Elizabeth Lockhead, in her letter ‘Saving the Island’, bemoans the architectural decline of St Julian’s bay and wonders if there is a preservation society for the area.

If there is, all I can say is I would hate to imagine what the bay would look like without preservation. Truth is that, like so much of Malta, St Julian’s is a visual disaster.

I was lucky enough to live in Main Street in the 1950s, Then, it really had charm and architectural cohesion. Now, all that has gone. Thanks to so-called progress and tourism, all one sees in many parts of the island is ugliness.

The writer and poet John Betjeman once wrote a poem which began “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough/It isn’t fit for humans now”.

If he could see St Julian’s today, I think he’d have probably wanted a few of those bombs to be earmarked for this once lovely little bay.