Letter: See Naples - or maybe not

The photograph accompanying your article "There's chaos. And then there's Naples" (Travel, 7 December) is of Amalfi, not Naples - or at least it would be of Amalfi if it had not suffered a left-to-right reversal at some point during the publishing process.

It would be pedantic to take issue with the author's statement that "there are no people living in Pompeii today", when he refers to the ruins of ancient Pompeii which are just outside the modern city of the same name. But it is not true that "the volcano (Vesuvius) has erupted with clockwork regularity since it buried Pompeii in AD79 and is due to pop again", as he puts it. The whole point about Vesuvius's eruptions, some much more catastrophic than others, is that they have not been regular and are therefore not predictable. All that can be said with any certainty is that the last was 53 years ago, in 1944.

Brian Dodd

Bishops Castle

Shropshire