Excavating Tunnel for RAF Control Rooms: Maltese Miners by Leslie Cole, oil on canvas.

After selling numerous Home Front pictures to the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, Cole was appointed an Official War Artist. For his first commission in 1943 he recorded the German Siege of Malta in its last months.

Malta, then a British colony, was a strategically important naval and air base for the Allies in the Mediterranean. Since July 1940 the island had suffered continuous aerial bombardment, much heavier than London's Blitz. Cole depicted the British Armed Forces whose headquarters occupied extensive underground chambers. He also represented Malta’s loyal and stoical civilians, such as when they excavated operational tunnels and sheltered from raids. Months before Cole made this painting, and following the worst period of the Siege, on 15 April 1942 King George VI awarded Malta the George Cross medal for its citizens' 'heroism and devotion', which he believed would 'long be famous in history'. In 1992 a permanent memorial by British sculptor Michael Sandle, the 'Malta Siege Bell Memorial', was unveiled in Valetta by Queen Elizabeth II to mark the 50th anniversary of the medal's award. From the Air Ministry allocation of works from the War Artists' Advisory Committee, 1947. Original accession number: LD3253. On loan from the RAF Air Historical Branch (MOD). Copyight: Crown (expired) / RAF Museum.