Love and jazz in Hackney and Brooklyn

Claudia Winkleman heads to St Lucia's Windjammer Landing resort with friends and family in tow

St Lucia's tourism chief is praising Amy Winehouse for bringing publicity to the Caribbean island.

St Lucia is being tipped as the new Barbados – but without the crowds. Laura Latham reports

Cricket fans will find a bigger choice of hotels on St Lucia next spring, says Andrew Tong

A final resolution to the sponsorship row that had threatened the multi-million pound Stanford Twenty20 match looks to be only hours away.

One of the biggest emergency airlifts of modern history was under way yesterday as the Civil Aviation Authority sought to help 85,000 holidaymakers stranded at resorts across the world by the collapse of XL Leisure.

First pick your tropical island, then add some old-fashioned charm

The shooting of the Mullanys has highlighted the increasing problem of violent crime in the Caribbean. But the way to make the region safe is to keep visiting, says Travel Editor Kate Simon

The murder rate for British tourists abroad runs at about one a week, making it one of the most significant causes of death – though well behind road accidents and drownings. Many of the victims of homicide abroad are longer-term residents or on visits to relatives. The statistics show that only a handful of tourists are killed by criminals (or, more rarely, terrorists) in the average year.

I'm in St Lucia on a half-term getaway with the family. We don't normally do this kind of break, but we were suffering from a peculiar new breed of pressure – from the classroom. For the past year or so, we've had subtle hints from Parker about the quality of her half-terms, which normally involve a trip to the local swimming pool and an evening at Pizza Express in Cirencester. This, apparently, will no longer do.

With cricket fans ready to descend for the World Cup, West Indies property is a great catch, says Chris Partridge

Hurricane Ivan has brought widespread devastation to the Caribbean "spice isle" island of Grenada, damaging 90 per cent of homes and destroying a 17th century stone prison that left criminals on the loose as looting erupted.

New umpire is more than a match for the naked eye. Stephen Brenkley sees him pass the official test