A model whose millionaire ex-boyfriend was shot dead in his Spanish holiday villa has been charged with his murder.
More recently, Willem-Alexander has recovered from a scandal over his purchase of a holiday villa in Mozambique, which he sold last year.
In March, bank manager Tracey Griffiths and her husband Paul, from Barnsley, bought a three-bed semi detached holiday villa on Spain's Costa Blanca, just north of Benidorm.
Since three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from a holiday villa in Portugal in May 2007, her parents have been accused of everything from selling their child to hiding her body in a freezer.
Dr James Bridges, a leading expert on toxicology from Surrey, was injured along with his wife when they were stabbed while arriving at their holiday villa in Barbados in January.
In a holiday villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, a young English poet and his lover, the guests of another poet, discouraged from outdoor pursuits, sat discussing the hideousness of nature and speculating about the fashionable subject of "galvanism".
Maternal instinct Another successful entrepreneur and mum (to Barnaby, 10, Maisy, 8 and Monty, 3) is 39-year-old Wendy Shand, who runs Lincolnshire-based Tots to Travel, a family-friendly holiday villa company.
Cruel Summer is a psychological thriller focusing on a group of teens who, one year on from the suicide of one of their friends, try to get over it by going away to a holiday villa in the Mediterranean.
Le Guen, the former Lyon manager, was courted by Murray earlier this season and the chairman is believed to have met him at least once in his home country, where Murray owns a holiday villa.
On the pleasant shore of the Blue Nile, a stone's throw from where it meets the White Nile on their eventual way to Egypt, stands a large, stately hotel named the Grand Holiday Villa.
There is, as every reader will notice, quite a lot of this in Must You Go? My life with Harold Pinter (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20), as dear Tom (Stoppard), Philip (Roth), John (Gielgud), Ralph Richardsonn), Joanna (Lumley), Betty (Bacall), Vidia (Naipaul) and Salman (you know who) swell the seething ranks of famous friends whose wit and charm grace garden or table or holiday villa.
