DOCUMENTS uncovered in Malta by Bournemouth University scholars could paint a very darker picture of one Britain's greatest romantic poets and political commentators.

The university team claims its research reveals that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was actually a propagandist who manipulated Maltese public opinion to promote British Imperial goals - contrary to his public attacks on civil liberties during war time.

The researchers also claim that Coleridge, who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, and helped revolutionise English poetry in the late 18th Century, had a chequered record as the governor's public secretary in Malta on the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar.

An influential political journalist whose fierce criticism of the administration of William Pitt the Younger is believed to have brought down that administration, Coleridge went to the Mediterranean island as a form of rehab to cure his opium addiction.

But now papers uncovered by a team led by Bournemouth University law professor, Barry Hough, has shown that his time on the island was blighted with incompetence and ineffectiveness.

It had been believed that the records of Coleridge's period in Malta were destroyed in the 1870s. But the team led by Prof Hough has discovered extensive archives that paint another picture of the poet's time there, and they are about to return to Malta to continue studying the papers.

"We found a lot of material in Malta that related to Coleridge's activities - and you can look at the laws he passed and make a pretty good guess at his effectiveness as an administrator, and that is entirely new," said Prof Hough.

"Coleridge was there in 1805 and left a month before Trafalgar so he was at the heart of British military endeavour in the Mediterranean Sea.

"The British administration at that time is blighted with mistakes and ineptitude and Coleridge was a part of it."

Prof Hough's team found that as well as drafting and implementing laws, Coleridge was behind a propaganda campaign of misleading information fed to the local population to help maintain order.

"He was an active propagandist, struggling administrator and someone prepared to mislead the Maltese in the British interests."