Ladies of Lascaris

The world premiere of the musical stage play _Star of Strait Street_ took place in Valletta on 4 April 2017. It celebrates the life of Christina Ratcliffe, an English singer and dancer who became an aircraft plotter in Malta in the Second World War. She worked in the underground Royal Air Force operational headquarters beneath Lascaris Bastion in Valletta.
This is Christina’s story and that of other British and Maltese girls employed by the RAF. It is also the story of Philip Glassborow’s hit musical _Star of Strait Street_.
In June 1942 fifty-three female civilian plotters worked at Lascaris, some as young as fourteen. Six including Christina were decorated for gallantry. What they did, how they lived and how some of them died is told in part using their own words. Their descriptions of life beneath the most intensive, prolonged bombing the world has ever seen are extraordinary and rare: female perspectives at the heart of military conflict.
Described in the...