up show Revista de la liga. He is also the UK Correspondent for AS, the Spanish sports newspaper, writes weekly for Yahoo and has a monthly Special Show on Talksport. He is the Director of Football of the English football club Biggleswade United.

At the beginning, and weekly, throughout the 2016-17 season, Guillem Balague was given unprecedented access to the training ground of Tottenham Hotspur, shadowing Mauricio Pochettino and his close circle, to chronicle the words, hopes, aspirations and technical brilliance of this most charismatic of coaches. The result, which includes illuminating observations from assistants and players, is his latest biography, “Brave New World – Inside Pochettino’s Spurs.” It is a fascinating insight into the world of Pochettino and the pressures and challenges of being a leading coach in today’s Premier League.

Guillem will discuss this, and his other works, peppered, as ever, with his usual witty and revealing anecdotes about the “beautiful game” as played at the highest level.

Sophie Andrews is Chief Executive of The Silver Line Helpline, the only free, 24/7 confidential helpline for older people in the UK that she launched nationally in 2013. As well as her paid professional career in the charity sector she has volunteered for the emotional health helpline, Samaritans for over 25 years and was National Chair between 2008-11. She was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours list in December 2017. But Sophie’s life story is a roller coaster ride of emotions and is much more than just her professional achievements.

Sophie will talk about her childhood experiences and how she managed to slowly recover but also pay back to the organisations (like Samaritans) that had helped her along the way. Sophie is now writing a second book which is a novel that once again draws on her life experiences.

Jesus Jimenez Suarez studied in Valencia and Barcelona. He is a professor of Iridology and has been practicing in Natural Medicine for more than thirty years as a specialist in Dietetics and Nutrition. He has a private consultation in La Línea and in Gibraltar. He is also a poet and a writer with several publications published.

The novel that will be presented in this Literary Festival, "El último viaje de Julio Verne", has already been presented at the Cruz Herrera Museum of La Línea and in the literary salons of El Corte Inglés in Malaga, and will soon be presented at the Cervantes Institute in Manchester.

Dr Alison Gardiner is a full time juggler: writer, doctor, mother, regular radio broadcaster, business owner, although the priority order often gets muddled up. She blames her career as an author on her four children; the noise level became almost tolerable if she kept telling them stories; a Scheherazade effect. It worked; she has intact eardrums and achieved relative calm (calm relatives). The Eridor series is epic fantasy threaded with humour; the first two are out, the third is being wrestled into submission.

Alison will deliver an event specifically for children entitled, A Story Building Workshop, which will be a fun interactive session turning a creative spark into brainstorm lightning. She’ll guide you through where inspiration comes from, developing great ideas and how to make them totally terrific.

On the opening day of the Festival there will be an extended event called, An Afternoon with Jane Austen. This will be a performance in two halves of 45 minutes each with a 30 minute interval. Well known actors Adrian Lukis and Caroline Langrishe will perform dialogues from Austen's novels. They will be accompanied by the soprano Rosie Lomas and Harpist Mary Reid.

Caroline Langrishe is probably best known for her roles Charlotte Cavendish in the BBC series Lovejoy, Georgina Channing in Judge John Deed and Marilyn Fox in Casualty. Numerous other television appearances include, Agatha Raisin, Death in Paradise, Midsommer Murders, Pete versus Life, Poirot, Sharpe, The Fortunes of War, Chancer, The Flip Side of Dominic Hide and Anna Karenina.

Soprano Rosie Lomas studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Kate Paterson and graduated in 2011. Rosie was a finalist in the 2015 London Bach Society Competition. Future engagements include revivals of both ENO’s Akhnaten, and Silent Opera’s Vixen and a tour of a staged Messiah with Merry Opera.

Adrian Lukis is probably best known for his portrayal of Mr Wickham, in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. He also played Dr Shearer in the hugely successful series, Peak Practice. Adrian has recently completed filming on Judy, The Voyage of Dr Doolittle, Amundsen and Vera and will soon be seen in Poldark and Bulletproof, and Arthur Miller’s The Price at Bath Theatre Royal.

Mary Reid - With a varied musical appetite, Mary performs as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral harpist, and in the community. Solo performances include at Wigmore Hall, Ripon Cathedral, Isle of Arran Music, the Bowes Museum, Holkham Hall, Hove Music Society, and the Brantwood Young Artist Series as well as at the Moscow Russian Harp Festival. With a passion for chamber music, Mary has recently started giving recitals with soprano Camilla Jeppeson as one half of the Voce47 duo and founded Zamira Duo with violinist Tansy Garrod.