Telling it like it was

It must have taken Brian N. Tarpey a long time to try and put me down (April 30) and it would be rude of me not to respond.

I assure the gentleman that I did not want to supply the information myself. What I gained in knowledge on the subject cost me a lot of time and money. Sharing it freely is not in my nature. It used to be, but I found people are tight lipped and at the end of my life I want to be like them.

What I object to is the claim that everything belongs to England as the spoils of war. That is rubbish. Had Mr Tarpey not sounded so patronising I would have turned the page and read the editorial - as usual it makes more sense.

Mr Tarpey says that I misled people because I referred to the National Archives as the Public Record Office. Well, in the first place he is right: I have not been to the archives in 10 years and old habits die hard. I refer to it by the name I had come to know it, just like as for many years the Africans have been referred to as black, which they don't mind, while here the English still call them "niggers" and "wogs". Taking the golly wog off the marmalade jar did not improve the situation.

I am critical of anything that anyone writes about Malta. The reason is that you all try and tell us how grateful we should be to the English. You claim to have saved us from total starvation, while I ask by what right you took us into a war that nearly wiped us out as a nation.

Mr Tarpey, I, like many others, have lived through that war. I remember starving and being fed my mother's ration. A hell of a way to live for a four-year-old.

Mr Tarpey, come out and tell us the truth, the whole truth as it was, and I will stop cutting you down. But if you want me to give long and detailed accounts, you may want to negotiate a space with the editor and I'll be delighted to tell it like it was and not according to cheap paper backs.

I will also call the Record Office by its later name. How's that?

The editor published your letter under the title Malta Relics. That is not the way I like to be referred to...perhaps slightly worn at the edges yes, but I cannot help that.