Capri Today

Capri Today ALEC WAUGH One of the chief problems of the con- temporary travel writer is the speed at which places change under the impact of the tourist boom. He visits a West Indian island—St. Lucia let us say—in the spring of 1959. He notes the long stretch of empty beaches from which in 1782 Rodney watched for de Grasse’s fleet to sail out from Martinique to its destruc- tion. He would like to file away his description of it, to incorporate it later in a general article on different types of island. “Phat is how most. of us travel-writers operated in the 1930s. Today we cannot. We have to be on our guard. In the early Sixties in St. Lucia a vast hotel transformed the whole appearance and atmosphere of those beaches. If in

I were to write of St. Lucia out of my memories of 1959 I would be out of date, the one thing a travel writer must not be. He has either to write his piece straightaway or be prepared to go back and check. It is a tiresome pre- dicament. Last year, for instance, I spent two weeks in Sicily. I wanted foe compare it with Capri, but.

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Alec Waugh

Capri Today ALEC WAUGH One of the chief problems of the con- temporary travel writer is the speed at which places change under the impact of the tourist boom. He visits a West Indian island—St. Lucia let us say—in the spring of 1959. He notes the long stretch of empty beaches from which in 1782 Rodney watched for de Grasse’s fleet to sail out from Martinique to its destruc- tion. He would like to file away his description of it, to incorporate it later in a general article on different types of island. “Phat is how most. of us travel-writers operated in the 1930s. Today we cannot. We have to be on our guard. In the early Sixties in St. Lucia a vast hotel transformed the whole appearance and atmosphere of those beaches. If in

I were to write of St. Lucia out of my memories of 1959 I would be out of date, the one thing a travel writer must not be. He has either to write his piece straightaway or be prepared to go back and check. It is a tiresome pre- dicament. Last year, for instance, I spent two weeks in Sicily. I wanted foe compare it with Capri, but.