Michael Dibdin's Venetian copper delights crime buffs everywhere. But what does he owe to Belfast?

Staying in a cottage in deepest rural Sicily was always going to be unpredictable - but the surprises were all nice ones.

There can be no greater pleasure, surely, than a great book plus the time and a beautiful place to read it in? With that thought in mind, Diona Gregory and her panel of experts have browsed the booklists to bring you the best of holiday reading. These are words to chill with, in sun or shade, on sand or sward, but always at your leisure...

INVESTIGATORS IN Sicily believe the Mafia is behind an unexplained rise in cases of the animal disease brucellosis among humans.

The Royal Court Theatre has just been to Sicily to pick up a well- deserved award for its international residencies and exchange programmes. But what company does the New Theatrical Realities prize keep? Is it all it's cracked up to be?

Treat your feet for pounds 32

Need exotic fruit and veg? Fred Foster knows his onions

SICILIAN POLICE arrested one of Italy's few female Mafia bosses yesterday as she was having breakfast in her home town near Catania.

THE FONDNESS of modern politicians for kissing babies in public before elections reflects a deep-seated wish on the part of the electorate: that there should be no incompatibility between being a powerful ruler and a nice one, between being a great politician and a good-hearted one. Which is perhaps why the name of Niccol Machiavelli (1469-1527) has proved so offensive down the ages.

THE THREE Punic Wars, which lasted for nearly 100 years, from 264 to 146 BC, were a struggle for supremacy in the Mediterranean between the bludgeoning land power of Rome bent on imperial conquest, and the great maritime power of Carthage with its colonies and trading posts.

ITALIAN POLICE have arrested 17 suspected members of a mafia clan that it believes was behind a mass gangland killing in Sicily.

INFORMATION DESK: YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY OUR PANEL OF EXPERTS

ANTI-MAFIA investigators say they are tightening the noose around one of Italy's most powerful and mysterious bosses, Bernardo Provenzano. Although he has been in hiding for three decades, many believe he has never left his native Sicily.

Phillip Blom explores Catania, birthplace of the great 19th-century opera composer Bellini, where life appears to have changed little since his day