A rip-roaring account of the dramatic four-year siege of Britain’s Mediterranean garrison by Spain and France—an overlooked key to the British loss in the American Revolution For more than three and a half years, from 1779 to 1783, the tiny territory of Gibraltar was besieged and blockaded, on land and at sea, by the overwhelming forces of Spain and France. It became the longest siege in British history, and the obsession with saving Gibraltar was blamed for the loss of the American colonies in the War of Independence. Located between the Mediterranean and Atlantic, on the very edge of Europe, Gibraltar was a place of varied nationalities, languages, religions, and social classes. During the siege, thousands of soldiers, civilians, and their families withstood terrifying bombardments, starvation, and disease. Very ordinary people lived through extraordinary events, from shipwrecks and naval battles to an attempted invasion of England and a daring sortie out of Gibraltar into Spain. Deadly innovations included red-hot shot, shrapnel shells, and a barrage from immense floating batteries. This is military and social history at its best, a story of soldiers, sailors, and civilians, with royalty and rank and file, workmen and engineers, priests, prisoners of war, spies, and surgeons, all caught up in a struggle for a fortress located on little more than two square miles of awe-inspiring rock. Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History is an epic page-turner, rich in dramatic human detail—a tale of courage, endurance, intrigue, desperation, greed, and humanity. The everyday experiences of all those involved are brought vividly to life with eyewitness accounts and expert research.

Forfatteren var britisk guvernør i Gibraltar 1978-1982 og har her skrevet om den berømte halvøs og dens befolknings historie fra de tidligste tider til vore dage.

Since ships first set sail in the Mediterranean, The Rock has been the gate of Fortress Europe. In ancient times, it was known as one of the Pillars of Hercules, and a glance at its formidable mass suggests that it may well have been created by the gods. Sought after by every nation with territorial ambitions in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Gibraltar was possessed by the Arabs, the Spanish, and ultimately the British, who captured it in the early 1700s and held onto it in a siege of more than three years late in the eighteenth century. The fact that that was one of more than a dozen sieges exemplifies Gibraltar’s quintessential value as a prize and the desperation of governments to fly their flag above its forbidding ramparts. Bradford uses his matchless skill and knowledge to take the reader through the history of this great and unique fortress. From its geological creation to its two-thousand-year influence on politics and war, he crafts the compelling tale of how these few square miles played a major part in history.

It is the 24th Century. Humanity is only just beginning to gain a toehold out among the stars. While exploring the New Eden system, the crew aboard Stellar Survey Starship Magellan encounters a pair of alien spacecraft. A skirmish ensues and both sides exit the battle with heavy losses. In picking through the wreckage of one of the alien ships, the human crew stumbles upon a survivor with a fantastic story. The alien hails from a million-star Galactic Empire ruled over by a mysterious race known as the Broa. As masters of this region of the galaxy, they permit no challenge to their empire. But as yet the Broa are ignorant of humanity’s existence. Armed with this vital information, the human race must decide how best to proceed. Do they cease all astral voyages and retreat to their corner of the universe, quaking in fear at the thought of the Broa’s discovery of Earth? Or...do they take a more aggressive approach?

Disaffected, bored with his career at the French Colonial Ministry (where he has copied out birth and death certificates for eight years), and disgusted by a mistress whose vapid optimism arouses his most violent misogyny, the narrator finds himself at the point of complete breakdown while vacationing in Florence. After leaving his mistress and the Ministry behind forever, he joins the crew of The Gibraltar, a yacht captained by Anna, a beautiful American in perpetual search of her sometime lover, a young man known only as the Sailor from Gibraltar.''

In the mid-nineteenth century, as European navies learned to neutralize piracy, new patterns of circulation and settlement became possible in the western Mediterranean. The Deepest Border tells the story of how a borderland society formed around the Strait of Gibraltar, bringing historical perspective to one of the contemporary world's critical border zones. Drawing on primary and secondary research from Spain, France, Gibraltar, and Morocco—including military intelligence files, public health reports, consular correspondence, and travel diaries—Sasha D. Pack draws out parallels and connections often invisible to national and mono-imperial histories. In conceptualizing the Strait of Gibraltar region as a borderland, Pack reconsiders a number of the region's major tensions and conflicts, including the Rif Rebellion, the Spanish Civil War, the European phase of World War II, the colonization and decolonization of Morocco, and the ongoing controversies over the exclaves of Gibraltar, Ceuta, and Melilla. Integrating these threads into a long history of the region, The Deepest Border speaks to broad questions about how sovereignty operates on the "periphery," how borders are constructed and maintained, and the enduring legacies of imperialism and colonialism.

While much has been written about Gibraltar from historical and political perspectives, sociolinguistic aspects have been largely overlooked. This book describes the influences which have shaped the colony’s linguistic development since the British occupation in 1704, and the relationship between the three principal means of communication: English, Spanish and the code-switching variant Yanito. The study then focuses its attentions on the communicative forms and functions of Gibraltarian English. The closing of the border between Gibraltar and Spain (1969-1982), which effectively isolated the colony, had important social and linguistic repercussions. This volume presents the first full account of the language attitudes and identity of a new generation of Gibraltarians, all of whom were born after the border was re-opened. Adopting a variationist approach, this study analyses the extent to which the language use and phonetic realisations of young Gibraltarians differ from those of previous generations and the factors conditioning language variation and change.

A shout of recognition from a young Jewis refugee changes everything. Can the girl's story be trusted? Could Pierre's brother still be alive, and why in Morocco of all places? After all she has done to hurt him, is Jasmyn the only one who can help? Post-war adventure that sweeps to the shores of North Africa and back into southern Europe.

Contemporary life is caught in prisons of identity. Public, academic, and political discourses do not seem to be possible without circling around the topos of identity, thereby creating an illusion of uniqueness, separation, difference, and conflict. By studying the relationship between the Moroccan city of Tangiers and the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, Dieter Haller shows how cross-boundary experiences, practices, and identifications create a sense of neighborhood beyond official discourses. Across the Straits of Gibraltar, local and regional relationships in different fields such as kinship, economy, and culture provide resources for post-Brexit common action and a future beyond the prison of identity.

Clive Finlayson, a native of the Rock and a trained ornithologist, presents a fascinating account of this region and its resident and transitory bird life. The Strait of Gibraltar is famous as a major point of passage for Palaearctic birds migrating between their European breeding grounds and their winter quarters in Africa. The first chapter of the book describes the area, which broadly defined includes the Coto Donana in the north and the Merja Zerga in the south, and the geographic and climatological characteristics which make it a suitable crossing place. In scope this book goes beyond the strict definition of the Strait and, following Irby's 19th Century work, examines the rich area where Europe meets Africa. The chapters which follow describe in detail the migration patterns of the principal passage species including their origins, destinations and overall numbers, showing how the precise conditions of weather and visibility affect the specific choice of route and timing of the crossing. The breeding and wintering bird communities are then considered and the ornithology of the entire region summarized. Whether or not you have ever witnessed the thousands of raptors, storks and other birds that may make this legendary crossing in a single day, this book will conjure the spirit of this extraordinary place. Delightful illustrations by lan Willis complete an important and entertaining book.