Malta, War & Peace

Malta, War & Peace
Author: Conrad Thake
Publisher:
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2005
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9789993270553

A comprehensive survey of Maltas architecture in the last 200 years. This new book follows logically from the definitive initial publication by Dr Quentin Hughes and Dr Conrad Thake, 'Malta: The Baroque Island' which surveyed the buildings from the Mannerist and Baroque periods (1530-1798) which adorn the Islands. Malta: War and Peace is different and takes up the story of the more recent architectural heritage, bringing its history up to the millennium in the form of a colourful gazetteer. Once again the outstanding photographs taken by Daniel Cilia embellish a publication that documents and does justice to the richness of the architecture of the post-Renaissance Modern period. His pictures build on the entrancing effects of light found on the islands during summer reflecting in their sharpness and immediacy the warmth of the sun and the profiles of shadow-filled facades. Thus, the two separate publications can be seen as complementary, bringing heritage history together in a rich and formidably diverse array of examples. They depict an island that one commentator claimed has more buildings and monuments per square kilometre than that in any other other part of Europe! This book inevitably as its title suggests charts the history of the evolution of military structures underlining the awful tremors of conflict and wars that have besieged the islands over the past two hundred years. The new book is organized into building types which conveniently coincide with historical periods. They range from the early military naval Hospital at Bighi, now serving in part as the headquarters for the Malta Centre for Restoration and upon the initiative of Edward de Bono as a World Centre for New Thinking. The hospital complex was rebuilt and restored but it still dominates the Grand Harbour environs and alerts every visitor to its strong gaunt colonial Neo-Classical style. There are very few examples of what one might call Modern Movement (MoMo) architecture of the interwar period. The post-war period is different and productively rich with examples of work that clearly have a shared relationship with modernism and the various international movements and ideas current in other parts of the world.

Coleridge's Laws

Coleridge's Laws
Author: Barry Hough
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1906924120

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is best known as a great poet and literary theorist, but for one, quite short, period of his life he held real political power - acting as Public Secretary to the British Civil Commissioner in Malta in 1805. This was a formative experience for Coleridge which he later identified as being one of the most instructive in his entire life. In this volume Barry Hough and Howard Davis show how Coleridge's actions whilst in a position of power differ markedly from the idealism he had advocated before taking office - shedding new light on Coleridge's sense of political and legal morality.

Malta 1940–42

Malta 1940–42
Author: Ryan K. Noppen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 92
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472820614

In 1940, the strategically vital island of Malta was Britain's last toehold in the central Mediterranean, wreaking havoc among Axis shipping. Launching an air campaign to knock Malta out of the war, first Italy and then Germany sought to force a surrender or reduce the defences enough to allow an invasion. Drawing on original documents, multilingual aviation analyst Ryan Noppen explains how technical and tactical problems caused the original Italian air campaign of 1940–41 to fail, and then how the German intervention came close to knocking Malta out of the war. Using stunning full colour artwork, this fascinating book explains why the attempt by the Axis powers to take the British colony of Malta ultimately failed.

Malta, Britain, and the European Powers, 1793-1815

Malta, Britain, and the European Powers, 1793-1815
Author: Desmond Gregory
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780838635902

This book describes how the island of Malta became a protectorate of the British Crown during the wars against Napoleon after the failures of the Knights of Saint John, republican France, the Two Sicilies, and finally imperial Russia to fill the role of its best defender. Author Desmond Gregory also explains why most, though not all, Maltese people welcomed the protection of Britain, the supreme naval power in the Mediterranean after the battle of Aboukir Bay.

Siege

Siege
Author: Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1985
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

"When Mussolini's bombers broke the peace of a cloudless sky one day in the summer of 1940, they began a siege which was to become one of the epics of the Second World War. Ernle Bradfor's remarkable chronicle of thet crucial perio in the war-ravaged Mediterranean follow, in dramatic detail, the traumas and triumphs of the next three years. Siege: Malta describes how Hitler repeatedly thres the might of his Luftwaffe against a tenacious and courageous people, and moves finally to a stirring climax that is more tense and gripping than fiction"--Publisher's description.

Empires of the Sea

Empires of the Sea
Author: Roger Crowley
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2008-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1588367339

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggle’s brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepanto–one of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away “because of the countless corpses floating in the sea.” Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its best–a story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

Churchill and Malta's War 1939-1943

Churchill and Malta's War 1939-1943
Author: Douglas Austin
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2010-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1445620391

The meticulously researched account of the defence of Malta and its role, importance and contribution to the Allied effort during WW2.

Churchill and Malta

Churchill and Malta
Author: Douglas Austin
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2014-05-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0750967048

This is the compelling story of the special relationship between Winston Churchill and the people of Malta. During six visits over a period of forty years he came to understand and support the aspirations of the Maltese people and in the Second World War the bonds linking them were tempered in fire and destruction. In those dark days Churchill's determination to defend the island and his faith in the courage of the Maltese people never wavered.