Every old house in Malta has some shelter’s entrance in its back garden with the main one in the street blocked off nowadays.

It was the recommended design to pass shelters underneath buildings to attenuate direct hits.

Trust me, pestered as I was to grow mushrooms and make pretend wine-making.

I still live here because, right now, I have no choice but to do so. But if I had that choice, I would be out of here like a shot. I spend all my time avoiding as much of what passes for life here as I can, as it is.

On this I disagree with you. Malta has its problems and we may hate many things about it but it’s not a hell hole – far from it. If it were why would you still live here? I think sometimes you jump the gun in the way you criticise Malta. Remember that the grass is always greener on the other side.

That is the truth

You cannot possibly be serious.

If I were not Maltese, the last place I would buy a house is Malta. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself that I am Maltese. It is becoming an ugly place to live in.

My cousin, Paul, in Naxxar, some couple of hundred metres from the Palazzo, forwarded a link to this site. I was born underneath this building at a time when Herr Hitler’s Luftwaffe unsuccessfully attempted to execute the command to “… obliterate Malta out of the Mediterranean Sea”, viz., in October, 1942.

My mother told lme that the building was then used as government offices, a school and a police station. My parents migrated to Australia six years later landing here on the feast of Santa Maria, 15th August, 1948.

I resigned my commission to the New South Wales Governor in 2006 as Crown Prosecutor. I am tremendously proud of my parents’ achievements and of my Maltese heritage.