Book description
Father Salvatore was a simple, lumbering priest, a kappillan serving
the poor Valetta, when war came out of the blue skies to pound the
island to dust.
Now amid the catacombs discovered by a chance bomb, he cared for the
flood of homeless, starving, frightened people who sought shelter from
the death that fell unceasingly from the sky.
His story, and the story of Malta, is told in superbly graphic pictures
of six days during the siege. Each of those days brought forth from the
kappillan a message of inspiration to keep them going - the legendary
tales of six mighty events of Malta's history which shone through the
centuries and gathered them together in a fervent belief in their
survival. Nicholas Monsarrat was born in Liverpool in 1910, and was
educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in World War II, first
as a member of an ambulance brigade and then as a member of the Royal
Naval Volunteer Reserve. His lifelong love of sailing made him a capable
naval officer, and he served with distinction on a series of small
warships. Resigning his wartime commission in 1946, Monsarrat entered
the diplomatic service. He turned to writing full time in 1959, settling
on the Mediterranean island of Gozo. He died of cancer in 1979 and was
buried at sea from a destroyer, off Portsmouth.
