How happy I was to see recently, in your paper, reconditioned and polished Maltese cannon finding their place back in front of Castille.

But how sorrowful I feel when I see so many other 15th and 16th century cannon abandoned all along the coastline of Malta. Two beautiful cannon are stuck in the ground in Ta' Xbiex Gardens and plenty of others are stuck in concrete in the rocks of the seashore all along the Ta' Xbiex waterfront to Msida, even in the Valletta harbour shoreline and everywhere else where the former colonial governments wanted to tie up their warships or other ships.

Furthermore, I remember seeing a big pile of similar cannon in the centre of Manoel Island back in the mid-1980s. What happened to those cannon? Can any ministry tell us?

I appeal to the ministry concerned or the heritage department to pull out all these cannon, service them at Malta Drydocks or elsewhere, number them, index them and place some very good and nice ones around our monuments, such as the statues of Nerik Mizzi, Gorg Borg Olivier, Pawlu Boffa, the War Memorial, Dun Karm etc. They look so nice and so many tourists pose near them. Everybody knows that the Queen will hopefully be visiting Malta in November. Can our government tell her to send back the Maltese cannon now lying at the Tower of London? These belong to the Maltese. Let's have our cannon back please.

Recently Italy sent the obelisk back to Ethiopia. The Queen should give us back our cannon.