One of the "top picks for specialized military history" - California Bookwatch

Gibraltar is not only an archetypal fortress, preserving in its dominating topography and walls, bastions and emplacements a rich testament to extended periods of human conflict, but it is also a unique record of the evolution of the sciences of fortification and associated defensive structures over a period of more than six centuries. Gibraltar has a complex and varied military history, lying as it does at the gateway to the Mediterranean and the meeting points of the continents of Europe and Africa. Its history, always shaped by its unique combination of strategic position and topography, begins in ancient times with successive occupations by Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans. It then passed through Arab, Castilian and Spanish hands, and has been a British possession since 1704. The Rock served as a base for Nelson's fleet in the Napoleonic Wars and, in World War II, for the Royal Navy's Task Force 'H' and as as a vital stopping place for supply convoys plying to and from the East through the Suez Canal and supporting the Allied effort in the Mediterranean Theater. An unprecedented amount of tunnelling took place on Gibraltar, making it a veritable warren that housed aircraft hangars, ammunition stores, hospitals and even a secret chamber (the Stay-Behind Cave) that was to be manned as an observation post in the event of a hostile takeover.

The Fortifications of Gibraltar 1068–1945

Gibraltar: The History of a Fortress

For over 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 diseases. 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.

Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History

Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports

Jewish Heritage in Gibraltar: An Architectural Guide

The Edgar® Award-winning author of "Little Tiny Teeth" returns with his professor of forensics, Gideon Oliver, a.k.a. the Skeleton Detective.

 "No one does it better than Aaron Elkins, ( San Diego Union-Tribune ) and this time, Gideon Oliver will be up on the Rock of Gibraltar, where he'll inspect his oldest bones yet. But a killer's loose…"

Around 25,000 years ago, did the Neanderthal live peacefully with his smarter, handsomer cousin, the Homo sapiens? The answer, recently found in the Rock of Gibraltar, left everyone speechless…

 Buried ceremoniously, high in a cave, lies the skeleton of a human woman, clutching the skeleton of a part-human, part-Neanderthal child. Fascinated, Professor Oliver jumps at the chance to attend a conference near there. But two deaths, possibly murders, have rocked Gibraltar. As Oliver tries to piece things together, he's about to fall for some deadly tricks. After all, unlike the Gibraltar Boy, he's only human…

Uneasy Relations (Gideon Oliver, #15)

Maisie Dobbs returns in a powerful story of political intrigue and personal tragedy: a brutal murder in the British garrison town of Gilbraltar leads the investigator into a web of lies, deceit and danger

Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability—and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father Frankie Dobbs is not getting any younger.

But on a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn’t ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain who warns her, “You will be alone in a most dangerous place,” she disembarks in Gibraltar. Though she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain. 

Yet the danger is very real. Days after Maisie’s arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar’s Sephardic Jewish community, Sebastian Babayoff, is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service. Under the suspicious eye of a British agent, Maisie is pulled deeper into political intrigue on “the Rock”—arguably Britain’s most important strategic territory—and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process. At a crossroads between her past and her future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way.

A Dangerous Place (Maisie Dobbs, #11)

Adolf Hitler's failure to take Gibraltar in 1940 lost him the Second World War. But in truth the formidable Rock, jutting between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was extraordinarily vulnerable. Every day, ten thousand people crossed its frontier to work, spy, sabotage or escape. It was threatened by Spain, Vichy France, Italy and Germany. After the USA entered the war, Gibraltar became General Eisenhower's strategic headquarters for the invasion of North Africa and the battle for the Mediterranean.

Defending the Rock: How Gibraltar Defeated Hitler

Gibraltar’s strategic position at the mouth of the Mediterranean virtually guaranteed that its history would be filled with military and political conflict, and for centuries, it was, as the Rock was fought over by Rome and Carthage, Spain and the Moors, before finally coming under lasting British control in 1704. "Gibraltar: A Modern History" tells the story of the island and its people from that point, showing how an authentic Gibraltarian community arose as the British Empire first grew, then declined. Drawing on and enhancing recent scholarship on the Rock’s history by bringing together extensive archival research and developments in the secondary literature surrounding British Gibraltar, this first twenty-first-century treatment of the Rock’s history will not only augment but in many ways replace older treatments of Gibraltar’s history.

