Malta Magnificent, written by Major Francis Gerard and first published in 1943, tells of the siege of Malta, one of the epic incidents in the world’s history. For two years, the Luftwaffe was hurled against the island day and night, but Malta and its people stood indomitable and unshaken throughout, and the “George Cross Island” held. A gripping account.

The indispensable account of the Ottoman Empire’s Siege of Malta from the author of Hannibal and Gibraltar. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was thought to be invincible. Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan, had expanded his empire from western Asia to southeastern Europe and North Africa. To secure control of the Mediterranean between these territories and launch an offensive into western Europe, Suleiman needed the small but strategically crucial island of Malta. But Suleiman’s attempt to take the island from the Holy Roman Empire’s Knights of St. John would emerge as one of the most famous and brutal military defeats in history. Forty-two years earlier, Suleiman had been victorious against the Knights of St. John when he drove them out of their island fortress at Rhodes. Believing he would repeat this victory, the sultan sent an armada to Malta. When they captured Fort St. Elmo, the Ottoman forces ruthlessly took no prisoners. The Roman grand master La Vallette responded by having his Ottoman captives beheaded. Then the battle for Malta began in earnest: no quarter asked, none given. Ernle Bradford’s compelling and thoroughly researched account of the Great Siege of Malta recalls not just an epic battle, but a clash of civilizations unlike anything since the time of Alexander the Great. It is “a superior, readable treatment of an important but little-discussed epic from the Renaissance past . . . An astonishing tale” (Kirkus Reviews).

This is a true historical account of war in the air, at sea and on land in the battle for Malta's survival in the Second World War. It was a battle which decided the outcome of the war in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Adrian Warburton, the airman described in the subtitle by Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, went missing in 1944 in a single-seat American aircraft. He had flown at least 395 operational missions mostly from Malta. Unusually for a reconnaissance pilot, 'Warby' as he was known was credited with nine aircraft shot down. He lay undiscovered for sixty years. He is the RAF's most highly decorated photo-recce pilot.In Malta, Adrian met Christina, a stranded dancer turned aircraft plotter in the secret world deep beneath Valletta's fortress walls. She too was decorated for heroism. Together, they became part of the island's folklore. How important was Malta and the girl from Cheshire to the man behind the medals? This tale takes the form of a quest opening in a cemetery in Bavaria and closing in another in Malta. In between, the reader is immersed within the tension and drama surrounding Malta's Greater Siege retracing the steps of the main characters over the forever changed face of the island following its heroic victory.

Now available in ePub format. DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Top 10 Malta and Gozo will lead you straight to the very best this region has to offer. Whether you're looking for the things not to miss at the Top 10 sights or the liveliest nightlife, this fully updated guide with map is the perfect pocket-sized companion. The guide is divided by area with restaurant reviews for each, as well as recommendations for hotels, bars, and places to shop. Rely on dozens of Top 10 lists-from the Top 10 museums to the Top 10 events and festivals. There's even a list of the Top 10 things to avoid. You'll find the insider knowledge you need to explore every corner of this region with DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Top 10 Malta and Gozo and map.

In the spring of 1565, a massive fleet of Ottoman ships descended on Malta, a small island centrally located between North Africa and Sicily, home and headquarters of the crusading Knights of St. John and their charismatic Grand Master, Jean de Valette. The Knights had been expelled from Rhodes by the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, and now stood as the last bastion against a Muslim invasion of Sicily, southern Italy, and beyond. The siege force of Turks, Arabs, and Barbary corsairs from across the Muslim world outnumbered the defenders of Malta many times over, and its arrival began a long hot summer of bloody combat, often hand to hand, embroiling knights and mercenaries, civilians and slaves, in a desperate struggle for this pivotal point in the Mediterranean. Bruce Ware Allen's The Great Siege of Malta describes the siege's geopolitical context, explains its strategies and tactics, and reveals how the all-too-human personalities of both Muslim and Christian leaders shaped the course of events. The siege of Malta was the Ottoman empire's high-water mark in the war between the Christian West and the Muslim East for control of the Mediterranean. Drawing on copious research and new source material, Allen stirringly recreates the two factions' heroism and chivalry, while simultaneously tracing the barbarism, severity, and indifference to suffering of sixteenth-century warfare. The Great Siege of Malta is a fresh, vivid retelling of one of the most famous battles of the early modern world - a battle whose echoes are still felt today.

This scholarly yet accessible book explores the social anthropology of Malta within the context of regional cultural exchange between the Maltese and their neighbors. Contributors to Malta's rich cultural development have been the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Sicilians, Greeks, Romans, Berbers, Arabs, Turks, Normans, Spaniards, French, British, and others. Other important contributors have been the Holy See and the Order of St. John, whose members have often been known simply as the Knights of Malta. Malta is a missing link to understanding many interrelationships among Mediterranean peoples and civilizations that hitherto have remained hidden or problematic. Located at the center of the Mediterranean Basin, Malta has been pivotal in numerous cultural transformations and can serve as a prism for understanding much that is important about lifeways in the Mediterranean: trade, subsistence systems, religion, urbanization, and the transmigration of peoples in war and in peace.