Gibraltar, Keats and Hampstead Heath

 

Keats House on World Book Day 2026

It's something unexpected to find a piece of Gibraltar in Hampstead Heath, that little, somewhat exclusive, quintessentially English piece of London. It was also unexpected for it to be so warm and sunny on that March afternoon that I was down to t-shirt and jeans and wishing I'd worn sandals instead of trainers and that I'd left my jacket at home.

On 23rd March this year, World Book Day, I managed to get hold of a couple of tickets to attend a poetry salon at Keats' House. The famous Romantic poet, John Keats, had lived there from about 1818 to 1820. It was at this rather lovely house that Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale, the subject of rather frustrating homework assignments when I was at school decades ago now, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci, one of my favourite poems, possibly in my top ten depending on my mood.

Just being in Hampstead Heath, a far cry from the Medway Towns, where I lived for many years, let alone from Gibraltar, I felt a little out of place, or, as my daughter, who had come along with me, put it: 'it's a far cry from Varyl Begg, no?' Nice spot, though, Hampstead Heath, if you don't mind emptying your bank account for a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

Then we meandered into Keats' House, which was basking in glorious sunshine and framed in spring blossoms, walking, almost literally, into Gabriel Moreno, otro llanito, who was reading from his latest collection of poems at the Salon and treating us to some of his songs. 

It was a wonderful afternoon, filled with poetry, books, sunshine and wine (where there are good books, may there always be good wine), and music. Gabriel sang to us, treated us to a performance of the song I've Never Loved Before, the lyrics as yet unpublished and written by Leonard Cohen, put to music by Gabriel Moreno. A beautiful song, the lyrics, as expected of Cohen, profound and touching, and brought to life by Moreno's delicate musical touch.

(This is Ruth Irwin reading some of her poetry)

For me, though, it was the readings from Gabriel's book Gibraltar, that touched me most deeply. Presented by both Gabriel and the book's translator and publisher, Rafael Peñas Cruz, the readings filled this colonial English house with the sounds and rhythms of Gibraltar: el whisky con cola, and la Heineken, and el agua te traga si no te espabila of the llanito sonnet, Marlboro Man, to quote from just one. I lost a cousin to el estrecho many years ago: desaparecido el y su lancha. It was moving, here, at the heart of London, at the core of the colonial power that tried so hard to extinguish our language and reshape our Gibraltarian identity, for our language, experiences and existence to be acknowledged and applauded. Se me vino una lagrima al ojo, de verdad, and that doesn't happen often.

Gabriel Moreno and Rafael Peña Cruz reading from Gibraltar

To quote from Gabriel's poem, The Day I read at Keats' House, also in the collection, Gibraltar:

"You see, when I was growing up

 I was told poems were for posh folk.

        I recall reading Keats and thinking;

        What if I am never good enough?......

"I shall allow the dryad to answer;

        Hop on my wings, to mossy ways,

        our tongues will unravel England.

        Today is a perfect day to change." 

            

My Language and I

I was leafing through The Haw Lantern by Seamus Heaney again this morning over breakfast. Yes, I read poetry over breakfast sometimes and it beats checking my phone and getting caught up with emails and the utter rubbish spewed out on social media. 

Anyway, back to Heaney, I read A Peacock's Feather which Heaney wrote for his niece, Daisy Garnett, in 1972. In it he talks about her christening in Gloucestershire and ponders his background and hers being so different; hers orderly, almost courtly, and his, in another country, rougher, and he talks of how he has modified himself to fit into her world:

I come from scraggy farm and moss,

Old patchwork that the pitch and toss

Of history have left dishevelled.

But here, for your sake, I have levelled

My cart-track voice to garden tones,

Cobbled the bog with Cotswold stones.

(from The Haw Lantern by Seamus Heaney, Faber and Faber (London) 1987)

It is rare I read Heaney without something resonating and this passage has been hanging around in my head all day. In Gibraltar, we have just celebrated another National Day and the city and its people have been festooned in red and white - clothes, bunting, flag, banners, shop window displays, you name it, there's a red and white version of it - but this poem got me thinking: where do we come from, when we say we are from Gibraltar?

