Martin Scicluna’s assessment of my research on Malta’s identity (‘Commonwealth Walkway markers’, December 21) could not better illustrate a point I raised in my book France in the Maltese collective memory, perceptions, perspectives, identities after Bonaparte in British Malta, pages 302-3, where inter alia I state:

“Pertinent to the issue under review, having been caught up in a tug-of-war type of apprehensive relationship England and France had had for centuries, Malta could not but encounter hindrance in its formation of a mature and loyal identity towards its own territorial consciousness. Living in a British colony and in the first post-colonial decades one could hardly investigate and consequently appreciate the Island’s shared past with France, without obtaining a Francophile ‘antagonist’ timbre. Scrutinising relative facts pertaining to Malta’s relations with one foreign power positions one to be perceived as rival to the other.”

That said it is typical of post-colonial mentalities to preserve an amount of status quo for the nostalgic past that once had promised some form of perceived, albeit distorted identity. In our case, for some citizens, the longer Malta remains ‘an old part of England’ the better the future.