Montserrat Notebook

Montserrat, a smoulderingly beautiful volcanic island in the British West Indies, is a 15-minute flight from Antigua. Apart from me, the only passenger on the propeller plane is a birdwatcher from England, who hopes to catch a glimpse of the ‘critically endangered’ Montserrat oriole. After the volcano eruptions of 1995 to 1997, the island’s old capital of Plymouth was entombed in 40 feet of ash, and people air-freighted in their thousands to Gatwick. There is now a swelling Montserratian community in Stoke Newington, north London.

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As a British dependency (one is not allowed to say ‘colony’), Montserrat receives £10 million a year in British government aid and a further £8 million in grants. Britain’s development secretary at the time of the volcano crisis, Clare Short, infamously complained: ‘It will be golden elephants next!’ Short remains something of a hate figure in Montserrat and has not yet dared to visit. The lava-stricken south of the island presents a Pompeii-like spectacle of devastation, and remains out of bounds to visitors owing to mudslides. Even 15 years on, evacuees still live in sheds and abandoned cars.

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At the airport, wonderfully, a green shamrock is stamped in my passport: Montserrat was settled in the 17th century by dissident Irish Catholics. My taxi driver introduces himself as Brendan Sweeney. I half expect to see leprechauns instead of mountain goats on the roads. I have been invited to take part in Montserrat’s annual ‘Alliouagana’ literary festival, so called after an aboriginal Indian name for the island. Montserrat no longer has a bookshop, so I have had to take along a suitcaseful of my books for sale. I am relieved to be rid of the weight.