This book is different; it sets out to expose the dark underbelly of the island, born in feudality and laboured by slaves, prisoners, and the poorest of the poor brought in from Northern Portugal for the benefit of a few privileged farmers.

Twenty years of holidays there was no preparation for the culture shock of meeting the medieval mindset head on. A democracy where there has been no power shift in twenty-five years, and government departments run themselves answerable to no one, fines and penalties handed out without evidence or justification.

Failure to wear a seat belt can result in an on the spot broken nose, the rape of a young boy can be 'put right' by the defrayment of some cash and a cow, and the decapitation of young children caused by drunken driving can be settled in similar fashion. Builders who look on in wonderment at a spirit level and improvise a bed from the dust sheets provided and where 'Care in the Community' means keeping a mentally handicapped relative in the shed with the dogs, and feeding them together, if at all.

Many nights disturbed by the roar of gunfire, as the locals followed the age-old tradition of 'lamping' - hunting for rabbits at night by torchlight - and if their path takes them through patios and gardens then so be it.

Isolated communities, especially islands, cultivate an 'us against the world' mentality, which when combined with religious intolerance, incest, ignorance, greed and an envy of the outside world creates an unhealthy and unnatural atmosphere.

From the factual sexual assault trials on Pitcairn in 2005 and recent murders on Norfolk Island to the fictional Summerisle in "The Wicker Man" there is a common thread. Isolation.

Here is a very personal and subjective account, by an Englishman, of five years living on the island of Madeira.

Mary Victoria Wallis's Among the Pilgrims is the story of her two pilgrimages - one by bicycle in 1997 and one on foot in 1998 - in northern Spain along the thousand year old route to the shrine of St. James the Apostle at Santiago de Compostela. In ten chapters covering everything from medieval miracle tales to the modern perils of shin splints and flat tires, she gives her view, as a medievalist, outdoor enthusiast, and inquiring pilgrim with Buddhist leanings, of the five hundred mile trail to Santiago. Among the Pilgrims takes the reader through a landscape of both the past and the present, the real and the imagined, through a topography not only of village and field, but of mind and spirit as well. In the cultural remains of medieval pilgrimage, Mary searches for the spiritual seeds of modern pilgrimage.

Using a personal and impressionistic style, Among the Pilgrims brings into relief the treasury of literature, art, architecture, music, philosophy and science that was born and transmitted along the Camino de Santiago. Early in her first trip, for instance, Mary climbs the pass over the Pyrenees into the Spanish town of Roncesvalles. Here, in 779 AD, Count Roland was slain, blowing a dying note upon his magical oliphant to summon help from King Charlemagne - thereby giving birth to Le Chanson de Roland - and French literature. On the dry plains of northern Castile, she discovers the cradle of many Western musical traditions. Further west, she comes upon a 12th-century Templars castle that Napoleon thought about blowing up only two hundred years ago. Far from being isolated cultural artifacts, these stories, places and treasures are part of a heritage reaching into our own time. They are also mirrors in which we can find ourselves.

In the Middle Ages, the pilgrim's destination at Santiago was, after Jerusalem and Rome, the third most important in Christian Europe. Eight centuries later, when Napoleon's armies ravaged Spain during the Peninsular Wars, the pilgrimage died out almost completely. Among the Pilgrims reflects on the rise and fall of the Camino, from its glorious beginnings with the Spanish Reconquista, to its decline during the Renaissance and Reformation, its near death in the wars of the 19th Century, and its odd echoes that have since reverberated as far west as Mexico and Peru.

Among the Pilgrims is also about the resurgence of the Camino and the pilgrim's spirit. In the 1960s, the number of travellers on the road to Santiago began to grow; by the year 2000, the tiny hamlets along the way were seeing thousands of pilgrims each summer: walkers, cyclists, even a few horseback riders. The rise of the environmental movement, along with eco- and cultural tourism, are in some ways modern expressions of the urge to pilgrimage. Many travellers seek a transcendent meaning, a new - or perhaps an ancient - sacredness in nature. In Among the Pilgrims, Mary looks at the idea of pilgrimage through her own and other's experiences on the Camino. She asks how our response to the route is informed by what we know of its past, and also by our own personal pasts. She asks too what contemporary meaning - if any - an old Christian trail has in a world where the forces of organized religion are being dispersed into personal quests for spiritual harmony and fulfillment. Among the Pilgrims explores how people today experience the Camino and how an important tradition in western civilization - the Christian pilgrimage - is being transformed in a secular world trying to renew its experience of place.

This book, based mainly on Spanish sources, deals with the actions of the Liberals, especially those in the Kingdom of Valencia, during the Peninsular War and then in their fight against Fernando VII to make him accept the Constitution of 1812. Napoleon's defeat did not put an end to Spain's struggle for liberty and the situation for most Spaniards was worse after the war than before it began.

Asensio Nebot, a Franciscan friar who was obviously not suited to a religious life, left his monastery in 1809 and raised an army of 4,000 men, 500 cavalry and a rifle brigade to fight against the Napoleonic troops and had many victories. He was not a politician but was influenced by the Bertrán de Lis brothers and their Liberal ideas. After the war, when Fernando rejected the Constitution of 1812, the Liberals began to conspire against him in secret societies. Nebot acted as an agent for the brothers. He encouraged tenant farmers to revolt against their landlords and plotted to kill the Military Governor of Valencia and the King. He took part in Riego's revolution that forced Fernando to accept the Constitution of 1812 and brought three years of Liberal rule to Spain. However, the Liberals disagreed among themselves and with the Royalists. Nebot was a founder member of the most militant of the secret societies and was involved, with the brothers, in the street fighting in Madrid against the Royal Guards. Fernando asked for help and French troops invaded Spain at his request to restore an Absolute Monarchy. Nebot fought against the French again. The Liberals were defeated and many of them, including Nebot, went to London as exiles. There they continued to conspire against Fernando. Nebot also went to Ireland on a mission on behalf of Lord William Bentinck.