My father would mark the beginning of a holiday by taking off his watch. Sitting at the table outside the caravan with a view of the sea, he would remove the strap from his wrist and place it firmly on the table, next to a bottle of beer and some…

Towards the end of last year, I co-hosted a writing course with poet, writer and academic Emma Filtness. A collaboration between the LGBTQ+ writing platform Out on the Page and the Modernist Society, the course aimed to inspire works that would then be included in an anthology. …

The cupboard above the top of the stairs, in my grandparents’ Glacis Estate flat, was a dangerous wonder. The shuttered doors were swung open about once a year to get Christmas decorations or a suddenly-remembered blanket. …

On the eve of Gibraltar Literature Week, there was a debate brewing across social media and the local press regarding whether a Gibraltar Literature exists. Which to me and many others is a debate not worth having. Especially those of us who write. We are Gibraltarian. We produce literature. …

I used to work at a famous tea shop on London’s Strand. It’s not far from Gibraltar House. You could argue there’s nothing more English than tea (a story of Empire for another day), so of course the shop was often packed with tourists. And when you’re bilingual, you’re useful…

I’m not sure what compelled me to ask a friend if she had ever visited the Italian Church on Clerkenwell Road. I didn’t even know it existed until a few weeks ago, when bored out of my mind by lockdowns and closures, I decided to walk from Wapping to Bloomsbury…

When I was growing up, we spent our summers in Spain. The first evening of our holidays would often begin in the car, somewhere on Devil’s Tower Road, waiting to cross the border. There were times I remember it taking four hours. Once we got to the relatively enviable position…

My great-uncle Pepe had a friend. His name was Michael. Pepe and Michael lived together, travelled together, and from what I understand now, they loved together too. It was a relationship that spanned decades, probably as long as the ones my grandparents had. But it was Uncle Pepe and Michael…

When you think of sanctuary it’s in slices of jamon, wrapped in wax paper. Bollos out of the oven steaming the thin plastic bag they are kept in. A vanity table with a silver hairbrush, a heavy glass of perfume with an antique diffuser, and a statue of the Virgin…