Malta prime minister Dom Mintoff was labelled "overbearing and very rude" in a series of scathing secret briefings to the British government about key personalities in the country.

Mintoff, then Malta's minister for works and reconstruction, had a "grossly exaggerated" belief in his own ability as a town planner, an assessment provided to the Colonial Office said.

The briefing note, released by the UK's National Archives in Kew and compiled in 1948 when Mintoff was minister for works and reconstruction, said: "He can be, and frequently is, overbearing and very rude and will never admit that he is wrong."

The unnamed assessor also added damning reports on other key Maltese politicians of the time, saying Dr Arthur Colombo, Malta's then finance minister, was a "small cock-sparrow" of a man, "who is accustomed to speak wildly but cocksuredly on any and every subject without pausing to think".

Mintoff, who died last year, was prime minister from 1955 to 1958, when the island was a British colony and following independence for the island, from 1971 to 1984.

A letter addressed to Sir David Campbell from the Colonial Office, dated March 1949, said they were "very grateful" for the picture of leading personalities.