Book launch: Mintoff’s life and struggles as never seen before

“With this first scientific biography of Dom Mintoff we get to know “Il-Perit” as never before. Though many are acquainted to bits and pieces of him, none know him completely. This biography invites one and all to revise whatever is known about him until now,” Mark Montebello, the author of Dom Mintoff’s biography

said when meeting Maria Bartolo and Charles Hili, Mintoff’s relations from Gozo at it-Tokk, Victoria Gozo.

At the event, organised by publishing house SKS, Mintoff ’s biography was announced to the public, which will soon be officially issued. Montebello, a philosopher by profession, is a Dominican friar. He has been working on this biography since 2013, and it took him three years to write it.

“The biography goes into the motives of Mintoff’s commissions and omissions,” Montebello stated, “since his earliest years at Bormla till his last public appearances almost a century later.”

The biography will reveal many aspects of Mintoff ’s personality that have hitherto remained hidden. The work was completed from thousands of primary-source documents archived locally and abroad, and scores of interviews.

Montebello pointed out that the book’s name, was chosen from among many possible others to metaphorically highlight Mintoff’s significance to the Maltese nation. Mintoff was but a tail which, however, shook the dog, or influenced the Maltese State, so radically.

The event was held in Gozo to highlight the very close relationship of Dom Mintoff with Gozo both through his paternal family and through the Labour Party.