As a people, Gibraltarians talk proudly, and rightly so, of the Rock, of its centuries' old fame for impregnability in the face of conflict, of holding fast, physically and metaphorically, to its values. We are proud of much of our history although this is more often than not the white-washed version passed down to us by our British imperial masters, written in their language, using their terms, their memories. It has only been in relatively recent years, that a Gibraltarian culture and identity has begun to emerge. Even then, it is still seen by many people outside of Gibraltar as "Britain in the sun" because we cling onto our Britishness as if that was the only thing worth holding on to, or we are looked at as Spanish but trying to be British, or as nothing of any importance at all, some kind of mongrel race that is neither here nor there, or this or that.

So, having pondered that passage by Heaney and having spent a couple of days at the University of Basel immersed in matters of language and Gibraltarian literature with acadmics and writers from across Europe (link to information below), I took to thinking about what we do as Gibraltarians with our voices.

 Language and speech is how we communicate with others and how we speak, the sound of our words, the tone of voice, in fact, everything about speech is as revealing about us as individuals and as a culture as our flag and our British post boxes and our delight in churros in the morning and calamares fritos en el bar en Eastern Beach por la tarde. We know that regional accents tell us about where people are from in a country and if in England, then whether the person speaks with received pronunciation tells us a lot about their social class, or their aspirations to a higher class (this is a very British thing, class) or even their level of education.

Gibraltarians and their Language

Gibraltar International Conference 3 in Basel

Do we make changes when we speak when we encounter people from other cultures, I wonder? In Gibraltar, do we 'cobble the bog' of our speech? I think the answer is 'yes, we do.' I have listened to Gibraltarians in Spain trying to pronounce the ends of the words (we don't do that in Gib that much and nor do Andalucians). It sounds awkward. I find myself trying to do it, especially hardening the 'r' and putting the 'th' (I do not have a clue about phonetics, so any linguists reading this, please forgive me) in the right place in a word. I end up battling with my own tongue and giving up. Or not speaking at all, which is a poor option - every attempt at speaking someone's language is a sign of respect for them. Much better to speak in Llanito and explain the odd, errant word that is unique to Llanito (I spell it with a 'll" and am not going to argue about it!) than get into a muddle trying to be something that I'm not.

Same with the speaking of English. I have an English accent having lost my llanito accent as a child growing up in England. It was jolly handy because the racist bullies were mercilessly picking on me because I had a sing-song intonation to my voice and added 'bueno' at the start of most sentences and ended them with 'no'. I double-cobbled my own bog with south-east England tarmac.

Then there's also the matter of tone and pitch. I find Gibraltarians are loud. Seriously, if excited, we are endearingly but 'hurt-the-ears' loud. I missed that effervescence of speech when I lived in England but I made sure that I toned down my propensity to arm waving and volume increase when overly enthusiastic about a conversation; in a girls' grammar school of the seventies, all that continental passion simply 'would not do'. 

I wonder if I should have just been myself. I'm neither English in England, and, after over thirty years away, I am not particularly Gibraltarian in Gibraltar, and it is through language and the way I speak that my identity, or lack of it, generates assumptions in others. This is why I found the linguistic biographies collected in Gibraltarians and their Language published by the University of Vigo last year so enthralling and instructive. Language and how we use it in Gibraltar is fascinating, in particular the cultural and sociological connotations that are exposed when we speak it, and it is hugely reveealing about us as a people and about how we are evolving as a culture. 

These days, the attempt at rescuing our language from oblivion is gathering pace. There is a good deal of information online and the push for accepting greater use of llanito, of using it to write and produce literature is gathering pace. Just check out the work of poets Gabriel Moreno, Giordano Durante and Jonathan Teuma just for starters, and others, such as Rebecca Calderon with her landmark introduction of 'Bloomsday' in Gibraltar, are showing the world that small as we are, we do have a place in the world of literature. 

I do not come from a 'scraggy farm and moss', I come from a 'craggy land of rock, battlefield that the pitch and toss of stormy sea has left dishevelled, but here, for your sake, I have levelled my fish-wife voice to subtler tones, smothered the self, betrayed my bones'.

Not having a clear identity, not having a sense of complete belonging is odd. But perhaps it is ideal for creativity, for writing, for poetry.

Durante's essay on written Llanito

Calderon on Bloomsday

Gabriel Moreno

Jonathan Teuma