This is, I believe, the standard and authoritative book on the building of bastions in Malta under the Knights of St John.

It is a work of great detail, enhanced with photos, designs and explanations of the details of bastion construction. Credit is due to the author for such painstaking details.

But the issue, in my view, lies beyond the technical details of bastion design and construction.

The Maltese nation devoted to bastion construction years and years of work and labour. The project to defend the new city with adequate defensive structures grew bigger and bigger, extending first to the Floriana outworks, parts of which remain incomplete till this very day.

Then it was felt that Bormla and Birgu were too exposed to the heights behind them and a huge enterprise was undertaken to build a defensive structure there, which again remains incomplete till this very day.

On the other side of Valletta it was felt that the Marsamxett area left Valletta too exposed and so Manoel Island got a really splendid fortress.

This was not all for soon Tigne Point got its own fortress to rival the Fort Ricasoli on the other side of the harbour.

The Knights were paranoid about defence and built two or three series of small forts around the shores of the island, so built that they could warn each other in case of an invasion.

They even planned a bastion separating the north part of the island from the rest but had no time to do this and so the British took over and finished it themselves naming it the Victoria Lines in gratitude to Queen Victoria on her jubilee.

In short, the construction of defensive works grew and grew also because fortress construction changed from the initial Italian model to the French one entailing changes of plans and more and more expenses.

Despite all this hard work and expenditure, however, the whole island was surrendered with almost no shot being fired.

Who knows how much could have been spent to improve the lot of the Maltese people had it been spent in this direction instead of in building fortress after fortress?

This is not to say the fortresses were not built well. On the contrary they were, if we can call them so, state-of-the-art. But the theory of war changed over the years with more use of artillery and new ideas about defensive outworks.

In Malta, as explained in the book, we can find examples of the new methods of defence, which, again, cost money, money that the Order could not really afford after the French Revolution took away most of its revenue.

Besides, while continuing to build fortresses costing it so much funds, the Order found, very late in the day, it did not have enough soldiers to man these extensive fortifications. But still the Order continued to build until the very eve of Napoleon's arrival.

At the end, in June 1798, the Order was forced to leave, unloved and unwept, after building so many fortifications many of which, even after they have been restored, struggle to find a real use. Some are being reused, like St James Cavalier or Fort St Elmo; others like Fort Manoel have been restored but have not been set to use, while Fort Ricasoli lies unused and unrestored. And there are still others which up to a short while ago were used to house pigs. The Knights left us an inheritance which is too heavy for us to bear.