My Life and Times: Memories and Experiences of a Maltese Civil Servant

Alfred Fiorini Lowell was born in 1941 in the middle of World War II and this book covers eighty years of his life up to the end of 2021.

He had a distinguished career in the Malta civil service, during which he served in the Prime Minister’s Office for 31 years between 1967 until he retired from the service. In the latter part of his career he occupied, among others, the posts of private secretary to the Prime Minister, Permanent Secretary in two different Ministries and Cabinet Secretary in three different administrations of Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami between 1987 and 2003.

During his 45 years in the service and a subsequent seven as chairman of the Public Service Commission, he served under six Prime Ministers of the first nine legislatures after Malta became a republic in 1974. His reminiscences of many of the top political figures he worked with are many and are only one feature of the career part of his autobiography.

However, Alfred Fiorini Lowell makes it clear from the start that his career was only one of the two facets of his life that he writes about, the other, at least as important, being his family life. This autobiography therefore also covers some of the more important events in his family, from his birth, growing up, marrying and the adoption of Andrew, his and his wife Antoinette’s only son, and beyond.