When I joined Il-Hajja, the Church's Maltese language daily paper in July 1972, John Inguanez was the news editor, or at least acted as one, because things were rather fluid there.

The paper had just passed through the trauma of the defenestration of the editor, Henry Frendo and, as Inguanez says, his replacement, Salv Gatt, was more of a proofreader than anything else.

The editorials were written by somebody else and the decisions were also taken by somebody else.

Unfortunately the author fails to give the background to the sacking of Prof. Frendo, though this is now common knowledge.

Frendo had made extensive research on Manwel Dimech, the 19th century rebel, which contributed significantly to his revaluation.

But this happened at the same time that the Labour Party came to power and inside the Church, Frendo's articles on Dimech were unfairly blamed for leading to the PN defeat. Hence Frendo had to go.

The author had been registered as the new paper's editor even before its first appearance but this was disregarded.

Then after the Frendo case, the new editor who was appointed was not the author who had even followed courses by the Thomson Foundation, but Charles Buttigieg who had less seniority and who was later recompensed after the death of Il-Hajja with the PRO-ship of the Curia.

The author does not say clearly but two priests, in my mind, were responsible - Dun Ang Seychell, who like Buttigieg hailed from Zejtun, and Antoine Said Pullicino whose brother was Bishop Gerada's secretary.

The author had been warned by none other than Fr Peter Serracino Inglott "don't trust any of them".

"Robbed" of the editorship the author was still not ready to move elsewhere even when John Manduca tried to interest him in moving to Rediffusion during the reception to mark Il-Hajja's new building at Blata l-Bajda.

But when a second approach was made some time later (and meanwhile Il-Hajja had become weaker and he had been publicly chewed up by Mintoff) he accepted to join. He was the last to join Rediffusion.

Inguanez, the author, comes from a hard-working family from Ghaxaq. He tells us of his childhood in the village, of his father and his mother who used to run a bar in an outlying square which he later helped run when he grew up.

He was more of a village boy than his older brother, Joe, who became a priest.

In fact, village life never came into Joe's life except maybe the ZHN (Young Christian Workers) which spread in Ghaxaq and nearby Zejtun during the politico-religious crisis of the 1960s.

Fr Joe later became a university lecturer and a constant thorn to the Church leadership until his passing while swimming some years back.

Back to John. The Rediffusion he joined was a colonialist relic and soon enough was taken over by the workforce in a strike (John joining in) in the aggressive years of the Mintoff regime 1971-1976.

We may have a different perception of those years from the outside but for the author they seem almost a blur of appointments and removals where Charles Buttigieg was now replaced by Sylvana Cristina as the focus of his rancour.

These incessant battles continued through the years of the Labour administration and then the years of the Nationalist renewal when the liberalisation of the airwaves and the pluralisation helped calm the waters after the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of previous years. After all these years of strife the author had to face his share of illness and operations.

For 14 years he was the Malta correspondent of the Agence France-Presse with its high point reached in the interview with newly-elected President Sarkozy as he jogged in a country lane in Malta.

Through all these years John was supported by his wife Maria and in time by his three daughters and their families.

He never let adverse events bring him down and time and again found an outlet for his hard-working nature ending up doing translation work for European institutions.