When the Knights arrived in Malta in 1530, they made Birgu the capital city of Malta (Mdina was the capital at that time). It was fortified in 1551 and strengthened in 1554 in preparation for an attack by the Ottoman Empire.

Birgu was the site of the major battle between the Knights and the Ottoman Empire during the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. When the Ottomans retreated, a new capital city was built on Mount Sceberras and named Valletta. Birgu was given the title Città Vittoriosa, Italian for “victorious city”.

In recent years, an agreement was made between the Maltese Government and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. This 99-year long agreement grants the Knights of Malta the exclusive use of Fort St Angelo in Birgu.

The Birgufest was launched seven years ago and thousands of people attend this festival, making it a national event. The festival highlights the beauty and history of Birgu (the Victorious City).  The highlight of this event is Birgu By Candlelight where all the streets and houses are lit only by thousands of candles.

This concept began in 1985 when former actress Melina Mercouri , (then Greece’s Minister of Culture), and her French counterpart Jack Lang came up with the idea of designating an annual Capital of Culture. By highlighting the richness and diversity of European cultures, and raising awareness of common histories and values, it is meant to bring Europeans closer together.

Preparing to become a European Capital of Culture is an opportunity for the city to generate social, cultural and economic benefit while encouraging regeneration and raising awareness on an international scale. The Capital of Culture year is a one-off event. This makes for a unique encounter between local populations, artists, and visitors from all over the world.

The aim of this program is to develop a high-quality artistic program. This includes music, theatre, heritage, dance, contemporary art, science and technology, sport, cuisine and popular culture.

The Commission of the European Union manages the title and each year the Council of Ministers of the European Union formally designates European Capitals of Culture: more than 40 cities have been designated so far. An international panel of cultural experts is in charge of assessing the proposals of cities for the title according to criteria specified by the European Union.

Valletta will be the European Capital of Culture for 2018, together with a Dutch city that is yet to be chosen.

As Victory Day, it marks three significant events:

1)      The victory of the Great Siege of 1565 by the Knights of St. John against the Turks. The Ottomans retreated to Turkey on the 8^th September 1565,

2)      The Italian Forces surrendered during World War II on the 8^th September 1943, thereby ending the hostilities towards Malta, and

3)      The rebellion against the French troops in Malta which ended the French occupation in September 1800.

On a religious front, the day is connected to the Nativity of Mary. It marks the Religious Feast of the “Birth of the Virgin Mary” and feasts are celebrated in Xagħra (Gozo), Naxxar, Senglea and Mellieħa on the day.

During the morning of Victory Day there are usually a number of State Ceremonies, including a parade by the Armed Forces of Malta. The evening sees many celebrations of the feast of Our Lady as a Child (or Our Lady of Victories/Maria Bambina). Naxxar, Senglea, Mellieha or Xaghra (Gozo) will boast magnificent processions with the statue, beautiful street decorations and amazing fireworks.

Synonymous with this date is the famous Regatta held in Grand Harbour in the afternoon. This is an incredibly supported contested traditional rowing boat race, with the participation of the towns that surround Grand Harbour. Teams from Valletta, Vittoriosa, Senglea, Kalkara, Cospicua, Marsaxlokk and Marsa practice for months beforehand to try and claim victory!

The duo of Heavenly Blue, Hannah and Arlo, are two very talented and musically gifted children who go to the same school as my children. They have released their first Extended Play album and this is their first video, Go With The Flow. It was filmed at Popeye’s Village in Malta.

With Winter on his way out and Summer on her way in (albeit as slow as a tortoise carrying a mobile home) I decided it was time I had a Colour Consultation. Colour has a big impact on how we look and feel and how others perceive us. Wearing the right colours can make you look healthier, younger and more vibrant. However, the right colours are not necessarily the colours you like – you may like yellow but if you’re pale and blonde, it’s probably going to make you look sallow and drained.

So, off I went and what fun it was! The consult lasted about 2 and a half hours, and was filled with all those things girls love like pashminas in any shade you can think of, lip gloss and eye shadow and mascara and pencils, fashion books and little swatches of colour thingies that show what looks good on you. It was like a personal pamper session, and the consultant was friendly, funny and oh so diplomatic (she only mentioned once that, “No, neon pink with green dots is not your colour!”).

First she determined my skin, hair and eye colour. Yes, you would think that by looking in the mirror you could determine that yourself but it’s not as simple as that! There are various shades of categories: light, deep, warm, cool, clear, soft… Then she draped me in swatches and pashminas and jewellery in every colour imaginable until she proved how fabulous I looked in certain colours and not in others. I discovered I fall among the likes of Aishwarya Rai and Kate Middleton. Royalty!

She then did my makeup, in my newly discovered palette and Voila! I had just had an instant makeover!

With my swatch of “42 colours that make me look fabulous” I headed home to weed through my wardrobe and get rid of those items that don’t compliment me…a daunting task at first but one which now gives me carte blanche to shop for a new summer wardrobe…and since I now know that Peppermint, Coral and Violet are my new best friends, I know exactly where to start…!

