BRITAIN'S SUN and sea package holiday industry has been through some pitched battles in its time, but this one is shaping up to be a very bloody affair indeed. There was First Choice Holidays, trying desperately to squeeze through a cosy agreed merger with Kuoni, and now all hell has broken loose. In an attempt to wrest the market leadership from Thomson, Airtours has piled in. Thomson, for whom size is clearly very important, might bid itself. Already it has launched a spoiling campaign, with an increase in holiday capacity, a new budget brand and a series of low-priced offers.

THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE of Kuoni is to receive a pounds 4.3m pay-off in return for giving up the top job in the Swiss travel group's pounds 1.5bn merger with First Choice Holidays.

An Airtours bid for First Choice will anger consumer groups and unleash a battle between travel operators. David Brierley reports

SHARES IN First Choice Holidays rose sharply yesterday on speculation that Airtours might muscle in on its planned merger with Kuoni by launching a pounds 750m hostile bid for the company.

For many people the distinction between work, leisure and family life will become blurred

News Analysis: The link-up of First Choice and the Swiss group Kuoni creates a pounds 1.4bn giant

FIRST CHOICE Holidays yesterday caught the City off guard with an announcement that it is in "advanced merger talks" with Kuoni, the Swiss tour operator.

THOMSON TRAVEL Group, Britain's largest package holiday company, which came to the market last year, yesterday pledged to fight to hold its position as speculation increased that third-placed First Choice Holidays will fall to a bid. Airtours and Preussag, the dominant shareholder in Thomas Cook, are the most likely buyers.

Informal bids tabled for First Choice

COMMON HUMANITY? Gertcha. We'll have none of that in my column. What you have here, in the rather wonderful shape of my good self, is a terribly, terribly precious life dedicated to the cultivation of all things lovely, shielding oneself from the baser aspects of life - man- made fibres, cheap jam, Oxford Street, package holidays, tired old Judaeo- Christian ethics - and then one doles out the priceless distillate, drop by drop, to the parched groundlings hungering for beauty and insight in their plodding, workaday lives.

Know your rights if you get hurt abroad, write Warren Collins and Michael Imperato

The Street of Crocodiles Queen's Theatre, W1 Lord of the Flies Lyric Hammersmith, W6 Measure for Measure Barbican, EC2

Damn Tony Blair, writes A N Wilson. He is completing the destruction of a once decent society

Sonia's organising a ski-ing party. But one of her circle of friends is an attention-seeking single woman with a disruptive son. She is unhappy, so everyone feels sorry for her. She's also extremely moody, though capable of being generous and kind. Some friends feel that if she's invited they won't want to come. Should they give up their holiday plans, or put up with her?