Biographer Ian Gibson swooped into town on a brief visit this week. Although Irish-born and Trinity-educated, his heart and his home are in Spain - he is the author of the definitive biography of Federico Garcia Lorca and presented the highly successful TV series on Spain, Fire In The Blood.
The reason for his latest trip home was two-fold; to give a lecture on Lorca at Trinity on Thursday and to celebrate his latest book, The Shameful Life Of Salvador Dali, with a party at the Instituto Cervantes last night. Dr Gibson met the surrealist painter only once when he was summoned to his home in Figuera in Catalunya three years before his death. He had requested an interview with Dali several times while researching the first volume of his Lorca biography, as the Spanish poet was in love with Dali and they had what Ian describes as "a very intense relationship". However, it was only when parts of the published biography were read to Dali that he agreed to meet him.
"He was in a bad way at that stage, really very ill and he also spoke a very confusing mixture of French, Catalan and Spanish. However, he spoke very passionately about his time in Madrid in the 1920s when he first met Lorca and Bunuel, the film-maker."
Ian admits that by the time he had completed the biography he didn't like him in the slightest. "He was a very disturbed, a very timid man who decided to turn himself into the world's greatest exhibitionist. I didn't warm to him at all."
Gibson now lives in a small village some miles from Granada with his English-born wife Carol. His next project for Faber is a work on Henry Spencer Ashby, "a 19th century traveller and great collector of erotic literature". He also hopes to do more TV work. "It would also be nice to do nothing for a year. People assume I've seen a lot of Spain because I live here. The reality is quite different."