To substantiate their arguments on the George Cross and the Maltese flag, Victor J. De Bono and Mario C. Ellul in their letters have referred to Count Roger and to the piece of pseudo-history or pseudo-tradition still repeated daily by many tourist guides - that this Norman nobleman gave the Maltese the national colours. Mr. De Bono puts it as follows:

"Perhaps he (Mr Grech) will allow me to refer to a bit of history that every Maltese school child will know. Count Roger the Norman... was an invader of these islands and was as much a foreigner as (if not more so) than George VI. Would Mr Grech have us give up our flag because it reminds us of an oppressive foreign invader?"

The misconception that Count Roger gave Malta its colours has been demonstrated to be a pure fabrication quite some time ago. Readers may refer to an essay by Prof. Mario Buhagiar which he contributed to a collection of historical essays entitled Karissime Gotifride (1999) published on the occasion of Prof. Godfrey Wettinger's seventieth birthday. Prof. Buhagiar demonstrates conclusively that the Count Roger bestowal of the colours is a recent 19th century fabrication by a certain Laferla (I cannot quote the passage as I do not have access to my library from where I am writing).

This fabrication was then popularised and fed to generations of students through Mons. Lapira's textbook Outlines of Maltese History and those of my generation may still remember a picture in this book showing Count Roger on horseback holding a checkered flag (presumably red and white but the illustration was not in colour) and supposedly he tore a red and white section and gave it to the Maltese.

Prof. Wettinger himself, in his seminal article The Arabs In Malta (1986) states about Count Roger: "That he gave Malta its national colours is now universally acknowledged in academic quarters an impossibility."

I write in the hope that this piece of history will be laid to rest once and for all along with a host of other "historical episodes" connected with Count Roger.