This book is a selection of blog posts published on Truth be Told (Manueldelia.com) from its beginning on 6 June 2017 to the first months of this year.
In other words, with remarkable prescience, this blog substitutes Daphne Caruana Galizia's hugely popular blog Running Commentary (daphnecaruanagalizia.com), which was brutally blocked when Daphne was killed on 16 October 2017.
These details show that the original intention of the author was never to take Daphne's place although, as things turned out, Delia's blog is in more than one way, a continuation of Daphne's one.
The inspiration and the way they look at things are along the same lines. Daphne's blog was widely popular - people used to wait for each new instalment with the same frenzy Richardson's readers awaited every new instalment.
She was the one who many times broke new stories, for which we are coming to understand, she was later killed.
No other newspaper on the island had such a circulation. On particular days, such as when the Egrant story broke or when she claimed minister Chris Cardona had visited a brothel in Germany, her ratings shot through the roof.
There is another factor: Daphne took extreme care with those who posted comments on her blog, even to the extent of correcting their spelling or grammar. She would keep at it, in her last period, till the early hours of the night, sometimes foregoing sleep altogether.
I have no idea what kind of response Delia gets for his blog posts. All I know is that he has installed a kind of system, probably to ward off spam, which asks you to choose pictures of bicycles to prove you are a human.
I have written many times that Daphne's blog must be collected and printed "in toto" before something happens to it. I recently needed to find a blogpost methinks Daphne had written and found nothing. Could it be that Daphne herself had deleted the reference?
I have then an objection to the way the blog posts have been chosen and presented. They have been selected by theme, which makes sense, but that means that the reader is continually asked to skip ahead or as the case may be, to go back in time.
What happened in just this period in our country's history, such as we are made to remember by this book, beats description. We had first a general election, then the assassination of the country's best-known blogger and the tidal wave of shock that swept over the whole country as a result.
Then as investigations seemed to flounder, despite some arrests that were made, popular anger reached new heights, culminating in the resignation of the country's prime minister.
On the other side of the country, anger reached the Leader of the Opposition until he too was brought down.
All this is reflected in the blogs that feature in the book. Sometimes, as on the day Daphne was killed, Delia goes in overdrive with his comment appearing just minutes after the news broke and continues with others as shock sets in. Maybe that first comment was one of the earliest made.
One reason for the argument made above is that blog posts react to the news of the day and the news is hardly ever in logical progression but comes in all kinds and shapes. Hence, the posts treat different subjects, from the latest scandal regarding priest abuse of children, the choice of a new PN leader, and so on. In other words, Delia is not one of those early gramophones which repeat the same tune endlessly.
There is also a welcome sense of outrage especially on the priest abuse issue.
The author writes well, as he has many times written using a variety of pen-names but he misses Daphne's superior English and of course her sarcasm. Delia's sense of outrage is almost equal to Daphne's.
Whenever his writings on the Sunday Times touch a raw nerve, an army of government-leaning bloggers takes over and Arriva is mentioned.
He was minister Austin Gatt's chief assistant and the teething problems of the new public transport system are ascribed to him in the popular parlance.
I was critical as any on Arriva and wrote so. But in truth the new system broke down the old system of unwieldy buses, owner-driven and chaos all around. The Arriva system was not perfect, nor is the present one. And we are paying far more for it than we paid Arriva.
But it prepared the ground for the national system we have now. More could be done but that's up to the government of the day.
Manuel Delia is also a founder-member of Repubblika, the NGO which has organised so many protests against government. He has initiated court action against Minister Owen Bonnici regarding the Daphne shrine in front of the Law Courts and his wife was physically attacked in the same area.
In other words, and against Daphne, he unites writing to direct action.
Covid has seen to it that the regular meetings held every 16th of the month have had to be suspended. The spirit that animated the meetings through so many months now seems to be declining while new concerns come to the fore, mostly environmental. It will not be easy to carry Daphne's candle through changed circumstances.
Delia's verbal outpouring and his indubitable courage will ensure that Daphne's spirit is kept aloft.