Ever since the original exposure of Malta's larrikin hero Manwel Dimech, through the then youthful yet no less comprehensive research efforts of the budding historian Henry Frendo, much has risen to the surface from the depths of the nation’s collective subconscious. All this is a direct result of the sterling and persistent efforts of Professor Frendo and other professionals and enthusiasts.

It is fair to say that initially many were they who would have enthusiastically relegated the mere mention of Manwel Dimech’s name to the annals of national shame.

Fortunately, times have changed. The politics (both Church and Party) of those times have inclined towards a healthier bent, with the result that more open discussion of the man’s worth has evolved. With the passage of time, an increased interest from the general public as much as from our local writers and researchers concerning the Dimech saga has evolved.

Through the publication of these newly-discovered manuscripts, Prof. Frendo, as the original exponent of one of Malta’s national icons, has clearly placed before the world of academia the challenge of a new exciting overall re-assessment of Dimech the man – as humanist, serious thinker, social leader and reformer, and polyglot as, well as a poet of some worth.

With this new exciting find, I have no doubt that Prof. Frendo’s new contribution will rekindle a fresh enthusiasm for further rummaging around in search of even more possible surprises surrounding the intriguing personality of Manwel Dimech and its consequential significance.

In this compilation, with his inimitable style and broad knowledge of historical facts as much as his flair for language, Prof. Frendo presents a challenge for an overall reassessment of Dimech the man: Dimech in his quest for justice for the underdog, his seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge as well as an exposé of his underlying sophistry beneath his passionate outbursts, especially when confronting the high and mighty.

Of course, such conclusions must be seen in unison with the entire ouvre published so far – both by Prof. Frendo himself as well as the subsequent labours of other writers.

To me, this fresh discovery in poetical form reveals, if nothing else, a certain introspection on the part of Dimech in a form of auto-psychoanalysis. This in turn seems to foretell the future man as much as it reveals a definite turning point in the maturing personality of the youthful Dimech as a street kid without any direction.

What additionally stands out in my eyes, with particular apprehension within this collection of verses, is the complete absence of even the slightest contribution in Dimech's own native language Maltese! Could it be that if there were some poems in Maltese in this batch, then they are yet to surface somewhere sometime else? Or was Dimech at the time he wrote these manuscripts, so deeply enthralled with his successes in Italian and French, that he put all else aside until he attained a higher degree of literary excellence in these newly found fonts of inspiration?

In this new compilation now before our literary and history buffs, Henry Frendo presents a serious effort at elucidating and clarifying the remaining obscurities about the protagonist. This valuable find seems to suggest there is more to come to the fore in the manner of additional documents followed by a refreshed in-depth evaluation of the protagonist and his worth.

Of course, these documents further strengthen the arguments in favour of Dimech the humanist, Dimech the artist and Dimech the accomplished poet. 

In compiling these valuable documents, Prof. Frendo has not only rendered a worthwhile service to our nation but in his introductory critical chapter has laid a path towards a clearer understanding of a national figure who managed, in no uncertain terms, to literally rescue himself from the gutter. From an illiterate scoundrel to an luminary, a national hero! A genuine visionary, no less!

I have no doubt that this latest contribution is about to become a forerunner to further exciting discoveries about the man who has intrigued an entire nation.

In publishing Dimech's Lost Prison Poems, Malta's own publisher –Midsea Books – sustains its characteristic reputation of respect toward all items of Melitensia. The hard cover binding wrapped within an attractive sleeve depicts the importance of the book’s contents as much as the publisher's appreciation of its worth.