I feel rather awkward writing this as I have penned the foreword for it and spoke at its launch. But then, where Rene is involved, I have long had a sort of paternal attitude, a rather laid-back approach, laughing most of the time at whatever Rene did. Or else getting so very alarmed, even if we found out what he had been doing only after the event.

When he first, as a young boy just out of MCAST, became employed at Standard Publications, he was known, as I wrote, as the boy who chased lightning.

On any wintry night, when the rumble of thunder announces a coming storm, Rene would be off, chasing the storm, trying to get the best pictures of lightning strikes.

It wasn't all fun and games for on one occasion a bolt of lightning struck very near him on the seashore and temporarily deafened him.

But on another occasion he managed to capture a lightning bolt hitting the top of the Portomaso tower. Its owner was inordinately fond of this photo and had it hung in the office.

The other Rene we adored in those days was Rene the paparazzo. He does not write it in the book but here we remember how he described stalking Madonna especially on a Comino that was supposed to be forbidden to one and all, paparazzi especially. Rene told us how he crept from bush to bush in that heat, holding a thorn bush for camouflage and how angry Madonna was when Rene was discovered.

This is not the only memory that Rene has not included in the book, perhaps out of natural reticence or modesty. One other episode I remember was prodded by a photo of Pope John Paul. I was flabbergasted when another photographer we engaged for the occasion came up to me with a photo shot by a telephoto lens showing Rene in a very precarious position atop the Floriana church frontispiece.

There are then heaps of photos shot at red carpet events such as the MTV European Music Awards , the European Film Awards and Universal Music Awards.

But surely the most trenchant and nail-biting pages come from his coverage of war. Rene has been in two wars (and would have wanted to be in more) - in Libya and in Syria. He has also been to the West Bank.

His trip to Libya was in the midst of the civil war, an in and out affair in the company of the anti-Gaddafi rebels.

He was injured when he tried to enter Syria but that was not because he was hit (he was shot at, but not hit) but rather because the mule he was riding threw him off its back when they were shot at and Rene hurt his back severely, apart from having to make it back to the border in pain and with next to no assistance.

The pictures he got were impressive. Maybe no such risk is justified for photo-journalists have been killed in such circumstances but for a photographer like Rene getting the photo others will not get is an incentive like no other.