Description
‘MALTA – THAT TINY ROCK OF HISTORY AND ROMANCE’
This was how Sir Winston Churchill described the Mediterranean island that has for centuries enjoyed an importance out of all proportion to its size. Whoever controls Malta controls the Mediterranean, and this simple truth has been the root cause of some of the fiercest fighting in European history. Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, French and British have all vied for supremacy over the island’s strategic significance.
The Cross and the Ensign give the first detailed account of thenaval history of Malta over two centuries, from the earliest days of British rule, through the critical period of the Second World War, when Malta held the key not only to the Mediterranean but also to North Africa, to the advent of independence.
