5.30 am and Major Dan Bonar, pacing the roof of his house, greets the dawn with a skirl of his bagpipes. Another day in Malta has begun; a day when a retired colonial policeman will play golf with a retired shop-keeper; a retired Kenyan farmer will play polo; one retired businessman will hoe his marrows and another will play with his collapsible motor-bike. For the bronchial, asthmatic and arthritic as well as the plain hard-up, Malta is a place in the sun where it is still possible to live well, if not extravagantly, on ã1,000 a year. Also, for those who have lived and worked in what once were called our colonies, Malta can seem the nearest place to home where the sun does still shine. This is not a film about politicians or the British military presence; it is not even about a representative cross-section of the British in Malta. It is about some of the English abroad. Fifty years ago they would, perhaps, have been destined to govern outposts of our Empire. Today there is no Empir