In his four-volume study, Pirotta meticulously examines Malta's twenty-year transformation from Britain's foremost Mediterranean fortress colony to sovereign State. Acclaimed for its heroic resistance to fascism during the Second World War that ostensibly bound it closer to its imperial masters, the over-populated, physically wrecked Island bereft of resources, joined the ranks of independent states in 1964. To examine the why and the how of this transformation Pirotta delved through voluminous Maltese and British documents, local and foreign archives and interviewed numerous key personalities. Analysing the complicated power game played by party, Church and trade union leaders, Pirotta reveals much that went on behind the scenes.