St Lucia Jazz Festival

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

A plane

On the Floor

Two major new musicals are brewing on Broadway: Paul Simon's 'The Capeman' and Stephen Flaherty's 'Ragtime'. The one has been honed to perfection in out-of-town runs, the other is going through its birth-pangs in full public view. Phil Johnson has seen them both.

Aid is China's weapon to win the battle for influence and diplomatic recognition in the Caribbean basin

DNA testing could help solve the mystery of bones found buried on a north Devon beach. The boxes of bones could be the remains of Caribbean freedom-fighters - heroic prisoners-of-war who died in a West Country wreck. Or they could be the skeletons of Devon fishermen.

Many of the rich and famous prefer to take their holiday later in the year, particularly in winter, when the rest are coping with the British weather.

Paula Burnett hears a Nobel laureate's songs at twilight; The Bounty by Derek Walcott Faber & Faber, pounds 7.99

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

Jack Dear was one of Barbados's best-known, best liked, most respected citizens; and in one sense certainly its most prominent.

Books: Paula Burnett on a new Caribbean classic

Carnival is not all drinking Special Brew and being cheeky to policemen. Some people have to work, and hard. Surrounding carnival, a network of concerts, jams, and miscellaneous jollification brings a couple of dozen of the Caribbean's top soca entertainers to London in August, on a circuit which includes the major Caribbean cities of Canada and continues back via New York for Labor Day celebrations.

In St Lucia, people speak as freely about goblins as they do politics. The pantheon of Caribbean demons and demi-gods rivals even Hindu mythology