Island of happiness

On the eve of CHOGM, the Queen returns to her island of happiness, writes Caroline Davies in Valletta. From the Daily Telegraph-with photo gallery:

The Queen returned to Malta yesterday, the island where she spent carefree days as a Royal Navy wife before her accession. She was welcomed by a 1,000-strong crowd who lined the narrow medieval streets of its capital, Valletta, to see the woman who was once their resident princess, then later their Queen.

The Maltese jealously guard their claim that they provided her with the only few months of "normality" she has enjoyed in a life dedicated to duty when, as Princess Elizabeth, she lived as a naval officer's wife with Prince Philip, who was posted there between 1949-51 with the Mediterranean Fleet..

As she began a four-day state visit, it seemed there were memories around every corner. Indeed, this was her "isle of happy memories", asserted Malta's newspapers yesterday alongside evocative photographs of her at the time. Remember the occasion, one reminded readers, when she had to back her car up "after a countryman on a donkey cart plodding along a narrow stone-wall lane at Mgarr refused to give way"..

Fifty-six years later, that photographer, Frank Attard, was still there, perched on a balcony with his camera to record her walking through the crowds on this, her fourth visit. In fact Malta even claims her first "walkabout", said to have been in November 1967, when as Queen of a then independent Malta, she mixed with the crowds on Kingsway. Yesterday she repeated that walkabout, except Kingsway is now Republic Street after a Labour government jettisoned her as Queen in 1974...

From Australia's Herald Sun, 'John Howard has neatly summed up the Commonwealth's dwindling clout'; Wikipedia has the humorous CHOGM acronym: Chappies Holidaying On Government Money; From The New Zealand Herald, why have a CHOGM?; From Qatar Gulf Times, Laurence Grech gives CHOGM background; From Reuters, Commonwealth "getting angry" at lack of WTO action; From One world South Asia, first CHOGM meeting for Pakistan since re-admission in Commonwealth; From Fiji Times, Malta has been gripped by Commonwealth fever; From Yachting World, new marina opened by Queen.