Wow, people are suddenly interested in Maltese history — I’ve received several requests for reading material on the history of Malta.
I’d like to take this time to point out that we’re still accepting submissions of short stories about Malta. If you have a story that is about 5,000 words to about 8,000 words, is entertaining, and involves Malta in some way, send it to:
anthology.malta (at) (g)(mail).com
You’ll need to remove the brackets first, though. Death to spambots!
Anyhoo, on to books about Maltese history!
Any such list has to start with Ernle Bradford, in particular “Knights of the Order”, “The Great Siege, Malta 1565”, and “The Shield and The Sword”.
Roger Crowley, “Empires of the Sea” is excellent, too.
For a more modern book — World War 2, we’ve got a fictional book by Nicholas Monsarrat, “The Kappillan of Malta”.
Prehistory gets a little dry, but start with David Trump’s “Malta. Prehistory and Temples”, and then on to Anthony Bonnano “Malta – Phoenician, Punic and Roman”.
Pre-Knights of St. John, try “Malta – The Medieval Millennium” by Charles Dalli.
I’d like to thank Peter Grant for the first five suggestions, and as more come to mind we’ll update.
LawDog
Jack Beeching’s “The Galleys At Lepanto” is another excellent source that puts the siege of Malta in its wider context leading up to the naval battle of the title. Long out of print but common on eBay.
Good references!!!
On YouTube, naval historian Dr. Alex Clarke has a very good video about the sieges (plural) of Malta that was posted about a week ago.
I was living in Malta when it became independent. Prince Philip was there representing the British Crown.
Like other gawkers, I took my camera and went to stand next to the road during one of his appearances.
In those days, there were no cellphone cameras, or indeed, any other sort than the bulky one which had to be held, and it required flashbulbs for lighting.
Well, it was a rather dim day, and I readied my camera and flashbulb to take a picture of the prince as he rode by in a convertible.
The flash didn't go off. I jogged up ahead and tried again. Still no go.
The next thing I knew, here was this Greek god who had blithely vaulted over the side of the car, standing beside me, and holding out his hand for my camera. I gave it to him.
I mean, this was one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen and a Prince! What was I going to do, refuse to hand it over?
He took out the flashbulb, scraped it on the curbing, and held it out to me, end first.
"Spit," he ordered.
I obediently spat, he put the flashbulb back into the camera, leaped back into the car, waved and off he went.
I read "Kappillan" when I was in high school (not for school, but I'd already devoured all the SF/F in the high school library, and started working on histories, historical novels, and the occasional disaster book (Johnstown Flood, San Francisco Earthquake, "The Day the World Ended" (Mount Pelee), etc.)). One of these days I need to track down another copy.