Gibraltar: A Modern History

Just 28,000 years ago, the blink of an eye in geological time, the last of Neanderthals died out in their last outpost, in caves near Gibraltar. Thanks to cartoons and folk accounts we have a distorted view of these other humans - for that is what they were. We think of them as crude and clumsy and not very bright, easily driven to extinction by the lithe, smart modern humans that came out of Africa some 100,000 years ago. 
But was it really as simple as that? Clive Finlayson reminds us that the Neanderthals were another kind of human, and their culture was not so very different from that of our own ancestors. In this book, he presents a wider view of the events that led to the migration of the moderns into Europe, what might have happened during the contact of the two populations, and what finally drove the Neanderthals to extinction. It is a view that considers climate, ecology, and migrations of populations, as well as culture and interaction. 
His conclusion is that the destiny of the Neanderthals and the Moderns was sealed by ecological factors and contingencies. It was a matter of luck that we survived and spread while the Neanderthals dwindled and perished. Had the climate not changed in our favour some 50 million years ago, things would have been very different. 
There is much current research interest in Neanderthals, much of it driven by attempts to map some of their DNA. But it's not just a question of studying the DNA. The rise and fall of populations is profoundly moulded by the larger scale forces of climate and ecology. And it is only by taking this wider view that we can fully understand the course of events that led to our survival and their demise. The fact that Neanderthals survived until virtually yesterday makes our relationship with them and their tragedy even more poignant. They almost made it, after all.

The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived 

Sherlock Holmes in Gibraltar

The Caribbean, 1800. 
 
The spirit of Harry McGann lives on in his son Toby. Protecting Yankee shores from rogue French ships, he’s seen more action in his nineteen years than his father ever saw in a lifetime. 
 
But his destiny is set to diverge from his father’s in more ways than one. A chance meeting with the beautiful Felicity Crown, daughter of British navy-Captain, sets him on a path of reuniting the family with his father’s old foe. 
 
Times have changed, however, and a new threat to American interests stalks the seas. Barbary pirates operating out of Tripoli have cast their net wide over the Mediterranean, disrupting trade, plundering merchant ships and placing men and women into captivity. 
 
When Felicity’s ship is over-run and Felicity herself sold off to harems across North Africa, the war with these pirates becomes deeply personal for Toby. He believes Felicity is alive and he is prepared to cross the sea and the sand to find her. 
 
But Felicity’s cruel masters will not relinquish her without a fight. 
 
The Sea and the Sand is the epic sequel in the McGann saga.

The Sea and the Sand (McGann Saga #2)

A Vision of Battlements is the first novel by the writer and composer Anthony Burgess, who was born in Manchester in 1917. Set in Gibraltar during the Second World War, the book follows the fortunes of Richard Ennis, an army sergeant and incipient composer who dreams of composing great music and building a new cultural world after the end of the war. Following the example of his literary hero, James Joyce, Burgess takes the structure of his book from Virgil's Aeneid. The result is, like Joyce's Ulysses, a comic rewriting of a classical epic, whose critique of the Army and the postwar settlement is sharp and assured. 
The Irwell Edition is the first publication of Burgess's forgotten masterpiece since 1965. This new edition includes an introduction and notes by Andrew Biswell, author of a prize-winning biography of Anthony Burgess.


A Vision of Battlements

The Royal Navy at Gibraltar Since 1900

Gibraltar, 2008.

A counter-terror operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted in Britain's most precious colony. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, and a private defence contractor who is also his close friend. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister's private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.

Cornwall, UK, 2011.

A disgraced Special Forces soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be - or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up?

Summoned by Sir Christopher Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit's beautiful daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service.

If the only thing necessary to the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, how can he keep silent?

A Delicate Truth

This fluent, accessible and richly informed study, based on previously unexplored archival material, concerns the history of Gibraltar following its military conquest in 1704, after which sovereignty of the territory was transferred from Spain to Britain and it became a British fortress and colony. 

Unlike virtually all other studies of Gibraltar, this book focuses on the civilian population. It shows how a substantial multi-ethnic Roman Catholic and Jewish population derived mainly from the littorals and islands of the Mediterranean became settled in British Gibraltar, much of it in defiance of British efforts to control entry and restrict residence.

With Gibraltar’s political future still today contested this is a matter of considerable political importance. "Community and Identity" will appeal to both a scholarly and a lay readership interested particularly in the ‘Rock’ or more generally in nationality and identity formation, colonial administration, decolonization and the Iberian peninsula.

Community and Identity: The Making of Modern Gibraltar since 1704

The great siege of Gibraltar was the longest recorded in the annals of the British army. Between 1779 and 1783 a small British force defended the Rock against the Spanish and the French who were determined take this strategically vital point guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean. The tenacity and endurance shown by the attackers and defenders alike, and the sheer ingenuity of the siege operations mounted by both sides, make the episode an epic of military history, and the story gives us a fascinating insight into the realities of siege warfare. In this, the first full study of the siege for over 40 years, James Falkner draws on a wide range of contemporary sources to tell the exciting tale of a huge and complex operation.REVIEWS ..".the first full study of the siege in over 40 years, drawing on accounts written by British soldiers who took an active part in the operations and on later studies."Book News does a wonderful job in describing a portion of that history during the Napoleonic Wars uses a number of contemporary sources to tell the story of the Rock, including not only military and naval but civilian as well; they suffered as much, if not more, than the soldiers and performed their part in its defense an important addition to the literature of the Napoleonic Era Past in Review Weekly"

Fire over the Rock: The Great Siege of Gibraltar, 1779-1783

This book provides a detailed study of the attempts that have been made by Spain, to regain the sovereignty of 'the Rock', despite the wishes of the Gibraltarians.

