Letters to the editor – March 24, 2025

Churchill and Malta

Once again, Charles Xuereb (‘Churchill’s stand on Malta’, March 19) has no hesitation in recommending his own publications to give us the unvarnished truth about Churchill’s attitude to Malta, particularly during World War II.

In his widely-praised 2018 biography of Churchill, Andrew Roberts freely admits that, in May 1940, only days after becoming prime minister, “Churchill was about to enter a murky area of discussions that would eventually be used to try to blacken his reputation”, which is what Xuereb consistently sets out to do.

A stamp printed in Malta in 2015, marking the 70th anniversary of the Yalta Conference, shows The Big Three - Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin - at Yalta. Photo: Shutterstock.com

However, unlike Xuereb, Roberts puts into context Churchill’s remark (reported by Neville Chamberlain, whom Churchill had just replaced as prime minister) that “if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar, I [Churchill] would jump at it”. 

Roberts, unlike Xuereb, continues the quotation from the same source: “But the only safe way was to convince Hitler he couldn’t beat us.” That is, “to fight on, which”, as Roberts points out, “is what (Churchill) proposed to do, and which is what happened”.

To suggest, as Xuereb seems to do, that things would have been better all round if Britain had simply surrendered the strategically vital bases of Malta and Gibraltar to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is almost breathtakingly naive. 

An earlier biographer, the former Labour MP and home secretary Roy Jenkins, concludes his survey of Churchill’s life in words that every admirer of Churchill, of whatever nationality, can willingly echo: “I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity, and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street.”

Alan Cooke – Gżira 

Churchill’s meeting before the war

The meeting before the war in which the president of France as an ally of the British was present together with Churchill on the subject of Malta, gave Charles Xuereb an opportunity (March 19).

Churchill did not try to barter Malta. 

This was only suggested by… the president of France.

Thomas Zerafa – Naxxar