Montserrat

Columbus named the island in 1493 for a monastery near Barcelona. From 1632 it was settled by Irish colonists, most of them coming over from nearby Saint Kitts; the first wave was largely Protestant Anglo-Irish, and they brought in Catholic Irish indentured servants — all of which made Montserrat unusually Irish, a fact still marked by Erin, the figure of Ireland, with her harp on its flag. Sugar plantations were worked by enslaved Africans; a revolt planned for St Patrick's Day in 1768 was betrayed and crushed, and is now commemorated alongside the Irish heritage.

After emancipation in 1834 sugar gave way to limes, whose juice was shipped in casks to England by the barrel-load, and the island stayed a quiet colony. From 1979 to 1989 George Martin's AIR Studios made it a rock-recording destination: Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, along with albums by Elton John, the Police, and Paul McCartney, were made here. Hurricane Hugo flattened the island in 1989.

Then, in July 1995, the long-dormant Soufrière Hills volcano began to erupt. Pyroclastic flows destroyed the capital, Plymouth, and the airport; nineteen people were killed by a pyroclastic surge at Streatham in June 1997; and the southern half of the island became an Exclusion Zone. Two-thirds of the islanders fled, most of them to the United Kingdom, leaving fewer than 1,200 people here in 1997; the population has since climbed back towards 5,000. The seat of government moved to Brades, a new town and port are being built at Little Bay in the north, and the volcano has been relatively quiet since early 2010, though it is monitored around the clock.

Montserratian culture is English-speaking and Christian, with a proud and much-marketed Irish thread. St Patrick's Day has grown into a ten-day festival that both celebrates the Irish ancestry and remembers the 1768 revolt, and Irish surnames and place names are common. String-band music, masquerade, the "jumbie" dance, and the goat-water stew are older island traditions.

The community is tiny — under 5,000 people — resilient, and closely bound to a diaspora many times its size. The volcano runs through the island's sense of itself: the loss of Plymouth and the villages, the long resettlement in the north, and a dark, matter-of-fact humour about living beside it.

Everyone now lives in the safe northern third of the island; Brades and the rising town at Little Bay serve as the de facto capital. The economy leans heavily on United Kingdom budgetary aid, along with construction, a little tourism — volcano tours, diving, birdwatching — and the construction of the new town and port at Little Bay; British budget support runs to roughly £25 million a year.

Power and water supply are a continuing challenge, and geothermal energy from the volcano is being developed to help. Daily life is rural and car-dependent, crime is almost unknown, and the rhythm is set by the ferry and flight schedule to Antigua and by the Observatory's reports.

"Goat water", a goat stew often made with breadfruit and dumplings, is the national dish, traditionally eaten at celebrations. Saltfish and fish cakes, fresh fish, pumpkin soup, and ducana (a sweet-potato and coconut dumpling) are everyday fare, with johnnycakes alongside. The "mountain chicken", a large native frog once eaten as a delicacy, is now critically endangered — hunting, volcanic eruptions and the fungal disease chytridiomycosis have left few or none in the wild here, and its survival rests on captive breeding. Grilled, fried and roasted fish, seafood and chicken round out a small, homey food scene.

The volcano and its aftermath are the reason most visitors come. The Montserrat Volcano Observatory, which monitors the mountain, is open to the public, and viewing points at Jack Boy Hill and Garibaldi Hill look out over the grey, ash-buried ruins of Plymouth — a "modern Pompeii". Visitors are generally not allowed into the Exclusion Zone itself.

Away from the volcano, the island's coral reefs and shoreline caves offer diving and snorkelling, and the beaches here are mostly dark volcanic sand, tucked into coves reached by road or boat. The Centre Hills rainforest holds the endemic Montserrat oriole, the national bird, found nowhere else but this island. The exterior of the abandoned AIR Studios can be seen on the way, and the St Patrick's Festival in March and the December Festival are the best times to experience the island's culture in full.