Clytemnestra Latakia and Maurice Robertson Carvillo - Mario Sanguinetti
Jorge Russo and Stagnetto - Povedano and Vasquez
Albert J Risso and Joshua A Hassan - Dr Codali and Tobaila
Fernando Cruz Guerrero and Dr James Johnson - Sir Archibald Hunter
Albert Porral and William Sallust-Smith - A W Serfaty and A P Montegriffo
Mary Chiappe and A J Baldorino - Peter Isola and Sir Peter Russo
Solly Serruya and Guy Stagnetto - Louis Triay
John Stewart’s book – Gibraltar, The Keystone - was published in 1967 and was immediately and universally condemned by locals as anti-Gibraltarian. When I read it in the 1980’s I was unaware of this and actually enjoyed reading it. It was the very first book I had ever come across about the Rock in which the Gibraltarians – as against the British - take center stage. As Stewart comments in his acknowledgements:
The social history of Gibraltar, unlike the naval and military, is rarely documented. . . .
John D. Stewart writing The Keystone
However . . . Stewart’s Keystone is not really a history book – it’s a partial autobiography written by a non-Gibraltarian who spent 10 years in Gibraltar as a civil servant during the late 1950 and early 1960s. A Northern Irishman from Belfast he must have been more sensitive to intractable political positions than most. A short Kirkus Media review suggests that the book:
. . . surveys (Gibraltar’s) geology and history since the Moors landed on it twelve hundred years ago, its people, its birds and apes, its government and politics.
True, the book does have separate chapters covering all these headings and others - but it does not have one that deals specifically about its “people”. Instead Stewart simply takes every opportunity throughout to include more than a comment or two about Gibraltar’s inhabitants - often regardless of the topic under discussion. There are very few books about Gibraltar that do that – in fact none before this one as far as I can make out - and for that I have mostly tended to forgive many of his more obvious criticisms.
This view of eastern side of the Rock was used on the cover of the Spanish edition of the Book – Just below the water catchments lies Sandy Bay (see LINK) in the foreground and the village of Catalan Bay further north (See LINK)
Keystone has more than 300 pages – too many to deal with in one go - so I have divided my review into three sections as shown below:
Part 1 – Chapters 1 to 9 (See LINK)
Part 2 – Chapters 10 to 17 (See LINK)
Part 3 - Chapters 18 to 28 (See LINK)