Coolest new hotel in the Caribbean

Leroy, 89, has heaved his boat off the grass bank and into the water, a cliché of aquamarine, which shifts sleepily against the shore.

Morning is under way on Harbour Island, three and a half miles long, half a mile wide, laced with clapboard houses of pink or primrose, a gentle glory of verandahs, gazebos, gingerbread fencing and a succession of competing churches.

Last year, in one of them, Leroy married a girl of 43. His bride did well: there's competition for a lean man with a boat and a big smile. He might, for instance, have been distracted by Elle Macpherson, one of the newer residents, or Brenda Barry, a former Miss Bahamas, photographs of whose triumphs are framed at The Landing, the sevenbedroom hotel where she is now chatelaine.

Brenda squeals with delight and embarrassment when her "tribute wall" is mentioned. One picture shows her in elbow-length gloves, heroic earrings and a red dress talking to a young man in wing-collars and black tie: the Prince of Wales was evidently eager for a longer chat.

Though pictured in evening dress, Brenda is, she says, a "morning person, in for breakfast by 7.30 and up at 5.30 for a walk". Richard Burton called for service at 3am: she was a nurse in London at the time, and Burton one of her patients. His needs did not seem strictly medical. Brenda had been crowned Miss Bahamas shortly before she arrived in England, and though she kept quiet about her title - "I thought it was vain to mention it. I thought I was smart, that's where my vanity was" - she quickened pulses wherever she went. "I'm very affectionate," she says, before explaining that, though tactile, she remained a good Catholic, to Burton's chagrin.

She moved to Australia, then, 17 years, three daughters and a divorce later, returned home.

Chris Blackwell, the Caribbean Croesus, lured her to Harbour Island to run Pink Sands - now favoured by Michael Heseltine and the Duke and Duchess of York, but then "a big construction site. Chris and I fell out - or he fell out with me," she says, laughing. "In the week that that was happening, I was assisting Tracy (her eldest daughter) in acquiring this place." Seven years on, the Barrys have weathered Tracy's divorce, the departure of a gifted but volatile French chef, and a hurricane or two.

The great joy, says Brenda, is that The Landing remains a family affair, reinforced by the arrival of Tracy's new husband, Toby Tyler, an Australian-with an insistence on impeccable-food and memorable wine, who has recruited a compatriot to introduce precision, zest and ambition to the kitchen. A Landing menu might confront you with leek-and-potato soup, sourdough crostini with Portobello mushroom pesto and black truffle oil; linguine with fresh asparagus, arugula, lemon, chilli and parmesan; chicken breast marinated "Jerk-style" with green plantain chips and saut?ed spinach - with steamed bok choy as vegetable of the day.

It pleases James Caan, who has his favourite table in the dining room, a place of mellow yellow walls and a white raftered ceiling, which looks out on the neighbouring island of Eleuthera. In the bar, fans stir lazily, in sync with a succession of smoky tunes.

There are a couple of sofas which insist you collapse into them, a brace of planter's chairs, an apparently superannuated barometer and a prewar "station"-clock. The Bahamian authorities-said that antique mirror should be replaced, and complained about the deliberately distressed beams in the bar - evidence that the British theme-park disease, with its desperate obsession with reducing everything to anodyne conformity, has begun to afflict the Caribbean.

Mirror and beams remain in place, much to the relief of the local talent - India Hicks - to whom the Barrys turned for decorative inspiration. White walls, lined with 18th-century architectural prints, contrive stateliness without calling for best behaviour.

There are slim, varnished floorboards, door handles of subdued brass, four-posters with white damask covers and mosquito nets, rattan armchairs and day beds on which to take the evening breeze through louvred sash windows - and Ralph Lauren sheets, says Brenda, who demands clinical cleanliness. The day after Hurricane Michelle blew through, last November, she appeared in swimsuit and tights, organised breakfast and distributed-water "for drinking and flushing?.

She is still adroit at "taking temperatures", gauging guests' requirements, noting those who want to chat and those who do not, and predicting who will ask for what (Americans: "air-conditioning and e-mail", Italians: "how late they can eat", and the British: "easiest and best"). She goes off duty at 4.30pm, returning home to her mother, who is now completely blind. "We still have the extended family in the Bahamas," she says. "It helps people age well."

Way to go

Marcus Scriven travelled to the Bahamas with Discover The Bahamas (01737 218803; www.discover-the-bahamas.co.uk). One-week packages - six nights at The Landing, one at the Orange Hill Beach Inn in Nassau - from £1,257 per person room-only, based on two sharing, including British Airways flights to Nassau and transfers.

Destination guide: Bahamas