Here’s my new look!

Look out for me on the beach at Golden Bay – I’m the one in the green and purple polka dot bikini!

We planned a busy Easter weekend, and boy did it turn out to be rather interesting.

On Friday I was due to have my very first dive of 2012. It was going to be in Cirkewwa with a good friend of mine and we were so looking forward to it! We had the day planned – we were going to be blowing bubbles! As I was hopping out of bed, raring to go on the beautiful, warm, windless day, I received a text message saying the dive had been called off! WHY? The divemaster had a hangover! WHAT? You have got to be kidding me!? Only in Magical Malta! Well, no matter. I have a couple of summer months coming up and I’m definitely going to be putting that dive equipment to good use!

To make up for our lack of diving that day (and since the weather was truly magnificent), my friend and I decided we’d spend the day at Golden Bay, drining Prosecco – it was a good alternative!

Friday night, with same friends, we went to MEET, that Argentinian restaurant in St. Julian’s. Once again, it was fantastic! The meat was superb, the wine delicious and the service excellent! What surprised me, however, was that St. Julian’s was so quiet! Half the places were closed and there were so few cars on the road. We had our pick of parking spaces, which let me tell you, in Malta is a prize! Normally you park and walk at least two blocks so when you get a space right outside the restaurant, it’s worth celebrating! It only occurred to me afterwards that fish is the dish for Easter Friday…

Easter Sunday saw us in Cospicua and then Birgu for the Easter Festival. On this day the atmosphere across the island is one of joy and celebrations (remember most people on the island have just participated in Lent – 40 days of self-sacrifice).  Towns and villages celebrate the resurrection of Christ with lively band marches and a short procession with the statue of the Risen Christ. An interesting tradition is to run with the statue of the Risen Christ. This does not occur in all processions, but only at the harbour towns of Vittoriosa (Birgu), Senglea (L’Isla) and Cospicua (Bormla). We decided we would go and watch the procession and then have a delicious lunch thereafter.

When we left home that morning, in Swieqi, the sun was shining. By the time we arrived at my friend’s house in Marsascala half an hour later, it was overcast and threatening to rain. I know that this weather-change happened because I decided to wear a sundress and sandals…

We made our way to Cospicua, to the parish church dedicated to The Immaculate Conception and waited to hear the band and see the running with the statue. Due to the now imminent rain, it was decided that there would be no run as the statues could not be subjected to the water (some of these statues are more than 300 years old!). We then decided to take a walk to Vittoriosa to the church of St. Lawrence – the oldest church in Malta. There the band was ready and it was agreed to allow the men to run up the hill with the statue. They did so, and as they got to the top, it started raining. They immediately ran back to the church, but most of us spectators were left to enjoy the rain, many of us in sundresses and sandals…The locals all re-iterated that they could not remember, during the last 60 or 70 years, that the runs had been cancelled due to bad weather.

It was a great experience and one I look forward to again, next year, when the sun is shining brightly!

The Author:
Douglas Kennedy was born in Manhattan in 1955. He was educated at The Collegiate School and graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1976. He also spent a year studying at Trinity College Dublin, as a history major.
In 1977 he returned to Dublin and started a co-operative theatre company with a friend. He was later hired to run the Abbey Theatre’s second house, The Peacock. At age 28 he resigned to write full time. After several radio plays for the BBC and one stage play, he wrote his first book. Called Beyond the Pyramids, it is a narrative account of his travels in Egypt. Kennedy and his wife then moved to London where he expanded his journalistic work, and wrote for The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Listener, The New Statesman, and the British editions of Esquire and GQ.
His 10 novels have been translated in 22 countries. His latest novel, The Moment, recently became a #1 Bestseller in France, as did his earlier novel, Leaving the World. His novels are often written in European landscapes. He received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2007. In November 2009, he received the first “Grand Prix du Figaro,” awarded by the newspaper Le Figaro.

The Book:
Thomas Nesbitt is a divorced writer in the midst of a rueful middle age. Living a very private life in Maine, in touch only with his daughter and still trying to recover from the end of a long marriage, his solitude is disrupted one wintry morning by the arrival of a box that is postmarked Berlin. The name on the box—Dussmann—unsettles him completely, for it belongs to the woman with whom he had an intense love affair twenty-six years ago in Berlin at a time when the city was cleaved in two and personal and political allegiances were frequently haunted by the deep shadows of the Cold War.
Refusing initially to confront what he might find in that box, Thomas nevertheless is forced to grapple with a past he has never discussed with any living person and in the process relive those months in Berlin when he discovered, for the first and only time in his life, the full, extraordinary force of true love. But Petra Dussmann, the woman to whom he lost his heart, was not just a refugee from a police state, but also someone who lived with an ongoing sorrow that gradually rewrote both their destinies.

