Grecian Doric returns to the central Mediterranean : the achievement of Colonel George Whitmore and the Royal Engineers

Abstract

In his reminiscences of his service in Malta during the Second World War, the late Sir Howard Colvin mentioned his interpretation of aerial reconnaissance and his off-duty use of the Garrison Officers’ Library. Here he found many essential books, including Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens, ‘evidently acquired for the benefit of the Royal Engineers ... who were responsible both for the maintenance of the fortifications and for new buildings such as the Neoclassical Main Guard in Valletta’, where the library was situated.1 The officer primarily responsible was revealed as Colonel, subsequently General, Sir George Whitmore KCH (1775–1862) in Joan Johnson’s The General (1987) an edited version of his travel memoirs.