A new biography on Dom Mintoff was launched in Gozo on Friday evening, organised by publishing house SKS. Author Dr Mark Montebello, a philosopher by profession, is a Dominican friar. He started working on this biography in 2013, and it took him some three years to complete.

The publishers explained that, “with this first scientific biography of Dom Mintoff – The Tail that Wagged the Dog: The Life and Struggles of Dom Mintoff (1916-2012) – 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,” said Dr Mark Montebello when meeting Maria Bartolo and Charles Hili, Mintoff’s relations from Gozo.

“The biography goes into the motives of Mintoff’s commissions and omissions,’ Dr 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 author explained that the work was completed from thousands of primary-source documents archived locally and abroad, and scores of interviews.

Dr Montebello pointed out that the book’s name, “The Tail that Wagged the Dog,” 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.

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