Giovanni Bonello: Histories of Malta, Volume 11, Travesties and Dynasties, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2011, 249 pp.

I do not suppose there is anybody out there unaware of the successful formula Giovanni Bonello follows in writing his delightful papers.

Seven of the contributions published in the 11th volume Histories of Malta have already appeared in The Sunday Times, admittedly in a truncated form and lacking footnotes.

There is solid research following leads that may or may not prove fruitful. He avoids the much travelled highways, looking into ill-lit by-ways which others have mistaken for alleys but which turn out to be avenues.

All this information is transformed into highly readable text, with the addition of generous helping of wit and dollops of gentle self-irony, so rarely found in similar writings. Nothing makes him happier than the demolition, gently or otherwise, of some highly revered myth or entrenched legend.

In the autobiographical ‘Confessions of an archive junkie’, Bonello recounts how his fascination with archives and research grew, helped no doubt by the right DNA he inherited from his adored father, then sweating in the humid Ugandan air, thanks to a free passage donated by the British authorities. We are also given a round-up of the island’s main archives.

He describes the joys and frustrations of the archives habitué – the great discoveries one made (the new sketches by Mattia Preti depicted in this volume are one prime example) and those that stared one in the eye but one obtusely overlooked (the tumultus which earned Caravaggio his notorious defrocking and which was left for Keith Sceberras to announce).

Archivitis is an incurable disease. Once bitten, one is destined to keep searching. Success breeds a greater determination, but then so, ironically does failure. Readers of this volume have plenty to cherish, enjoy, and roll round the mouth like vintage wine.

There are the usual parade of kings, grand masters, saints, heroes, traitors, villains, courtesans, generals, admirals, slaves, God’s plenty, as Dryden said of Chaucer. Henry VIII had an eventful life, to put it mildly. Anybody with six wives, and a good number of mistresses to boot, surely deserves whatever comes to him.

Bonello weaves his way through stories of intrigue, explaining networks of relationships, like linking the Blessed Adrian Fortescue to Queen Elizabeth II and reigning grand master, Matthew Festing.

Henry ruled at a time when the Order was passing through many ordeals, and his seizing of its property was a huge financial blow. His persecution of erstwhile friends led to a good number of brethren of the Order to martyrdom.

The reason for Fortescue’s execution by beheading are not clear, yet the Order took him over as one of the brethren, even though there is no evidence of any induction. Also nebulous is the reason that led to Sir Thomas Dingley’s execution. And still it might be all part of a myth.

Although not officially part of the Spanish Armada that attacked England, the Order ‘allowed’ some knights to join in the enterprise. Could this have been a delayed means to get its own back on perfidious Albion? Bonello tells us the stories behind the facts, and more.

Then there are five Maltese ‘almost-saints’ who could have beaten Dun Ġorġ Preca to the honour of being the first Maltese saint. There is the mystic who allegedly survived almost exclusively on figs (what did he eat when they were out of season, desiccated ones?).

In 1606, the Sorbonne University pleaded with Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt for a bit of the skeleton of St Euphemia, today venerated in the chapel of Italy in St John’s Co-Cathedral minus its silver casket, which went to satisfy the Corsican’s greed. As usual there is much more behind the story, and once again we get to know it.

Fra Carlo Valdina was a notorious greedy violent individual, unlovable would put it too mildly, who clashed with Inquisitor Fabio Chigi, later Pope Alexander VI. His misdeeds make compelling reading, as all misdeeds do, and the unruly knight jumps out of the book’s pages.

The post-British period is widely featured. The famous Declaration of Rights by the Maltese in 1802 is one of the basic documents of Malta’s constitutional development. Bonello discusses the complicated scene of the first decade or so of the British presence, when invited guests surreptiously became masters.

For most traditional historians, Sir Alexander Ball enjoys a reputation one step short of sainthood. Al-though Bonello refers to his duplicity and his less than appreciable character, it is to ‘King Tom’ Maitland that he reserves the most generous servings of his opprobrium.

His administrative abilities may have somewhat sweetened a character, but the picture that emerges is one of a self-centred autocrat – ‘an ape of Bonaparte’, as an English royal commissioner would style him. He lived a life of ‘unrelenting scorn for all decencies and values’, as the author puts it.

Even the leaving of his life has the elements of a tragic comedy, or comic tragedy, about it. Prurience has normally shielded readers from the details; Bonello relishes in revealing them. The iron railings around his Upper Barrakka burial place may have had a protective reasoning, which the reader will get by reading the very last paragraph.

Napoleon’s feared head of national security, the duc de Savary, a coarse and brutal murderous fellow, spent half a year as a British prisoner in Malta, eventually escaping from Manoel Island in April 1816. Readers will enjoy the way the author retells the story filled with intrigue and deception.

Overall, this is another volume to cherish. One would have wished a more consistent quality of the illustrations which range from excellent to just acceptable, a little more attention to the presentation of the footnotes, and some other minor details, such as the use of dashes in the text.