It would be difficult to find an island nation more friendly or more welcoming than the Maltese. It goes back many centuries and would appear to be the result of a never-ending stream of overseas visitors, including Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Italians and, of course, British, who had just one thing in mind – control of one of the most strategically important ports (halfway between Sicily and North Africa) in the entire Mediterranean. There are mementos everywhere of Malta’s incredibly chequered history not least in the fact that English is widely spoken, most public signs are in both English and Maltese and traffic circulates on the left.