My Verdict:
This is without a doubt one of the most emotionally thought-provoking books I have read in as long as I can remember. This book is an adventure in dark political manifestos. It is part love story and part historical novel. But the one thing this book most definitely is, is tragic! Not just the personal tragedy that unfolds between Petra and Thomas but the tragedy which was the time and place in which they lived – when East and West was divided and people were tortured and killed for something as simple as reading the wrong newspaper. This is not a whimsical light read. It is an engrossing novel which is likely to trigger thoughts and memories of your own decisions – that Moment when you unwittingly changed a life and have no concept of the consequences.

The Author:

Diana Norman, writing as Ariana Franklin, was born on the 25th August 1933 and passed away on the 27th January 2011. She was a British author and journalist writing both historical fiction and non-fiction. She was born in Devon. Her father was a journalist and she followed this profession until moving to the countryside with her film critic husband Barry Norman. There she studied medieval history and continued to write. Writing as Ariana Franklin, she developed the “Mistress of the Art of Death” series, featuring the fictional medieval pathologist Adelia Aguilar. The Assassin’s Prayer (also known as A Murderous Procession) is the fourth and final book.

The Book:

In 1176 the beautiful and tranquil Glastonbury Abbey has been burned almost to the ground. It is one of England’s holiest sites and believed by some to be King Arthur’s sacred Isle of Avalon. The arsonist remains undiscovered but the fire leads the monks of the Abbey two uncover two hidden skeletons, a man and a woman. The skeletons’ height and age send rumors flying – are these the remains of Arthur and Guinevere?

King Henry II certainly hopes so. Struggling against a rebellion in Wales where the legend of Arthur is particularly strong, Henry demands definitive proof that the bones are Arthur’s. If the rebels believe the Once and Future King will not be coming to their aid, Henry can stamp out the belligerent Welsh subjects for good. So he calls on Adelia Aguilar, Mistress of the Art of Death, to examine the bones.

But someone doesn’t want the skeletons to be identified and is prepared to kill in order to prevent this from happening.

My Verdict:

This is the second book (although the third in this series) by this author that I have read (see my other review “The Assassin’s Prayer”). I am reading this quartet of books backwards as I am buying them as I find them. However, each book can be read as a novel on its own. As I stated in my previous review, I will most definitely now be reading the other two.

As with the others, it is an historical medieval novel, set in the early 12th century in England. It is a wonderful, unpretentious adventure story.

Again, it is not your typical whodunit plot. There are many sub-plots although the primary plot is more definitive and resolved than in her last novel and there is more investigative work actually done in the book.

It is an easy, enjoyable read with a cast of characters as richly embroidered as those in her other novel, and yet again, the historical aspects of the investigation are fascinating and the information on the religious and political landscape during the middle ages is well imparted. Adelia is a beguiling heroine with modern feminist attitudes and an independent spirit, uncommon during the time of the Crusades.

If you like a bit of mystery with some interesting history thrown in, then you’ll love this!

The Author:

Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. After graduating from Tufts University, she taught high school for a number of years in and around Boston.

She started writing short stories. One of these, “Past the Island, Drifting,” won an O. Henry prize. She later switched to journalism and travelled to Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived for three years, working as a journalist for an African magazine. One of her novels, The Last Time They Met, contains bits and pieces from her time in Africa.

In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close. Since then she has written 12 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, and Body Surfing.

In 1998, Ms. Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot’s Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah’s Book Club and an international bestseller. In April 2002, the film version of The Pilot’s Wife was aired and thereafter The Weight of Water was released in movie theaters.

The Book:

On a beach in New Hampshire in 1899, a young woman is drawn into a disastrous journey to adulthood. Olympia Biddeford is the only child of a prominent Boston couple. She is a precocious, well-educated young woman on the verge of discovering her own sexuality. Her summer at the family’s annual vacation home in Fortune’s Rocks is transformed by the arrival of a doctor who happens to be a friend of her father. Olympia is captivated by his thought processes and humanitarian efforts and she is overwhelmed by her irresistible sexual desire for him. The doctor is married, a father and more than twice her age, and they come together in a hopeless passionate affair.

Olympia is cast out of the world she knows, and this is the story of her determination to reinvent her broken life and claim what she discovers she cannot live without.

My Verdict:

This is the second book by this author that I have read, the first being The Pilot’s Wife (see my review on that book too!). I loved that book, and I enjoyed this one even more.

It is a profound and moving story about unwise love and the consequences of the choices we make. It is also a study on the erotic life of women and an exploration of class prejudices. Olympia is an unforgettable young woman, 15 years old and an unlikely heroine.

The narrative drama is beautifully and soulfully written. Ms. Shreve writes in the present tense which helps to make the reading experience immediate although being set in a period more than 100 years go. It is easy to relate to the main characters, and the intensity of their intimacy is very believable.

If you’re looking for a compelling read and an unusual love story, I recommend this book!

Valletta’s bid has passed the pre-selection stage by an evaluation panel set up to assess the applications of bidding cities. The V18 Foundation panel meets in October of this year to make their final decision.