In 1968, when Anthony Burgess married Liana Macellari, an Italian linguist and translator, they decided to leave England and settle abroad. They moved first of all to Malta, then to Italy, France and Monaco, with long excursions to the United States and Canada to take up occasional lecturing posts in universities, and to carry out lecture tours. 'I had married into the Continent,' Burgess wrote, and it seemed only right that he should make a new life in places where Italian, French and Maltese were spoken.

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How did I get to meet and indeed befriend, Anthony and Liana Burgess in Malta? It came about because of the Censorship Reform Group which I believe was set up by Dr Paul Xuereb, then University Librarian and literary critic for The Sunday Times of Malta. I was a member of the group and we wrote articles and endless letters to the press protesting about the censorship which in the early '60s was absurd.  Girls in bikinis in the English papers were blackened out or the pictures simply snipped out with scissors; films were censored or not shown at all in the cinemas and books were simply not given to you at the post office if the officer considered the cover too lascivious. The local press was full of articles and indignant letters pointing out the absurdity of all this.

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One day I had a phone call from Liana Burgess inviting me to go and meet them at their home in Lija. To me then her husband was simply a writer whose books I had never read. But Burgess was already famous abroad. One day Liana, complained to me that it was only in Malta that they were not greeted at the airport by the media and admirers of Burgess. She was unhappy about it and quite right too.

 Liana was warm and a bright spark and did not hesitate to tell you exactly what she was thinking. ;Anthony was intense and usually at his typewriter. I have never seen him without a cheroot between his fingers, puffing away. His sense of humour was always present. I was to visit them a good number of times at their home in Lija.

 Their son Andrea went to the local government school and was beginning to pick up Maltese. This was a family of linguists and they loved playing with words. They had come to live here because  the government had introduced a special rate of income tax for expatriate residents - merely sixpence in the pound. (Thus people like the Burgesses were rather vulgarly known as the six-penny-settlers.)

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But censorship was to touch Burgess too and he didn't like it  He wrote in an article of which he gave me a copy: "A book of mine was confiscated because it had a girl on the cover and was entitled Un Agent Qui Vous Vaut Du Bien - French, a highly suspect language. When the same book came out in Danish it was called Martyrenes Blod - or Martyr's Blood - and whizzed through to me almost with an archipiscopal blessing. Again I think this was right, since the Danish title is more appropriate to the content of the book than the French one."

He sometimes spoke about music, for he was himself a composer of some two hundred and fifty works of music. At one time he told me he was composing a piece of music inspired by the festa fireworks. He called it Gigġifogu. He wrote in the Forward to his collection of Literary essays, Urgent Copy: "I am really, I think, a novelist and a musical composer manqué...book writing is hard on the brain and excruciating to the body: it engenders tobacco-addiction, an over-reliance on caffeine and Dexedrine, piles, dyspepsia, chronic anxiety, sexual impotence."

As we got to know each other  over a meal or a drink (he sometimes cooked himself - Liana often complained about the garlic - too small,I eventually asked him for an interview to be published in The Sunday of Malta. There was no email then so there was much going and coming to Lija with discussions, questions and corrections. Finally, triumphant, I took the final copy of the interview, typed on my portable red Olivetti, to Laurence Grech, then editor of The Sunday Times. Burgess had said that it was not for the archbishop (then Michael Gonzi) to enter into people's bedrooms. Laurence hesitated and told me he would have to censor that out. I was adamant. Either all the interview as it stood or it was not to be published. Laurence reluctantly conceded. It was a scoop. In a way it was brave of him for this was not a time to spar with Archbishop Gonzi or any member of the Catholic church..

I do not have the interview at hand but The Library Association through me had invited Burgess to give a lecture at the University of Malta. This information was written at the tailend of the interview.

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When I had asked him to give a lecture on censorship, he protested. I remember his words as my heart sank: 'What makes you think that a writer can also speak in public?' I insisted  and indeed pleaded and he was finally persuaded. The lecture was an enormous success with people pouring out of the door of the main hall of the university. We loved him:  his eloquence, his humour, his knowledge, his wit. The Library Association eventually published the lecture.

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I eventually went to London on scholarship from the University of Malta, to study librarianship. The Burgesses had  kept in touch although by now they had left Malta but I had the occasional postcard and phonecall.   In London Liana called me and invited me to Claridges where they had a suite. 'This will possibly be your only chance to sleep here,' she told me. 'Come!' They were there for the premiere of A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's film and possibly Burgess's most famous book. Liana told me not to dress up for  the English simply don't. So I stepped into Claridges in a tweed coat. We had supper at a nearby restaurant with Andrea's godparents whose surname I have now forgotten. But before that we drank a few glasses of Black Velvet at Claridges, It was Guinness and champagne

 I did not wish to sleep there as I had an early lecture the following day but I told them that I was going to Paris soon. Anthony immediately offered to give me an introductory letter to his French publisher Denoel. Out came a Claridges letterhead and he wrote the introduction in French. Andrea accompanied it with some of his drawings. I never went to Denoel but I still have the letter. It was all done so spontaneously and so generously.

He gave me two signed copies of his books one of them  Urgent Copy: Literary Studies dedicated to his wife Liliana. Here is a quote from the Foreword: "Most of the essays in this book were written because I was asked to write them... In this respect, these writings are different from the seventeen novels and three books of literary exegesis that I have produced. One doesn't usually work to a deadline with a book, and  hence one thinks one is taking more trouble than with journalism. This isn't necessarily true, Some fine nervous prose can be jerked out by deadlines. Fine nervous music also: think of Mozart composing the Overture to Don Giovanni while the audience was coming in. "

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Another book he gave me is The God I want. (edited with an introduction by James Mitchell) in which Burgess had contributed a piece together with another eight writers including Andrew Boyle, A.S. Byatt and Bernardine Bishop. Anthony Burgess's  contribution is a philosophical conversation with himself: between Anthony and Burgess.  

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When they were living in Monaco they phoned, telling me that they would not be returning to Malta and would I sell their house in Lija? I had fallen in love and wanted to return to London as soon as possible and told them so.

Sad to say the three of them are now dead. However, Liana made sure that her husband's legacy is well looked after and that Anthony's name and work will be remembered for generations to come.

I was fortunate to meet them and get to know them and I shall always remember the kindness they showed me.