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Family history reads with Karen Clare

GIBRALTAR: THE GREATEST SEIGE IN BRITISH HISTORY by Roy & Lesley Adkins

Husband-and-wife historians Roy and Lesley Adkins, authors of several acclaimed books on naval and social history, have turned their able hands to cover a major but often forgotten event in Britain’s past – the Siege of Gibraltar, which took place between 1779-1783 and very nearly led to the invasion of England itself.

An overspill from the American War of Independence, this extraordinary military bombardment saw the united forces of Spain and France laying siege to the tiny British territory of Gibraltar, which was a place of varied nationalities, languages, religion and social classes. Thousands of British soldiers, civilians and their families endured more than three-and-a-half years of terrifying attacks from huge floating enemy batteries, as well as starvation and disease. It became the longest siege in British history and the obsession with saving Gibraltar was later blamed for the loss of colonies in the war with America, as Britain ploughed warships and troops into preventing the rocky peninsula falling back into the hands of Spain.

The Adkins have used official and eyewitness accounts from archives, including from private journals, manuscripts, letters and newspapers, to uncover the dramatic human stories behind this terrible conflict; the experiences of individual civilians and their families, soldiers, sailors, prisonersof- war, priests, and more. This is a fascinating insight, not only into the history of Gibraltar and its relations with Spain, but also of the impact the conflict had back in Britain, which experienced a new wave of patriotism against its European neighbours. Under constant fear of invasion (an invading enemy fleet was actually scuppered by bad weather, disease and poor supplies on board), militia and fencible ‘home guards’ sprang up across the nation.