An Extraordinary Life in the Shadows of War. Diana Mackintosh came of age to the drone of sirens alerting the people of Malta to the arrival of relentless flights of belligerent German and Italian menace - the bombers she first imagined as a swarm of black flies, pests that stung and cursed her Mediterranean homeland. The three-year onslaught never took a day off; it was endless, but supplies were not. The hope of a shipment of high high protein became an ongoing dream. The only time Diana wasn't hungry was as when she slept. Her story of that time, and in 2020 she is one of the very few remaining who experienced it first-hand.