Ten years ago today, the British island of Montserrat was "the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean", an upmarket getaway for celebrities and pop stars from Elton John to Eric Clapton.
Its capital, Plymouth, was throbbing to calypso and soca rhythms, and the locals and tourists were enjoying the national dish of "mountain chicken" (a giant frog) or sipping rum punches on its shimmering black sand beaches.
But the lives of the 11,000 islanders were about to change forever. On 18 July 1995, the lush green Soufriere Hills, a favourite picnic site amid mango and breadfruit trees and thundering waterfalls, began to rumble and steam. Hardly anyone on the island had been aware that the ring of peaks above Plymouth formed the rim of a still-active volcano. These rolling hills just did not look the way a volcano is supposed to look. And there had been no eruption in recorded history.
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