Now, Malta

Yes, the place where I had a meaningful encounter with a jellyfish is indeed very beautiful

As promised on Wednesday, here’s my Forum Conclusion for Law & Liberty on the prospects for UK unity, and something I meant to include but forgot — an interview with the American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis on two of my novels — Kingdom of the Wicked Book I: Rules and Book II: Order.

I must admit I’d started to get mildly cheesed off during February, March, and April as outlets in four countries wanted to interview me about my first novel, The Hand that Signed the Paper. Yes, I appreciate it has a Ukrainian setting and that some of the claims I made in it turned out not only to be correct but directly relevant to the current Russia-Ukraine conflict. But.

It was originally published in 1994. There were places where I’d forgotten exactly what I wrote and had to go back and re-read bits. This felt weird.

I was very grateful for Pethokoukis’s excellent & informed questions, obvious love for The Kingdom of the Wicked books, and general appreciation of the wider genre of speculative fiction (he knows more than me, and I’ve written entire books where I do this). The interview is superb. I don’t normally recommend podcasts in here, but am making an exception for this one.

Now, Malta.
As I explained on Wednesday, covid stopped me seeing as much of Malta as I’d have liked. I missed all of Mdina, for example, a traditional medieval walled city. A return trip is in the works.

However, what I did see was extraordinary, especially Valletta Cathedral, which my partner and I took to calling “the Glitter Church”.

One of the things it’s most famous for is Caravaggio’s Execution of John the Baptist (below). Not only because the information the Cathedral provides doesn’t hide the fact that Caravaggio was, ahem, a rather complex character (he was on the run for murder when he painted this), but because of the sheer immensity of the man’s talent.

One of those where you really do have to separate art and artist!

As mentioned, I got a nasty jellyfish sting. Here. Beautiful, isn’t it?

This (below) was built 5,000 years ago (for a long time, it was considered the oldest free-standing stone structure on earth, until an even older one was unearthed in Eastern Turkey). Called the Hypogeum, it is one of the oddest places I have ever visited, made odder because no-one really knows what it was for, except that when it was discovered it was full of human remains, painted red-ochre swirls, and statuettes of extremely plump women (called, imaginatively, “Fat Ladies” by the locals).

A view down to Valletta Harbour from a local eatery is below.

Malta is basically a battleship island, and those fortifications you can see (constructed by the Knights of Malta) really did keep all-comers out (but especially marauding Ottomans) until Napoleon turned up in 1798. There’s a widespread view among military historians that the Knights could have held Napoleon off, too, Malta is so heavily fortified. For some reason, they surrendered.

That said, the Maltese themselves finished up giving Boney the Boot (he was nicking stuff from their glittery churches, which they considered theirs by right, and not Papal property) not long afterwards.

The Maltese also (famously) gave Il Duce and Old Adolf the boot, too. Don’t mess with the Maltese. The George Cross the entire Island received is featured on its flag to this day (not, as you would expect, the distinctive Maltese Cross).