It was a menu of smoked salmon with caviar, beef fillets with asparagus and béarnaise sauce... all washed down with bottles of Chateau Latour Clanet.

After all, this was the state banquet menu on the eve of Malta’s Independence Day on September 20, 1964.

James Thomas Geering (left) found the document when he was going through his father’s books and papers.

Former Royal Navy chief petty officer James Frederick Geering was stationed in Malta in the 1950s and returned to the island as a tourist several times after the 1970s.

But he never visited in the 1960s, which is why Mr Geering was baffled that this menu was among his father’s possessions after the 91-year-old died in 2006.

Mr Geering and his wife Ann, from Kent, have returned to Malta for the second time in 27 years, just as the island celebrated its 48th anniversary of Independence.

This time, they brought the menu handed out during the State banquet, with the surname ‘Bonanno’ scribbled on the back, hoping to trace its origins.