My friend, Charles Xuereb, a historiographer with an interesting theory about Malta’s “Stockholm syndrome” relationship with the British and an imagined “Maltese hatred” of the French, who “uses analysis of presentist collective memory theory”, has taken to his pen again about the installation of the Commonwealth Walkway markers in Valletta (December 15).

I am a totally loyal Maltese citizen and an unadulterated Anglophile, who happens to also love and admire the French.

Xuereb is an unequivocal Francophile who, for reasons best known to himself, dislikes the British period of our history. He has a particular bee in his bonnet about what he perceives as British “symbols” that litter (as he sees it) our capital city.

He makes a number of unsubstantiated assertions about the Commonwealth Walkway markers. “British tourism” does not “take priority over [our] nation’s culture, traditions and values”. Each marker extols the beauty and history of what the tourist – whether German, Dutch or British – is admiring. Each marker celebrates Maltese, not British, history.

The markers in question are not a “new 2015 colonial insignia”, unless, that is, one is ignorant enough to believe that the Commonwealth imposes a colonial regime.

Finally, 400,000 Maltese would reject the assertion that Malta is unable “to mature into a fully-fledged independent nation that can stand on its own without colonially-induced symbols”.

The correspondent should just look around him: independent, confident and proud.