Tito Mesod Benady (born 17 July 1930, Gibraltar), MBE, is a Gibraltarian historian of Sephardic Jewish descent. He currently lives in Grendon, Northamptonshire in the United Kingdom.
Benady was involved in local politics during the seventies; he contested the 1976 election, as an independent, and in the 1980 election, as a candidate of the Party for the Autonomy of Gibraltar, led by Joseph Triay; he defended positions of rapprochement with Spain. In neither election was he successful.
Benady has specialised in the local and military history of Gibraltar and has also written about:
Sephardic Jews in general;
the Jewish communities in Gibraltar,
Malta
Minorca; and
The Royal Navy.
In 2000 he was awarded an MBE after a proposal by the Government of Gibraltar for his services to local history. In 1993 he founded a history journal published by the Gibraltar Heritage Trust. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and also one of the board members of the Friends of Gibraltar Heritage Society. Benady is also a member of the Centro de Estudios Campogibraltareños (English: Centre for Campo de Gibraltar Studies) and runs the editorial Gibraltar Books Ltd., especialised in books about Gibraltar.
Works
- The Settlement of Jews in Gibraltar, 1704 -1783, Transactions, Jewish Historical Society of England 26 (1979)
- The Gibraltar police, 1830-1980 (Mediterranean Sun, 1980)
- The Jewish Community of Gibraltar, in Western Sephardim (Gibraltar Books, 1989)
- Guide to the Gibraltar Museum, ISBN 0-948466-10-3 (Ashford, Buchan & Enright, 1989)
- The Royal Navy at Gibraltar, ISBN 0-907771-49-1 (Maritime Press, Liskeard, 1992)
- Los menorquines en Gibraltar in Revista de Menorca (1992)
- Grendon in Northamptonshire, with Eileen Wilmin, ISBN 0-948466-34-0 (Gibraltar Books, 1994)
- The Streets of Gibraltar, ISBN 0-948466-37-5 (Gibraltar Books, 1996)
- The Convent at Gibraltar in Journal of the Society of Army Historical Research 77 (Summer 1999)
- Spaniards in Gibraltar in Gibtel Gibraltar Heritage Journal No 7, ISBN 0-9524808-5-9 (2000)
- The Settee Cut: Mediterranean Passes issued at Gibraltar in The Mariner’s Mirror 87:3 (August 2001)
- Genoese in Gibraltar in Gibtel Gibraltar Heritage Journal No 8, ISBN 0-9524808-6-7 (2001)
- The Royal Navy at Gibraltar Since 1900, ISBN 978-1-904459-04-0 (Maritime Books, 2004)
- The Royal Gibraltar Police, with Cecilia Baldachino (Gibraltar Books, 2005)
- Trade and Contraband in Gibraltar in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Anglo-Saxons in the Mediterranean (Malta University Press 2007)
- "Essays on the History of Gibraltar" (Gibraltar Books 2014)