2 Shillings

Malta's wartime government notes were issued under the Currency Notes Ordinance and printed in London precisely because the island itself was under sustained aerial bombardment from 1940 onward — the Siege of Malta made any local production infrastructure an obvious liability. The 1942 series, of which this 2 Shilling note is a part, was a practical response to severe coin shortages caused by disrupted supply lines and hoarding.

Bradbury Wilkinson's wartime production was under considerable pressure across multiple colonial and occupied-territory contracts simultaneously. Malta's notes from this period are known to suffer from foxing along the edges, a consequence of high-humidity storage conditions on the island during and after the siege.