Gibraltar: British or Spanish?

As 1941 draws to a close, brave young men are fighting for freedom in countries across the globe. But for Sub-Lieutenant Harry Gilmour, washed up in neutral Spain alongside ‘interned belligerents’ from both sides of the war, hostilities have come to a pause.Before long, his unlikely comrades must once again become his enemies, and he is back at the frontline of the battle for the Mediterranean. But aboard the submarine HMS "Umbrage", operating in the waters off Malta, Harry is soon reminded that allies can be more dangerous than foes. When his volatile skipper is lost at sea, it falls to Harry to take charge of the boat—and of the lives of the men who now depend on him.Ashore, there is another lesson: how war drives its wedge between more than just nations. Shirley is waiting for him back in Scotland, but the world offers many distractions for a young man…As Malta is besieged from the air and home seems ever further away, Harry must summon all his courage not only to stay alive—but also to forge in himself the nerve and the wisdom necessary to shoulder the responsibility of command.

Turn Left for Gibraltar (Harry Gilmour, #3)

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.

Language Change and Variation in Gibraltar

The principal argument in Gibraltar and Empire is that Gibraltarians constitute a separate and distinctive people, notwithstanding the political stance taken by the government of Spain. Various factors - environmental, ethnic, economic, political, religious, linguistic, educational and informal - are adduced to explain the emergence of a sense of community on the Rock and an attachment to the United Kingdom. A secondary argument is that the British empire has left its mark in Gibraltar in various forms - such as militarily - and for a number of reasons. Gilbraltar and Empire's exploration of the manifold reasons why the Gibraltarians have bucked the trend in the history of decolonization comes at a time when the issues in question have come to the fore in diplomatic and political areas.

Gibraltar Identity and Empire

The story of Gibraltar is one of siege, starvation, plague, and battles interspersed with periods of peace. The colony's civilian population is made up of a rich and complex racial mix of exiled Jews, French royalists, Maltese merchants, emigrants from India, and Genoese fishermen who fled Napoleon. This history provides the background to a unique community and a chronicle of a remarkable chapter in British military history. Even now, the future of the tiny territory is still uncertain. An important RAF base, it is a fragment of Britain's imperial past set uneasily in the territory of a fellow member of the European Union apparently eager to reclaim it. Gibraltar's dramatic history is far from over.

Gibraltar: Conquered by No Enemy

Since 1945 Gibraltar's sovereignty has repeatedly been questioned. A strategic possession overlooking Africa at the mouth of the Mediterranean, Gibraltar is the victim of both history and geography and continues to be the barometer of Anglo-Spanish relations. Arguing that Gibraltar has played a much more proactive role in negotiations than is assumed, the book describes the objectives and actions of the Gibraltarians against the wider map of Anglo-Spanish relations.

Gibraltar

The Fortifications of Gibraltar 1068–1945

Darren Fa

Gibraltar: The History of a Fortress

Ernle Bradford

Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History

Roy A. Adkins

Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports

Mark Fainaru-Wada

Jewish Heritage in Gibraltar: An Architectural Guide

Helena M. Tomko

Uneasy Relations (Gideon Oliver, #15)

Aaron Elkins

A Dangerous Place (Maisie Dobbs, #11)

Jacqueline Winspear

Defending the Rock: How Gibraltar Defeated Hitler

Nicholas Rankin

Gibraltar: A Modern History

Chris Grocott

The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived

Clive Finlayson

Sherlock Holmes in Gibraltar

Sam Benady

The Sea and the Sand (McGann Saga #2)

Christopher Nicole

A Vision of Battlements

Anthony Burgess

The Royal Navy at Gibraltar Since 1900

Tito Benady

A Delicate Truth

John le Carré

Community and Identity: The Making of Modern Gibraltar since 1704

Stephen Constantine

Fire over the Rock: The Great Siege of Gibraltar, 1779-1783

James Falkner

Gibraltar: British or Spanish?

Peter Gold

Turn Left for Gibraltar (Harry Gilmour, #3)

David Black

Language Change and Variation in Gibraltar

David Levey

Gibraltar Identity and Empire

E.G. Archer

Gibraltar: Conquered by No Enemy

Marc Alexander

Britain, Spain and Gibraltar 1945-1990: The Eternal Triangle

D.S. Morris