Fish fries in Half Moon Fort

When you think of Barbados, you think of celebrities. Tony Blair’s annual holidays in Sir Cliff Richard’s villa; high-profile Hello! weddings on the beach or the golf course, like that of Tiger Woods or Jemma Kidd and the future Duke of Wellington; the absorbing sight of an enormous Luciano Pavarotti being gently decanted into the sea at Sandy Lane — whenever he stays at that most luxurious of hotels, he has an oven specially installed in his room so that he can cook pasta for all the family — all these combine to produce an image of a holiday island which is the exclusive preserve of the terminally rich.

This image is largely true. There are a lot of vast fortunes on Barbados. The Irish racing mafia which bought Sandy Lane some years ago have constructed enormous mansions with pilasters on the beach next to the hotel. The J.C. Bamford family, makers of ditch-diggers and of ditch-digger chic, own the lovely Heron Bay, a Palladian mansion worthy of the Veneto.