This is the fourth in the series of Nostalgias volumes by
Giovanni Bonello in which he lays before the reader handsome sets
of photographs taken by artists, mainly Maltese, who recorded the
appearance of the landscapes and seascapes of the Maltese Islands
and, to a smaller extent, that of the people who inhabited them
in the late nineteenth century and in the first half of the last
century. Handsomely bound and elegantly designed like its
predecessors, Nostalgias of Malta - Images by Horatio Agius

from the 1860s to the 1900s , should sit proudly on a bookshelf
or on a coffee table, whilst being pleasantly useful as a work of
reference, or as one of those books through which it is pleasant
just to leaf idly.





As usual, Giovanni Bonello has not just made a careful choice of
those photographs from Horatio Agius's studio to include, but has
also made sure that those of them to whom time has been unkind
have been professionally doctored. He has also provided one of
his very readable and carefully researched introductions to Agius
as an artist and as a man. In fact, the early part of the
introduction will remind readers of Bonello's numerous articles
about people - Maltese, Knights of St John and Britons - whose
lives were noted for irregularities in social mores, as he
reveals that Agius was born in 1844 out of wedlock to a married
woman, and a father who was to recognise him when Horatio was
twenty-six years old.



The boy did not receive a regular schooling, it seems, but he
managed to learn a photographer's technical skill, and over the
years made some good money out of photography. He tried his best
to achieve social acceptance by acquiring immovable property,
marrying as the second of his two wives a woman from a good
middle-class family, and finally by buying himself a dubious
Neapolitan knighthood, following which he styled himself Chev
Horatio Agius. He died in 1910.



His many photographs, many of which are remarkable for their
sharpness, provide a fine record of Valletta, its harbours, and
of Cottonera in the last few decades of Queen Victoria's reign.
The captions used for the original prints have been retained,
leading to hilarious phrases such as "French Chapee

[for Chapel]" or "Colidor of the Armoury". The greatest novelty
is the series of figures in lay or religious garb - cotton
spinner, chorister, peasant, Capuchin Father, etc. A photograph
showing "The Boys of HMS Garnet" - naval ratings wearing the
large straw hats still worn as part of the summer uniform in
Victorian times - should become a favourite especially with English readers.