AS A young man Handel Evans faced the choice of two careers, music and art. His considerable gifts as a pianist and as a painter would almost certainly have guaranteed him success at either but, perhaps rather curiously for a Welshman, it was on the visual arts that he chose to focus.

2-7 February

A LUXURY schooner skippered by a British seaman may have sunk while trying to outrun Hurricane Mitch, according to rescuers who discovered empty life rafts and the ship's staircase among wreckage in the Caribbean.

ELFI EDER, who quit the Austrian women's Alpine team last year after an argument with her national federation, will race for the Caribbean island of Grenada this winter. The 28-year-old returns to the circuit after a one-year enforced break.

A courageous new novel breaks taboos to tell the secret story of a Caribbean sexual awakening.

Two young writers have given powerful voices to the `East Indian' women of the Caribbean. Paula Burnett welcomes them; Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo Granta, pounds 14.99, 249pp; Buxton Spice by Oonya Kempadoo Phoenix House, pounds 12.99, 176pp

NEVIS FAILED to become one of the world's smallest countries yesterday, but it did force the world to take its self-determination drive seriously, the Caribbean island's premier said. Nevis, a mountainous patch of green with 9,000 people, needed a 67 percent vote in Monday's referendum to secede from neighbouring St Kitts, population 32,000. It got 62 percent.

PROSPECTIVE holidaymakers who have not yet booked their holidays still have plenty of options.

A delegation from St Vincent is in Brussels this week in a last- ditch effort to save the tiny island's livelihood - and keep the drug barons at bay. By Louise Jury. Photographs by Tom Pilston

Despite a history of conflict, and economic difficulties today, Tina Stallard found Grenada to be the classic paradise island

George Michael Chambers, politician: born 4 October 1928; married (one daughter); died Port-of-Spain, Trinidad 4 November 1997.

Sir Eric Gairy, Prime Minister of Grenada 1974-79, died at his home at Grand Anse on the south coast of the island he loved and tyrannised.

Earl Lovelace won the Commonwealth Writers Best Novel award with 'Salt' and has been on tour reading his work. This is an extract

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