Rizzo Marich Dynasty And The Tobacco Industry In Malta - Noel Toledo

“The Marich tobacco business started in 1838 and closed down in 1959. People did not only enter, buy, pay, pick up the change and exit. The ‘divan’ in time morphed into a welcoming social hub, where habitues met habitues, exchanged news and gossip and sipped an aged port, a sherry or a single malt, under the genteel and friendly gaze of several generations of Marichs and Rizzo-Marichs.

Noel Toledo has been meticulous in preserving for posterity the Maltese micro-history of an immense global phenomenon – the nicotine capture of the world. In parallel to the story of the business, he has woven together the life-threads of the various families. But, besides that, he has frozen for posterity some of the essential trivia of an age – a captivating overview of the promotional adverts of the business, the testimonials by royalty and high-profile personalities, the suppliers – some forgotten, others who left a major imprint on the history of the island, like the old-established tobacco firm A.G. Cousis & Co, run by Joseph Howard, the first Prime Minister of self-governing Malta in 1921.”