The author is listed on the book cover as Joseph Paul Cassar, the author of many other books on Maltese artists.

But the real author is Mariz Cassar. Mariz is the daughter of Lewis Wirth and Helen Cavarra and she has been the driving force behind this loving homage to her parents.

The Wirth-Cavarra couple lived a relatively quiet life, engrossed in their relationship and painting and drawing all the time. By the time one finishes this massive coffee-table book, one simply marvels at the many drawings, paintings and designs produced by the couple. They did study at the School of Art (where they met each other) and even, in Helen's case, studied art abroad, but they are not thought of as among the foremost Maltese artists of the 1950s and the 1960s.

They kept away from the trends of the contemporary artists then and maybe have been passed over in popular esteem. This book goes a long way to redress the balance.

The couple, together with George Fenech, the subject of another book by Prof. J.P. Cassar, were among the students of the evening School of Art that met in Valletta in the post-war years. There they were trained in the basic grounding of art and there they discovered their love of art.

For Lewis, art was a hobby he took up passionately. He painted mostly the open countryside, the many corners of this island which he saw on his wanderings, together with sometimes the remains he found, of a small church, or an old farm.

Helen was more taken up with nature and she has produced what may be called a compendium of Malta's flowering plants. Her drawings are precise, exquisite, and yet they are not illustrations from a book, but real plants.

In 1951 Lewis went to Libya along with Paul Manduca to work for Barclays Bank in Tripoli. His new wife joined him there after a year.

The Tripoli Lewis painted is sadly now no more. The fighting and the destruction of the past months have made us forget the tranquil Tripoli of pre-Gaddafi years. Even some landmarks have been changed - the Tripoli cathedral that Lewis painted was taken over in 1980 and changed into a mosque.

For Lewis, Tripoli was exotic, quaint, interesting. He delighted in painting the ordinary people in their traditional dress, at their traditional pastimes. He was enthused by the many Roman remains he saw (now sadly vandalised).

The couple spent no less than 17 years in Tripoli, leaving Libya in 1969, thus missing Gaddafi's coup by a few months. Meanwhile, they also missed the revival of Maltese artists in the 1960s.

They came back and resumed their quiet lives. They came back, fortunately a week before the Gaddafi coup, but mainly because Helen had fallen sick. Her long illness involved going to London for treatment but she nevertheless continued painting and holding or taking part in exhibitions until the very end. She died in June 1978, aged 52.

On her death, Lewis left Barclays and resumed his quiet unassuming life. A meticulous man, he began keeping a diary and listed all his and his wife's paintings in minute detail. Naturally, he continued painting and also his hobby of design and finding comfort in the Poor Clare's monastery in St Julian's and the parish as well. He died in 2010, aged 87 years.

The heavy, coffee-table book, contains a large quantity of the drawings by the couple, all annotated and commented by Joseph Paul Cassar. Having been tutored by Emvin Cremona, there are obvious influences evident. Such can be seen, for instance, in a collection of scratchboards on the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. Lewis was so meticulous that he even kept and collected entries he made for design competitions even when they were unsuccessful.