Peter Vassallo writes:
My first impression of David Cremona many years ago (at the Old University of Malta, in Valletta), was that he greatly resembled James Robertson Justice, who played the part of the formidable Sir Launcelot Spratt in Doctor in the House. At the time, we were both reading for an Honours degree in English and actually got to know each other after an entertaining and erudite lecture on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales by the late Richard Beck, who was then our mentor.
David was fond of declaiming long speeches from Shakespeare’s plays, especially the soliloquies which, as it were, punctuated his conversation.
I was struck by his brilliant mind, his scintillating wit and his prodigious memory. He had a fine sense of humour and, as he jokingly claimed, echoing Falstaff, he was not only witty in himself but the cause that wit was in other men.
After graduation as an Honours student, he proceeded to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar (at St Edmund Hall) and we frequently met again either in Bodley or in The Bear, one of the cosy ‘medieval’ pubs.
One of the authors we frequently talked about was J.R.R. Tolkien and his The fellowship of the ring. On one occasion, we visited the Eagle and the child, the pub at St Giles where Tolkien and his cronies (‘the Inklings’) met to discuss their literary works.
On his return from Oxford, he taught at the Junior College, where he instilled in his students a love of literature, especially poetry. He wrote poetry himself, mainly in a satirical vein but never got down to the task of having his poems published.
He was also a talented artist in his own way and he often made excellent sketches or caricatures of his friends. One such drawing, which I cherish and which now hangs in my study, is a caricature of me in Lord Byron’s ‘buff and blue’ attire ,clasping a book on Byron.
During the summer vacation, when he retired (aestivated) to his flat overlooking the bay at Xemxija, he would spend most of his time in the balcony reading book after book. He once told me he read (digested) a book every two days and we joked about his getting indigestion.
Later, when he was beginning to lose his eyesight (he suffered from acute diabetes), he transferred, with the help of a friend, to a nursing home in Naxxar. Somehow, he managed to cope with blindness and found some relief in listening to audio books and to the radio.
He will be sadly missed by his friends and by his cousin, Larry, who cared for him lovingly to the end.