Tag: malta

Caravaggio was here

caravaggioIn the pit underneath this hatch in 1608. For brawling, breaking down a door and badly injuring the knight with whom he was brawling. After a month, he escaped, fled Malta, and was expelled from the Knights of Malta (into which he had been inducted the year before as official painter to the Order) as a ‘foul and rotten member’.

Imagine what this shit would be worth if they’d kept it in the original packaging

All items found in one room of a museum (the Grand Inquisitor’s Palace) largely dedicated to arguing that the Inquisition wasn’t actually that bad since it only occasionally tortured and executed people, while blithely describing its brutal oppression of the general population. Such as the slave who was tried for heresy for – it was claimed by his anonymous accuser – complaining that he would have been better off if he was still a slave of Muslims since they treated their slaves better than Christians did.

And there was me thinking the Grand Inquisitor was some kind of music hall memory-man act.

Holiday reading 3: what I read on my holiday

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What I didn’t read on my holiday:

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Poor Caine Mutiny has now traveled over 20,000 miles in my luggage since December and is still unread. Maybe next time.

What only got as far as Manchester because the case was too heavy when Andrea selfishly packed her stuff in it:

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And, okay, the books I bought in Malta:

books2In my defence, they were both remaindered, I’ve never seen a copy of the Lotz, and the Winslow was because when we were mis-sold bus travel credit, they refused to refund but would exchange, then mis-sold us different bus travel credit but on leaving the shop we checked online what they’d straight out lied to us about, and still they refused to refund, so we bought the correct bus travel credit and then spent ages finding a bunch of things we did not really want for them to have to ring up on the till (though, that said, the Winslow sounds like a great piece of trash, and so no doubt it will find itself packed in the luggage for another trip some time. But not until I’ve finally read The Caine Mutiny).