OUR first Italian holiday was in 1971 with our lifelong friends, Denis and Barbara Kirk. We stayed in a family hotel and enjoyed real Italian food cooked by Mamma, in Masa Lubrense, near Sorrento.

We travelled in a rented Fiat on the Amalfi coast run to Positano, Ravello, Salerno Bay, where three of my mother's brothers landed in 1945, Naples and Herculaneum by train.

Another great memory was standing outside a record shop in the main street of Sorrento with a silent, enchanted, small crowd.

We were listening to Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti for the very first time.

George Appleby, Clifton, York.