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THINK Chicago, and it's the glamour of the West End musical, the guns of Al Capone and the gore of hit TV medical drama, ER. But the gigantic Midwest city, on the wind-blasted banks of Lake Michigan, is eager to sell its more mainstream charms, too. To this end, the city now has 180 personal greeters. These are members of the public who are paid absolutely nothing for showing outsiders around town: remarkable, but true, and a testament both to the city's friendliness and its relative lack of confidence. With rivals like ritzy New York and celeb-studded Los Angeles, who wouldn't feel a little insecure? For while Chicago is synonymous with Tommy Guns (or 'Chicago Typewriters' as they were once dubbed in these parts), dancing girls and barrels of bootlegged whiskey, it's not generally known as the kind of place you visit on a weeklong jolly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

MY FAMILY has a split personality. Two of us can think of nothing better than soaking up the sun; two of us want to be on the move all the time. So, my wife, two daughters and I devised a strategy. Spend the first week recovering from the stresses of living in modern Britain and spend the second week travelling to find out why Crete has become one of the swishest, most sought-after of Greek islands, a place that's hospitable to the foreign visitor, while jealously guarding its distinct cultural identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Austrians know little and care even less about The Sound Of Music. This was one of many surprises for my daughter, Alex, during our long weekend in Salzburg, erstwhile home of the von Trapp family and, oh yes, birthplace of Mozart. Alex, my 14-year-old, is a musicals nut. She can rattle off the names who starred in which play or film version and even who the understudy was -- well, almost. So we cut a deal. We would visit every location of the Julie Andrews epic only after we had absorbed the architecture and classical music of one of central Europe's most beautiful towns. All in three days. We were, it must be said, blessed. One of the reasons Salzburg is so green, its flowers and surrounding fields so verdant, is because it rains a lot. Not when we went. It was April, but in the middle of a heatwave and hundreds of people were sunbathing on the banks of the Salzach River. Rarely can a view be so majestic. On one side, the old town, everywhere else, mountains, some still capped with snow. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WE ALL have our favourite drives. I remember passing Stonehenge just before Christmas one year, the winter sun rising behind the stones. I also recall taking my family down California's fabled Route 1, and winding our way around stunning Big Sur. But little prepared me for the beauty of Northern Ireland's Antrim Coast, one of the UK's most beautiful, and forgotten, destinations. Northern Ireland has truly arrived -- at least that is what people have been saying. I am not one to fall for a cliché, so I decided to check it out for myself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

AT the start of Labour's suicide week, I went to see David Miliband, Environment Secretary and Cabinet rising star. Over the years, ministers have publicly pretended that the Blair-Brown feud was a media invention. Not this time. Miliband waxed lyrical about a future under Gordon Brown, while suggesting that talk of civil war was 'ridiculous'. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WHEN IT COMES TO FAMILY SUMMER FUN, JOHN KAMPFNER RECKONS SUN, SEA AND GIANT INFLATABLE FRUIT ARE HARD TO BEAT… [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WHEN Tony Blair came to power in May 1997, amid all the fanfare he promised that his Government would be whiter than white. He pledged a new era in which public confidence in politicians would be restored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ON his second afternoon in the office, Labour's first Foreign Secretary in nearly two decades asked his civil servants to assign him a free hour. The 2,000 Guineas, the first classic of the flat racing season, was due for the off and he needed time to prepare. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]