Here is a delightful book, with just the right amount of past history in it; the eventful history of Malta is still very much alive in its buildings and its customs, and one is quickly conscious of the past showing through the present. Captain Brockman first came to Malta in 1927 and married a Maltese in the following year. He was frequently stationed in Malta and made his acquaintance with the Islands as with a picturesque and exotic region; his was a lively interest in people and in vanishing customs. Eventually he stayed long enough to know Malta as a second homeland; he was himself the Knight of Malta. The book which he wrote in 1961 is no chronicle of Naval occasions in a great British base, but studies of an ancient people in a rapidly changing world.