Malta is, by and large, a safe country where people don’t lock their doors. This month’s car bombing, in which Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered, has forced me to reconsider the benign opinion of the island I know and love. The dark echoes of Belfast during the Troubles, where personal and political opponents often met a
Few, if any, commentators have seen fit to discuss the wider issue and the underlying morality from first principles. The instant reaction in all quarters has been to back Spain over the plucky little Catalans. The principle of national self-determination was laid down by Woodrow Wilson after the First World War and accepted by the
There are some strange goings-on in Rome at the moment. Two of the world’s smallest sovereign states, both headquartered there, are having a spat over who is in control. The head of the Knights of Malta, the former Guards officer now Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew Festing has announced he will step down. He has been
I have just returned from one of the world’s most secretive states. I had to apply for a visa a month beforehand and send in a copy of my passport. There is no way into this place by road; you have to arrive on an authorised boat and a policeman checks your visa against your
